It must be depressing for an artist to take a peek at the size of the audience before a show and see only a small smattering of people, no excited hubbub, just a few folk sitting down at the back as if waiting for the bingo caller to come out. That’s what it looked like on entering the venue, the only thing missing being a big “shush” sign. Remarkably, two intrepid souls had made the journey down from Cumbria (hello John and Om!) specifically for the chance to catch the Californian Blues guitarist, which put the train journey from sunny Sidcup for the WRC team completely in the shade. If Alastair Greene was disheartened by the tumbleweed blowing through the empty spaces in the already compact space of the 229, he didn't show it, proceeding to deliver two sets of blistering power trio Blues numbers that had the small crowd glad they’d made the effort.

To be honest, as an audience member it was perfect viewing conditions; the size of the crowd meant that there were no drunken eejits pushing their way past you continually, no seven-foot hat wearers pitching up directly in your eye line and no tense queueing at the bar. The sound was superb, the band delivered, so, putting empathy for the artist aside, it was almost the ideal gig scenario!

The trio came on stage and ripped straight into a fast shuffle to get the groove going before focusing on showcasing songs from the guitarist’s current album, 'Standing Out Loud', like the riff heavy title track ‘Standing Out Loud’ and ‘Temptation’. Having worked as a sideman to people as disparate as Alan Parsons and Sugaray Rayford, in addition to pursuing a solo career ('Standing Out Loud' being his 11th album, not including his participation in the Blues Caravan 2024 release) Alistair Greene is clearly no slouch on the guitar. In an understated way he used a technique that included him using both his fingers and plectrum to provide tonal variety between chord based passages and the frequent solo passages that most songs featured. He’s a fast flowing guitarist and on the evening ripped out solo after solo on his Gibson Firebird. His songs have a homogenous quality and variety was mainly provided by the foot being taken off the pedal occasionally to take the tempo right down and allow the guitarist to squeeze out some sweet, delicately played phrases and illustrate the full breadth of his fretboard abilities, as on ‘Rusty Dagger’ from the latest solo album and to even better effect on Peter Green’s ‘Merry Go Round’, which was the highlight of the night for me.

The second set was mainly Blues standards, like the aforementioned ‘Mac song and numbers like Robert Johnson’s ‘Stop Breaking Down’ and ‘Walking Blues’. The bottleneck was given full reign on various numbers, particularly on set finale ‘Bullfrog Blues’, which was played at a breakneck (bottleneck?) speed and was a rousing conclusion; however, while Alastair is a fine vocalist (he didn’t put on that rather affected voice that many Blues vocalists use that sounds like they’ve been on forty Capstan Full Strength a day since they were in a pram), and while drummer Mike Hellier and bassist James Winnicott were effective accompanists on this and throughout the evening, given that Rory Gallagher delivered the definitive version of this song as one of his trademark numbers, you have to wonder about the wisdom of bashing out this song when it can only pale by comparison to the Irish wizard’s version. A good effort though. The diminutive crowd had been making a lot of appreciative noise throughout the powerful set and prompted the band to end the evening with the classic Blues groove of Buddy Guy’s ‘Cut You Loose’. The evening could have been flatter than a party political broadcast but the trio managed to rev up their engines in admirable fashion and provide a dose of excellent high energy Blues for the audience. A highly enjoyable evening.

Simon Green