Derek Trucks, Beyond The Bush

Briefly:

Derek Trucks band:

New Orleans: Fantastic
Shepherd's Bush Empire: Awful sound, couldn't hear a thing
Manchester Academy 3: Bloody brilliant

I actually feel truly honoured to have been witness to Derek and the band's evolution since 2002. Back in the day, Derek's slide work was phenomenal. It's now even better plus his work without the slide, in alternate tuning (!) is more than it's equal. Amazing.

The Manchester gig was fan-bloody-tastic. There were a couple of technical issues which, if you didn't look closely, you might have missed. Mike's earpiece didn't seem to work right for the first couple of songs, so they broke from the setlist, went into an instrumental, off went Mike for a conflab then back onstage and bingo, everything was fab again.

It was interesting to see the band showcase each player. Most noticeably was on "Soul Serenade" where the band really reeled it in and Mike's vocals took centre stage. And he 'owned' the song, as they say these days (don't they?)

After the major disappointment of the Bush, Man 3 made up for it.

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.