[Harp-L] Brief report from Stockholm



I was in Stockholm last Friday night, and looked up the local blues society web page. I found to my delight that the Mercury Blues Band featuring Joakim Barcheus on harmonica was playing within a 15 minute walk of my hotel.

I dropped by the bar and introduced myself. Joakim asked me to sit in. I listened to the band's first set of solid Chicago-style blues. Joakim uses his own customized Marines Bands mostly, played into an apparently ancient brown-and-tan Premier amp (the amp section is in a box that sits on the floor in front of the speaker -- you don't see a lot of that anymore, if you ever did before) through an Astatic JT-30 -- in other words, a very traditional Chicago blues setup. His sound was strong, and the crowd had a great time, me included. The crowd was a lot more mixed than one usually finds in a nightclub in the USA -- people ranging from their teens to the sixties -- and everyone seemed relaxed and into the music.

I started off the second set with the band, and played two instrumentals -- "Comin Home Baby" on an A Natural Minor Lee Oskar in 2nd position, followed by Walter Horton's "Have Mercy" on a CX12 chromatic. It was a lot of fun, and the big tube amp combined with the Astatic produced a VERY large sound with the chromatic harp. There's a reason why people use those rigs...

Anyway, the blues has an audience in Sweden, and it's fun to hang out with them. The Mercury Blues Band seems to play regularly -- if you're in Sweden, check out their web page at http://web.comhem.se/~u83406314/index2.htm.

thanks and regards, Richard Hunter
hunterharp.com






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