Cult UK / NZ calypso-blues performer Tom Rodwell returns to Nelson for a stomping show of crucial R&B, at the Free House.
Following triumphant recent appearances at the Nelson Arts Festival, Tauranga Arts Festival and the iiii Festival of new music in Wellington, Rodwell performs with special guest Coco Davis.
The set includes a wildly entertaining and dance-friendly tour through lesser-known alleys of gutbucket blues music, including street-preacher rave-ups, slave music, irreverent calypso, prison work songs and salacious early female blues hits.
Rodwell has toured extensively in the UK, US, New Zealand, Switzerland and Holland since 2003, and has been described by the NME as “Sheffields answer to Lightnin Hopkins.” Blues in London praised his ability to eschew the cliches that beset blues music. “By turns wild, angry, hypnotic and sensual its as uncompromising as it is funky and some of the best live music Ive seen,” they wrote.
Guaranteed to entrance purists, charm newcomers, scandalise backsliders and make brain surgeons do the limbo – Tom Rodwells show is unmissable, improvisatory and unlike anything else on the circuit.
