WILLOUGHBY – 8 MARCH 2019

A few teething issues aside (which we’re dealing with right now), the first show at our new home, Club Willoughby was a HUGE success. Jeff Duff’s BOWIE Unzipped rocked the new room and a capacity crowd filled the dance floor all night.

Our next show is on Friday March 8 2019 when we present a great night of Blues & Soul, with the Shane Pacey Trio and Soul Messengers.  

During Prohibition in the United States from 1920 to 1933, Black music suddenly found a lucrative niche, rubbing shoulders with the seediest sides of the country while making money by providing the entertainment in illegal Speakeasies and Juke Joints. At the same time, a large sector of the fiercely Religious, Church-going black community, criticised Blues artists for subverting Gospel Music and the spiritual tradition. And so the rivalry emerged - ‘The Devil’s Music’ v ‘The Music of God’.

“The Shane Pacey Trio plays the music that grabbed us by the throat all those years ago.”  - Julie Fox – The Blues Times

As far back as 1913, ‘Black Music’ had been associated with evil influence. That year, the New York Times defended the fear surrounding Ragtime music, saying: "Decent people in and out of the Church are beginning to be alarmed at the crude and vulgar music and loose conduct accompanying it with dances defying all propriety." In the mid-1930s, Blues great Robert Johnson is said to have done a Faustian deal with the Devil to ensure his success at a Mississippi crossroads.  

Blues was tagged ‘The Devil’s Music’… and decades later, this was the music with which Shane Pacey fell in love. 
  
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"The Soul Messengers’ sound is deeply rooted in Soul, R&B and Funk.  It’s a sound that is simultaneously dirty and luxurious." - Huffington Post

As the influence of the early 20th century African-American church grew and thousands migrated from the South to America’s northern industrial cities, Gospel music (‘The Music of God’) combined with R&B and evolved into Soul. By the 1950s, it had extended well beyond the religious realm.

The Soul Messengers are revivalists… their sound harks back to true Soul and R&B – the non-sacred African American music played by Sam & Dave, Ray Charles, the Delfonics and Al Green. They fell in love with this music that arose from the black experience in America and became its own form of funky, secular testifying.

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