SpideWriter

Dereham Blues Festival 2026 Dereham: Wednesday 1st July / Sunday 5th July 2026 Will Wilde: Harp-led Blues at Dereham Memorial Hall 1st July 2026  Whoah, the summer we have been having has been real Blues country weather!  The unrelenting, enervating heat and hot breezes, have set up the 14th Dereham Blues Festival perfectly. Five straight days and nights of the finest, free, live blues music in the country are on the way in the old market town and it looks like all its hours will be blessed with good weather for wandering from pub to pub to cricket club and the Ellenor Fenn Garden to soak up the free music on offer.  The whole shebang kicked off last night with another stunning opening show at the Dereham Memorial Hall . It was sold out  of course.  The star attraction for the opening night was Will Wilde and his band, who hail from the Brighton.  Will’s specialism is playing the blues harp, the entry level instrument for so many to blues musicians. Whet...

 Wild Paths 2025:  Day 2 Evening Pleasure Inc. spitting fire At last a decent picture of my own for a review, as luck would have it. The second Wild Paths event of this year's festival presented a lively crowd with another three acts: Chest, Canned Pineapple and Pleasure Inc. To put it simply, this was a fun night out.  Chest were refreshing to the ears after last night's intensive aural workout.  With audible lyrics, tunes, chorus, who would have known that such ingredients were a recipe for a good time?  As proponents of shoe gaze that leans towards the poppie side of that style, Chest are a band who engage with the audience through lively songs, structured in a standard form: guitar intro, singer comes in with a verse that blends into chorus, then round we go again. The songs are delivered by a front man who makes extended elegant shapes with his long limbs, emphasising his emotional input to the act. Each number gives the instrumentalists room to feed in ex...

I've been looking forward to this week ever since I first heard about this festival...interesting it's called Wild Paths, not Wild Cobbles, or Wild Streets, but it is here at last, Tuesday, 14th October through to Sunday 19th October. My mission is quite simple: get to every venue when there's a show, or talk in session. How I get on will be written here, as I go. I'll try to keep it tidy, but it may get messy. Edits of articles will be notified when the whirlwind has been and gone. I think this festival could be a gem. Info and tickets are available from the link here:   https://wildpaths.co.uk/ Hope to see you in Norwich at Wild Paths 2025  Spencer Ide Monday, 13th October, 2025

Fall From Grace Latest release by Ross Stewart New Single launches 29 th  May 2025 Two things to get your teeth into straight away with Ross Stewart's new single  Fall From Grace:   it’s another great, bouncy tune; you get to bask in the sheer joy of a needle-sharp Stewart rock guitar solo that is hard as diamonds.  It is the kind of guitar solo you feared might be lost in the Digital Age, but here it is, a solo that makes you want to unpack an air guitar and spin round the room, eyes squeezed tight shut. Lyrically, Ross Stewart continues to explore his growing awareness of emotions, life and the kind of mistakes that can seem catastrophic early in adult life.  His latest song poses the question  Is it a fall from grace, or is it just getting older?  The song   ends with a cry for help for the over-whelmed voice,  I’m drowning, I’m drowning .   There is no attempt to push trite answers. The power of the vocal delivery...

  Sweet Morning - Many Happy Returns! New single from Norfolk based singer-songwriter, guitarist Ross Stewart show-cased at old-skool style Long Stratton High School gig 31 st  July 2024 Ross Stewart's got a 'new' motor to go with his brand new single!   Heading back to school in the middle of summer, never one to forget his roots, Ross Stewart took his burgeoning musical talents into the main hall of Long Stratton High School one more time, to pay a tribute set for his alma mater. Besides acknowledging how his high school, friends and teachers, had supported and encouraged his musical abilities, Ross wanted to launch his new single Sweet Morning to an audience of people who he trusted to give him honest opinions about his work.  Not for Ross sycophantic ‘super fans’ but individuals who would not be shy of giving an honest opinion.    Well, if there were any doubts (in Ross’s mind at least) about how his latest compositions would go down, they were bl...