Chris Scott

A master of open tuning and bottleneck playing, delivering both his own material and radical re-interpretations of Blues Classics with intensity and commitment, earning such critical comments as: ‘live, edgy and dangerous’ & ‘a potent mix of power and passion’.

Chris Scott first came to public notice with a band named ‘The Royal Assassins’. Sharing the same label (Fire) as Chuck Prophet, The Blue Aeroplanes and Pulp, an album and single were released. ‘Music Week’ approved mightily and called them "a riotous explosion of electric voodoo" Chris then took an extended sojourn travelling round Europe, busking, becoming interested in Roots Musics and re-discovering his love of Blues, the music that first inspired him as a youth. It was at this time that he developed his uniquely dynamic percussive style of playing using a combination of picking, slide, clawing, hammering and slapping techniques... However, circumstances soon placed him firmly back on the road, both solo and with his band at the time, ‘Blind Lemon Beefcake’, and he released another two albums, ‘Preachin’ the Blues/Praying for Deliverance’, and ‘Play Loud’, again to critical acclaim... He barnstormed the festivals and circuit for two seasons, gathering press plaudits such as "some of the best acoustic blues you could wish to hear","his stunning ‘in yer face’ guitar and vocals thrilled the packed room" and "this was Delta style that threatened to blow the place apart". Then he joined forces with Steve Payne, another guitarist who had played with the likes of Steve Tilston, Dr. John and Bob Dylan, and formed a band called ‘Crawdaddy’, touring again, and releasing an eponymously named CD using the cream of the South West’s musicians, and, a year later, the delicious ‘Dreamworld’... Eventually, they filmed a trip around the East Coast of the USA, jamming with musicians of all sorts of roots genres there in unusual locations, (all called Bristol) to be transmitted on HTV in 1998 under the title ‘Crawdaddy - Bristol to Bristol’. A CD, ‘Hope’, recorded live, was released to coincide with the transmission dates... Later, he experimented with mixing genres, as is typical with his short lived project ‘Jack the Dripper’, which mixed freeform jazz and psychedelia with delta blues classics. Using just a drummer and saxes harps and flutes, sometimes numbers would meander for hours... During the same period, he recorded and made a limited release of an acoustic album of original material, entitled 'scribble'. The idea was to catch the songs in their most undiluted, essential form as possible... He then worked with noted drummer Bilbo Birks for a while, in a project called ‘The Faith Healers’ and cut a live album, ‘Hands On’ in which he radically re-interpreted many old blues classics, following his path of ‘..doing an old thing in a new way...’, but sadly the band was not to last and after a couple of seasons exciting audiences around the South West, they parted company. However, in an acoustic parallel to 'Hands On' he recorded an album of re-worked blues standards called 'Stoned and Busted'...deliberately a late night up close and personal work. Currently,Chris Scott is working on two projects side by side - somewhat of a Jeckle and Hyde situation. One is 'Longdog' - with talented songwrighter and bass player Tracey Neil Elliss-Brookes, blending roots influences in urban acoustic original music, a progression from 'Crawdaddy' and 'Scribble', with the strapline 'great songs you never thought you knew' and the other is 'Bluesdevil' - a savage, squalling electric band dedicated to dragging the blues into the 21st Century...

Yes, all over, yes, Edinburgh Festival, too long ago now.

Everything. And nothing.

Guitars, amps, bottlenecks.