WOMAD

Eddie Martin & the Texas Blues Kings

From United Kingdom

Proof that you don’t have to come from the Mississippi Delta to play the blues, Eddie is a resident of the Severn Delta – Bristol, to be exact – and is one of the few UK bluesmen to whom the Americans will raise their hats. And this year, while Neil Young’s ‘Old Black’ takes Europe by storm, another well named guitar – ‘Old Goldie’, Eddie’s 1931 National Steel – is out on the road, accompanied not by the man’s usual band but by the hard-driving Texan duo of Guthrie Kennard on bass and Jimmie ‘Blue Shoes’ Pendleton (drums). This three-piece line-up (Eddie also plays solo sets and big band shows with brass) should deliver hard-edged, powerful blues. Over the course of his five CDs and numerous tours since 1994, Eddie has picked up a host of awards, with 1999 – the year of his first US tour and the Fires and Floods CD, proving to be a watershed. This year he’s released a live album and the aptly titled studio set Keep On Working (his second acoustic album, featuring originals and covers of the late John Lee Hooker and Robert Johnson), both of which will feature in any end of year Best of Blues lists – on both sides of the Atlantic.