CW Stoneking review

Bristol's Howlin' Lord opens the evening with a confident busker's pitch of high-volume guitar songs that demanded, and got, tonight's big audience's full attention. A suitable warm-up to the evening's main act, Australian-born blues artist CW Stoneking.

CW Stoneking pulls off an improbable impersonation of deep authenticity tonight by treating us to grandly tall tales and lots of downright fibs. Whatever else we were believing about his job in the New Orleans Voodoo Emporium, his tale of a drowning Trinidad scientist being paddled onto the Gabon shore with a short-necked banjo is the moment when we all surrender to gales of happy laughter.

The Medicine Show at Trinity is spectacularly entertaining. The jungle music of CW Stoneking and his Primitive Horn Section is the perfect soundtrack for getting dressed up, drinking and storytelling and the crowd at Trinity are up and dancing from the first song.

Tunes come from two of his finest albums, Jungle Blues and King Hokum, and he alternates between solo and band, banjo and resonator guitar and between dance, blues and story formats. Cab Calloway, Big Joe Turner, Louis Armstrong, Ma Rainey, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Jimmy Rogers are all here in spirit tonight: CW Stoneking sounds like none of them specifically, but he knows and loves all of their music and he has a fabulous blues voice (the yodelling disaster notwithstanding).

While his albums are unquestionably very good, it's his great stage presence and an enthralling live show that sets him apart from the rest.

Sam Saunders

For more on Trinity's rich history of hosting live music head to the Archive section of the site