The East Midlands five-piece blues rock band Dirty Ruby rocked up to Joe Joe Jim’s bar in Cofton Hackett, Birmingham. Joe Joe Jim’s regularly hosts blues bands, and has a great intimate setting for up to 120 people, run by Fletch.
The Dirty Ruby current line-up, which now really gels, is Anna Rose (lead vocals), Andrew Williams (hammond/piano/backing vocals), David Cox (guitar and backing vocals), Steve Taylor (bass and backing vocals) and Gary Reece (drums and backing vocals).
Their sound is a powerful mixture of blues, blues/rock with a bit of Jazz thrown in, with great harmonies to lead singer Anna’s strong vocals. They will be recording a live album at this year’s Diseworth Blues Festival as well as recording original songs for a new album to be released later this year.
The songs are written in a collaborative way with all the members in the band having opportunity for their input. Anna is inspired by great female lead vocalists such as Sari Schoor, Joanne Shaw Taylor and Maggie Bell from 1970s band Stone the Crows.
Please review full Image Gallery
The set included blues numbers, but in the band’s style, with Sari Schoor’s song ‘Damn the Reason’, ‘Blues is Blues’ with great vocals from Anna, great guitar riffs from David answered by Andrew on keyboards. They also covered the Wolverhampton artist Joanne Shaw Taylor’s song ‘Going Home’.
The band entertained the audience with two original songs ‘Money Talks’ about being skint with its funky backing and ‘Blue November’ which is a more traditional blues number with soulful vocals from Anna, with some Santana influences!
As Anna introduced, the band songs have a theme about lies and cheats which cover personal songs such as ‘Burnin’ For You’ and ‘Pack of Lies’ along with a blues staple religion with ‘Save Me’ with its driving blues rock beat.
The band make sure that the audience get to hear all aspects of the band’s musicianship with Anna’s vocals, the solid rhythm section of Steve on bass guitar and the blues rock beat backing on drums from Gary. This is further enhanced by Andrew’s keyboard solos as well as David’s blues guitar riffs.
