Guess who....

Of course: you are correct Keith. Funny you should say that as he was bizarrely introduced as Mr Ben Susan! I'm not sure which lady was with him, apart from the fact that his wife was in the audience. More on the matter tomorrow; suffice to say for now that I have never said the word "Wow!" so many times as I did tonight.

Yes, a simply wonderful evening. The Acorn at Penzance is a lovely little theatre holding about 120 people. The room (I wouldn't call it an auditorium!) was laid out with tables and chairs in a really intimate cabaret setting so there were about 70 of us down there with another 50 or so on the small balcony.

The presenter told us this was the last night of a five month tour. Pierre had taken the long road down to Penzance from the previous night in Bristol and would then be going up to Dover to catch the ferry home for a month off. As I said he was announced as Mr Ben Susan. Cue applause, the lights dimmed and......and......and.....nobody appeared! The applause faded and was replaced by whispers. Where is he? Is he even in the building? The roadie guy who was in charge of the merchandise at the back of the room eventually strode up to the stage and ducked into the wings, reappearing a few moments later and returning to his stall. And then, hoorah, PB walked on to another round of applause.

He sat down and spent some time strapping his guitar (his New Lady) on - round his midriff not over his shoulder - plugging in and meticulously tuning (he plays exclusively in DADGAD). He says guitarists spend half their time tuning and the other half playing out of key! And then he started. Three astonishing tunes later he finally spoke. He has the sort of humour that when I were a lad would be known as "zany". As for the music, it was fun trying to place the many influences. Certainly classical, Spanish, middle Eastern, avant garde jazz, north African, even South African on one piece. And all fused together with great freedom of expression. He loves playing around over the beat, displacing forwards and backwards, even throwing in the odd rhythmic allusion but always carrying the beat in his head. He's an absolutely superb player.

And then there was the singing Riverman. He's got a super voice, very smooth, with an excellent range. Apparently he's from a Sephardic Jewish background and their music is typified by using the voice as the main instrument. At times it was scat singing pure and simple and usually overlying the guitar.

I was able to chat with him at the interval and I asked him if he ever plays a tune the same twice. I wasn't surprised to learn that he never does. He likes to "go to different places" and I believe if your mind is sufficiently open, you can go with him. When he's playing he's totally absorbed and then as he approaches the end of the piece, you can sense him bringing us back down to where we started.

He did two one hour sets and I don't think a smile left my face throughout. An unforgettable night.

Technical detail: according to my son, who knows about these things, he has a virtual mixer that he runs his audio through. He blends the three signals from the pick-up and two mics together and runs them through an FX bus with a nice delay. The delay FX only effects the midrange and above. He appears to have his three signals going through a compressor outboard (in the rack below the laptop, where the audio interface is as well), then into the virtual mixer and the FX bus, and out to the main master bus to speakers.  Please don't ask me to explain what this all means!

Pierre told me that he is working with George Lowden on introducing a new pickup. It's American and begins with a "B" but the name escapes me.