The things we do for music!!......Went to Crawley Blues Club last night to see the incredible Mike Dowling, nice to see over half a dozen Bottleneckers there & of course the gig was superb.....Mike is a charming performer as well as being an outstanding musician....he played the club a couple of years ago on the same bill as Geoff Achison & The Souldiggers if you remember. However on the way back not only had they closed the M26 (bringing the M25 to a complete standstill) but directed all the traffic up the M25 to Wrotham Hill....into a blizzard! It was white-out....I kept thinking we could have just bunged one of Mike's CDs on the old machine at home & not had to endure this...& then an idiot pulled out in front of me without warning, I had a car overtaking me & nowhere to go. By a miracle the ABS kicked in & we missed him...so we got back in one piece...just! The things we do for music!

A bonus when I got in at gone 1:00am was catching that excellent programme on BBC 4 this morning...yes 1:00am what pillock decided that anybody into Bluegrass, Blues & "real" Country never goes to bed?...anyway what a feast...Emmilou Harris, Alison Kraus, Gillian Welch, Chris Thomas King, The Cox Family...it just went on...great fiddle, astonishing harmony & virtuosic musicianship....the kinda thing I try to dish up.

OK folks....no excuses...so it's Good Friday at the weekend & it don't get much gooder than Jeremiah Marques & The Blue Aces....I mean...they are beyond good, in my opinion & many others they are Britain's premier 50s Chicago exponents...both Toby Walker & Watermelon Slim were blown away by them, they couldn't believe we had such excellent musicians in the UK & both took Jerry's CDs home with them. If that's not enough we also have the beautiful voice of Lesley Atchisson a young girl from Oban who writes her own material as well as singing traditional songs, who will be joined by Carl Burgess for a few tunes. Another evening of contrasts, which is what I try to do, give you something completely different, something or someone you may never have heard before....it doesn't get any easier but thankfully, amongst the many CDs I get on a weekly basis, occasionally a little gem appears & that's what makes programming these evenings so much fun (at times!!).