BRITAIN'S GOT DA BLUES

Tom Colborn sometimes known as Delta Tom or Bluesman Tom is the real deal feel it in your bones, rhythm and sounds in deep tissues, from the Mississippi Delta to east coast Ragtime blues belta. This man plays his brand of bottleneck blues guitar in the old style troubadour tradition of what blues was in "dem good ol' days". You know back in the day' when blues men were the musical scribes, Griots and messengers of conscience within their community and travelled around from hamlet to town giving up social commentary on what was happening in their little corner of the universe. Tom is one a those guys reincarnated for twenty first century Britain got-da-blues. But Tom's not singin’ duh: "Oh My baby's gone I'm so alone" type blues, duh: “ I wanna slit my throat”, “You got my goat" type blues He's hollerin' the up beat "rag time" "jump jolly," Jelly roll".... "Funny thing happened to me the other day" type 21st century Millennia Blues.

I first saw Tom in an open mic acoustic session at the Durrel in Fulham when he was doing a sound check warm up before the session started and I was busily chatting away to my friends as you do ignoring the musicians go through their warm up session when this tall thin lick of a man got up on the stage with his guitar and started strumming away and almost right from the very first belt of his (really handsome acoustic) guitar stopped the conversation at my table and the next and the next stone cold dead and transfixed us with a force fusion of lyric and beat. He threw down some of the most brilliant steel guitar I have heard in a long time. Gotta tell you it was just a warm up but he got a standing ovation at the end of it and I know that everyone in the place knew that that was just a prelude to big treats yet to come. By the time the session got under way and the two other artist before him had done their thing there was an air of excitement and expectation when he took the stage.

I'm not going to bore you with the details. Suffice to say that he didn't disappoint. He stormed through his set with brio. Fantastically fresh lyrics and threw in a maestro quality string picking bottle neck sliding expertly delivered steel guitar instrumentals. punctuating each number with little witticisms. Tom Colborn is in my opinion one of the most accomplished exponents of the genre practicing in Britain today. If you like the blues? I mean the real deal Cajun type, railroad riding, String bending raw rending blues then I thoroughly recommend you go and see him do his thing. I promise you you will not be disappointed.

PS: One of the most profound things I’ve heard from an exponent of this music that I love so much came from a conversation with Tom. I quote:

“if you take the blues form as a philosophy of story telling that you can use to express your own concerns, desires, aspirations etc, and those of your peers. Without personal input, in lyrical and musical content, this music would simply be a dusty museum piece, and its vitality and relevance is so obvious as to need no advocacy from modern day me's.
A guitar workshop ad I once read ran 'today, the blues belongs to everyone'. Wrong. It doesn't belong to anyone - you belong to the blues. You give yourself to it, and in so doing connect with a tradition which has its roots in Africa over a thousand years ago. As with the ancients who worshipped their ancestors, the blues connects you with the past, enables you to address and reconcile the problems of the present - and therefore light the way to the future. ”

My Peoples! You understand why I am Biggin'Up dis Tom Colborn Bluesman Tom fella so much.... Don’t you my peops?

PPS: HOT OFF THE PRESS BLUESMAN TOM LIVE AT LITTLE TARDIS STUDIO WILL BE UP ON THIS SITE IN A COUPLE OF DAYS TIME



KING KING for Mixit.TV

Photo provided by www.charles2ndphotography.co.uk