Wizz Jones
Wizz Jones
Edinburgh Folk Club
Rob Adams
Form is temporary, class is permanent, they say, and Wizz Jones has certainly cast a permanent presence since your reviewer discovered fingerpicking guitar's dark arts as a teenager. I say dark arts because then as now there was a "how does he do that?" aura about the tones, slurs and accents with which Jones decorates and enriches a song's storyline.
It's a cliché to say that he sounds like a whole band but it's true, not in volume but in the way he orchestrates these accompaniments with melodic phrases, harmonic colour, contrapuntal hornlike lines and percussive kick. He's 75, so he's approaching 60 years' onstage experience and although he mentions the aches and creaks that come with age and he takes an old codgerish minute or two to plug in and settle down, when the music begins it flows with apparently effortless style and drive.
Songs segue into one another naturally and a full picture of a long career and considerable breadth of interest emerges, the blues of Mance Lipscombe's About a Spoonful somehow seeping into and enhancing The King of Rome's pigeon fanciers drama as the first set heads towards the tale of how Bruce Springsteen gave Jones yet another star endorsement by covering his When I Leave Berlin.
Jones seems bemused by the honour and follows a poker faced critique of Bruce's singing by adding a cheeky "born in the U-U-K" coda. Jones's own singing isn't quite up there with the fluent guitar mastery that produces a fabulous Anji but his timing gives words exactly the required weight and his voice and guitar made Blues Run the Game swing deliciously and emphatically.
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