The Blue Blokes 3 are old pals Ian Anderson (English Country Blues Band, Hot Vultures, Ian Anderson’s Country Blues Band, Tiger Moth and more) on vocals, guitar & slide guitar, Lu Edmonds ( Mekons , Billy Bragg’s Blokes, 3 Mustaphas 3 , Shriekback, PiL, The Damned, Kirsty MacColl and many more) on vocals, cumbus, saz, guitar and more, and Ben Mandelson (Billy Bragg’s Blokes, 3 Mustaphas 3, Tiger Moth, Orchestre Jazira, Magazine, Amazorblades and many more) on vocals, mandolin, baritone bouzouki, banjo, tenor guitar, guitar and more.
Past social twanging and banging apart, they came together one dark and rainy night in the spring of 2007 to pay tribute to English folk sweetheart Shirley Collins on the occasion of a celebratory evening to mark her receipt of the MBE from another queen. Their wonky take on old time nomadicised English country blues and death folk seemed to appeal and one thing led to another - within days the Fledg’ling A&R office were inviting them to make an album, and then came offers to appear at other reckless events. How could they do other than agree?
Produced by Hijaz Mustapha and Jamie Orchard-Lisle, Stubble - released 7th July 2008 - is the result. Blues standards go willingly on trips through the Balkans, the Steppes or the South Downs, old English folk songs from the family closet get newly clothed in subtle tones of vintage Congolese guitar and space saz, and certain participants’ greatest hits get revisited with instruments they’d not suspected existed at the time they were originally recorded. The album’s title could be a subtle allusion to it having taken little more than a week to effortlessly grow, but actually – like the trio – it just looked good on paper!
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Wanna date? Email ian at frootsmag dot com
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Stubble enters World Music Charts Europe Top 10 Aug '08!
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Charlie Gillett wrote about their Jan 09 concert at the Purcell Room, London:
For a sumptuous musical evening, you could not hope for anything better. The sound was exquisite, thanks to engineer Jamie Orchard-Lisle (and the room's natural acoustics), and the playing so good, I don't have the adjectives to describe it.
A trick of the lighting gave Lu Edmonds a pink aura illuminating the long bits of hair sticking out under his trilby; a gift of nature has provided Ben Mandelson with the most perfect beard a man could dream of (if men ever dream of perfect beards). These two musicians are not simply brilliant, but their telepathic interchanges are endlessly fascinating and remarkable; between them sits Ian Anderson, the straight man in a Marx Brothers sketch, holding not only his own but a couple of guitars that he knows exactly what to do with. As the other two take off on flights of fancy, Ian sticks to the script and gives them a core to return to.
Among the several bewildering aspects of the evening was: how does Lu find the exact place to put his fingers on the neck of his cumbus, which has no frets? There is no sign that he even has to think about it, those fingers find their place and the sound is flawless, every time. Don't you just know it?
I have grumbled in the past about Ian's singing, but either he's getting better or I'm getting used to it. Last time I saw this trio, I was taken with his touching crooning on A Fool Such As I and this was a highlight again. But he does Fred McDowell's Write Me a Few Of Your Lines very well too, his distinctly English accent much more effective than the usual fake-American approach taken by Brits on such numbers. Of the three, Ben is the only one who doesn't take a lead vocal, but this is misplaced modesty to judge by his jokey efforts before the band launched into the authorised version of Don't You Just Know It. Flawless in E flat. [You try it - it's very high!]
As entertaining as the music of the Blue Blokes is the repartee between the numbers, some of it apparently thought out ahead of time but mostly improvised on the spot (much like the music itself, come to think of it). Tonight's show had the benefit of a few anecdotes reporting incidents from earlier in the tour, and it really did seem that these three had enjoyed each other's company every day for three weeks.
How lucky we are that they have finally set about demonstrating some of the remarkable talent in their fingers. No wonder Ian is adamant that he is first of all a musician, only after that a magazine editor, live music promoter, tour manager , talent propagandist and conceiver of big wheezes.
They may have imagined that Stubble would be yet another one-off sideshoot to their respective careers, but after this it is possible to imagine both a demand and the need for a follow-up.
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The Guardian F&M Playlist 6th February 2009:
Blue Blokes 3
A Fool Such As I
This glorious Hank Snow weepie from the 50s was played by Bob Dylan on his radio shows and revived yet again by this cheerfully entertaining British trio at their Southbank concert at the weekend.
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The Independent 4th July 2008:
As members of 3 Mustaphas 3, Ben Mandelson and Lu Edmonds were playing footloose and fancy-free with blended roots music 'forgeries' as far back as the Eighties, so the string-band crossovers done in cahoots with folk blues guitarist Ian Anderson on Stubble should come as no great surprise. Using an instrumental palette of guitars, mandolin, banjo, bouzouki, cumbus and saz, the three blokes grab songs from all over and turn them into something else. Elmore James's "Sunnyland" acquires a certain trad-folk hauteur and Huey 'Piano' Smith's "Don't You Just Know It" is given a Flying Lizard-esque makeover, while Hank Snow's country ballad "A Fool Such As I" is transformed by Anderson's voice and languid slide guitar into a British country-blues. It's a pleasant, whimsical affair.
Andy Gill ***
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The Guardian 4th July 2008:
Formed as an impromptu folk club trio to pay tribute to Shirley Collins after she was awarded an MBE, Blue Blokes 3 are a bunch of old friends, each with a lengthy musical history. They sound like a contemporary version of those white blues and string bands of the 60s, who in turn were reworking good-time material by even earlier blues artists. Ben Mandelson and Lu Edmonds are best known as members of 3 Mustaphas 3 and Billy Bragg's Blokes. Here they are joined by journalist and musician Ian Anderson for a cheerful, twanging acoustic work-out, playing anything from guitars to mandolin, bouzouki and saz on a set that ranges from reworkings of Mississippi Fred McDowell and Louis Jordan to English traditional material. The best tracks are the most experimental, from the Hank Snow 1950s weepie, A Fool Such As I, through to Nirvana's favourite Leadbelly song, In The Pines, or - best of all - Me And My Chauffeur Blues, which now sounds like a Memphis Minnie session in Chicago hijacked by east European Gypsies.
Robin Denselow ***