The Bobcats at the Musician
Tuesday 10th December 2013
Also on this page: 8Miles High band ↓
Leicester blues rock band The Bobcats was on the line-up tonight at the Musician. With the vocals of Stu Crown, bassing by Dan Fraser-Betts and with Art Pridmore on the drums, The Bobcats is a band making its mark on the local music scene.
Launching the band’s set, lead singer Stu Crown immediately made an impression on the room; “Sit down, shut up and listen” he commanded before getting into his first song. Stu Crown is a character and the force majeure of the band; his deep gravelly voice is reminiscent of ‘Satchmo’ and there is no shortage of colour and atmosphere when he takes to the mic.
What you can expect from Stu Crown is singing that comes from the heart; he is the kind of song writer that takes real life experience and waves into his words. When he gets behind a mic you see the real person, the man of stature and experience as well as the gifted guitarist. Introducing his song Drinking, Fighting and Women, Stu said “this is a song about me.”
The Bobcats delivered a set that pulsated with passion, counterpoised with moments of delicacy, contrasting moments of anger with passages of bitter-sweet feelings. Well that’s the blues for you and this is a band that whose songs are laden with life.
Superbly crafted music delivered with gusto The Bobcats is a band that brings something richly rewarding to the Blues rock idiom of Leicester’s music scene. We will be doing a feature article on The Bobcats soon.
What I did not realise, as I watched the Bobcats on stage, is that some of that they were doing with extemporised. As bassist Dan Fraser-Betts told me, after their set, is that there is a chemistry between the three musicians that allows them to feed off of each other and hence no one song is always the same from one gig to another. The smoothly executed songs belie the fact that they are the kind of musicians that make music as they play – you would have thought that every song was the product of careful rehearsal and meticulous pre-arrangement; in fact they play to an outline, a structure, but what we hear is music that is played as it happens on stage. A mark of the true blues rock band and something you would recognise if you had seen films of artists likes BB King or Louis Armstrong. That is something I think of which most of the audience would have unaware as they watched them on stage.
8Miles High
We have seen tonight’s headline band before; 8Miles High is one of the outstanding young bands of Leicester and tonight’s performance was every bit as good as when we saw them before.
Fronted by vocalist Oliver Kidd-Martin, the band put on a storming set of their songs, amplified by a couple of covers. Starting their set with their song Days of Glory, 8Miles High went on to play Dammit, December to Forget, Are you gonna to be girl and 98 percent.
A performance fizzing with teenage energy and youthful sparkle, the band delivered a lively and enjoyable set that hit all the right notes with the audience.
Their tunes were sharp and snappy, cut with razor sharp breaks and revved up with vitality. A band does not have to have been playing for a couple of decades before it make good music and can set a room alight, as some of our local youth bands are demonstrating now.
See our article on 8Miles High.
Follow 8MilesHigh band on Facebook
Also on tonight’s bill Murmer and acoustic artist No Man’s Heath from Loughborough.
