Chantel McGregor

Chantel McGregor chose London’s 100 Club as the launch platform for her new album ‘Lose Control’ and together with her band – drummer Keith McPartling and bass player Colin Sutton – she laid down a storm of great Blues tinged rock to a highly appreciative audience - more than the usual Blues crusties, many in the crowd were younger than the usual Thursday Blues audience.

Tiny and dressed in black against her blonde hair, shoeless but with a huge smile on her face, she looked like a waif who had been thrust into the spotlight. Her cheeky banter with the crowd showed there were no nerves as she kicked into a top set and set the place alight.

She mixed up a few tracks from her previous album and most of the new one and surprisingly she seemed more comfortable with the new material than the songs she has been playing for years.

‘Southern Belle’ went down well with the crowd as did ‘Lose Control’, both from the new album and the opemer from the album ‘Take The Power’.
The showstopper in the early part of the set was a brilliant version of Robin Trower’s ‘Daydream’ where she caught the essence of the song’s drifting and meandering hypnotic psych and really showed that she is much more than a rock guitarist. There was a pause before the applause kicked in as if the audience were still stuck in their own daydream.
An acoustic section followed with ‘Anaesthetise’ and ‘Home’, just her on guitar and a crowd waiting on every word (apart from the inevitable idiots at the bar), with ‘Anaesthetise’ especially getting home to the crowd and eliciting a great response.
With the band back onstage she ripped it up with ‘Killing Time’ and closed the set with her prog homage ‘Walk On Land’.

Throughout the set she showed just why she won Best Guitarist in last year’s British Blues Awards (runner up this year) but she also demonstrated that she has the chops as a vocalist as well.

One of the best sets I’ve seen this year.

Support on the night was from London based Trident Waters and the three piece tore it up with an excellent set of hard Blues and rock. Vocalist/guitarist Andrew Knightley really has some skills and the bass of Reno Rennie and drums from CJ Campbell give a great drive to the music. Definitely one band I will see again.

Picture by Laurence Harvey