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After playing Galways last Thursday, Dublin last Friday, Kelly Joe Phelps was in Southampton tonight.
The Brook, Southampton, Monday 27th, July 1998
Kelly Joe Phelps
He got a fair sized audience and had to do two encores before the crowd would let him go. Not owning Highway Kind he was totally new to me. Like everyone else in the bar tonight my jaw was on the floor from the start.
It won't be easy to pigeonhole what he played tonight. Suffice to say the ghosts of Bukka White, Joseph Spence and Neamiah Skip James have smiled on him and what he delivers is stunning bottleneck in the left hand and beautiful thumb and two fingered picking with his right plus a voice like a gravel road.
Mostly Kelly Joe Phelps plays with the guitar flat across his lap. At one point tonight he plucked the strings hard with his right hand before diving the bottleneck like a Kamikaze pilot onto the strings then following up with a sweeping stroke of his right hand across the third fret. The audience let out their collective breath.
Before his final encore Kelly Joe Phelps asked: "Anyone here seen Townes Van Zandt play?" A handful of the audience shouted and roared back. "Me too," he smiled.
If you haven't seen him don't pass up an opportunity to do so. For those who have I'll stop trying to teach my grandmother to suck eggs.
Mike Plumbley
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