Carvin Jones Band @ Madison Bar, Dublin 28/07/2007

A musical tornado blew into Rathmines on Saturday night all the way from Phoenix Arizona and treated the full house of delighted music fans to some tube screaming roadhouse tinged Texas Blues Rock.

Carvin Jones is an ace guitarist and a broad brimmed fun charismatic front man who mixed time honoured classics from Hooker, Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan with his own originals and several tributes to our own Rory Gallagher during the performance.It was high energy solid gold fun from the minute the sequined Carvin stepped on stage with Carvin repeatedly bringing the stage down to the audience with ecstatic reactions from the spellbound audience in the tightly packed Madison Bar as he weaved his way through the crowd with his Fender Stratocaster screaming into the stratosphere.

A Carvin Jones gig is the ultimate participation event for the audience, if you leave your pint out of your hand for a second there is a good chance Carvin will lay his tortured Strat on top of it and commence to play it lap style.Nothing stands between the artist and the audience at a Carvin Jones gig, there are no barriers, and it’s a wonderful feeling and a testament of his self confidence and natural friendliness on stage or off that leaves one and all thoroughly entertained.

Carvin is an ace player and delivers the set of classic covers and medleys with an uncompromising muscular brass knuckled style on his Black Fender Strat, that takes you to the hearts and hands of the essential bluesmen enhanced with some tube screaming sound effects. The guitar – bass – drum line up delivers the rollicking roadhouse rockers with Carvin’s dark brooding vocals teasing the audience.The classic bar room favourites are delivered in rapid succession with Carvin’s fluency imagination and versatility being grounded by his long time stage partner Bill Troxell and the help of an Italian rhythm section on this leg of the tour.The audience were amazed at his playing and it’s great to see such ability and talent being harnessed by such a fun loving entertainer and it’s good to feel so much fun in the atmosphere.

The Carvin Jones gig had us all exhausted at the end but the crowd could have gone on all night long because of the up beat enjoyment. Carvin said at one stage “I am a man who knows what he wants, get up and dance, you know its cool” and that about sums him up perfectly”. Promoter Pat Cannon strapped on a bass guitar and joined the band on stage for the final encore. There’s no messin with the kid.