Edinburgh Jazz Festival
John Nemeth
West Princes Street Spiegeltent
Rob Adams
three stars
JOHN Nemeth knows how to make an entrance. The singer and harmonica player from Boise, Idaho, and now resident in Memphis, arrived on stage proudly wearing a set of overalls whose yellow-fading-into-white tones looked like they might have been the result of a dry cleaner’s faux-pas.
Despite the contrasting wrist and shin flashes suggesting the possible absence of a pantomime animal’s head-mask, he was, the message seemed to say, here to work.
And work he and his band did, throughout two sets of material that wasn’t always as memorable as Nemeth’s attire, with no little physical effort from Nemeth in conducting his guitar, bass and drums team through arrangements and rhythmical punctuation.
Nemeth has a gruff voice that suits the hard-rocking roadhouse blues that forms the spine of his repertoire and can put across a testifying gospel-style declaration of his love. His songs mostly follow the well-worn blues path – his baby’s left him and if it weren’t for bad luck, he’d have no luck at all – and his band help him to deliver them with solid accompaniment and guitar solos that, like Nemeth’s harmonica playing, tend to settle into a familiar pattern.
He forms a good rapport with his audience, with his rogue-ish chat about learning to play harmonica while driving an 18-wheeler and the possibly aphrodisiacal properties of a kool-aid pickle, and he isn’t above singing Happy Birthday to a fan in the stalls. The most enjoyable bits, though, were his ventures into Southern soul, where the band’s well-worked and effective vocal harmonies introduced a fresh dimension and the songs’ unashamed pop element added sweetness, light and shade.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here