Live Review: Blind Tiger Blues Box, The Rogues, Galloping Foxleys, King Of The Travellers, Celery

Mojo’s Winter Warmer provided music local music lovers with a chance to escape the dropping mercury levels and enjoy some local folk talent along with a spicy hot-buttered rum or two. 

Squeezing onto the stage to kick off the night was nine-piece collective Celery, the current side project of Sean Gorman from The Shops. The band started with You Don’t Know My Style, featuring Gorman’s Auto-Tuned vocals over a swell of synth sounds provided by George Ross before drummer Louis Cameron Inglis and the rest of the band kicked in with a foot-stomping rhythm. The band encountered some slight sound problems during Like Nothing but recovered quickly to give a great performance before continuing on with Beyond and the start-stop rhythm of Upside Down Island. They then performed a Bruce Springsteen/Bad Religion mash-up called Sandy City before the epic sounds of Lying Around The Pool and Mini Moke closed out their performance to a great response from the crowd.

King Of The Travellers were up next, combining folk jigs with some fiery punk energy mostly from singer Nathan Hull, who clutched the microphone in one hand with a beer in the other as he and the rest of the band got people energised with songs The Puncha Hoedown and Lip Service. The band charged through a blistering performance of Travel that got a great response from the crowd, as did Streams and Rambling Jackson, before the Hull brothers exchanged manic screams over Curly while enticing the audience to scream into the microphone, which they all happily obliged. 

Galloping Foxleys made their way on stage to a big welcome from the packed crowd, starting off strong with Romancing The Bone and Stink Eye Waltz before telling the crowd to grab a partner for the slow waltz of Mothman, which saw Rachel Hocking deliver some spectacularly spooky violin. Our Love featured solid harmonies from the band and a great a cappella ending before the band delivered the blues swagger of Educational Piece and a reworked version of Murder Ballad that had some blistering guitar work from their new guitarist. They finished strong with Dying Song and Hard Working Man, which got the biggest responses of the night.

After that it was left to The Rogues to keep the live energy up until midnight before Blind Eye Tiger Blues Box jumped up to spin some tunes until 1am and end a night of spectacular live music from some very talented acts that never fail to disappoint.