When Johnny Mastro’s message appeared on Facebook in January that Ian “has left the building” and Ian’s answer was “I believe we made a great record” I started to get curious. Johnny is known for his raw blues albums partly because of the sound of his harmonica and the fat rough guitar sound of his mama boys and especially that of guitarist Smokehouse Brown.
We all know Ian Siegal since his breakthrough in 2005 with “Meat and Potatoes”. His albums after that differ greatly from each other and contain many different styles between blues and Americana. However, few of his songs with harmonica are known.
This collaboration eventually resulted in the album “Easy Tiger” The tour to promote this album is called Ian Siegal Meets Johnny Mastro. At exactly half past two the backing band consisting of Djumblah (Dusty) Ciggaar, Darryl Ciggaar and Nick Croes entered the stage.
Unfortunately Dusty plays the bass again, too bad such a good guitarist has to play bass. With a rhythmic intro by the aforementioned Johnny and Ian came on as the real stars of the afternoon, although they themselves had lost a bit of sense of time due to this early performance. The warm-up for the entire band was Bo Diddley’s “Hey Bo Diddley (Who do you love)”.
But the first three songs of the official setlist were also the first three songs of the album “Four on the floor” (With a delicious piece of spoonful), “Balling the jack” and “Baby you can yet your gun” It is immediately noticeable that the album is recorded somewhat dirtier and fatter compared to the live performances.
But it still bursts from the stage. What a drive from Mastro, what a wonderful voice Siegal has again and how much space they give Croes to solo. “No Merci” Ian dedicated to all his “ex-wives”, much to the delight of the audience. Ian’s cutting slide and Mastro’s crying harp made you feel the pain of “No Merci”.
Johnny Mastro meets Ian Siegal 01 Dec 2024 Building T-9098 The “Tall and Tight” co-written by Luther Dickinson gave the concert a completely different atmosphere, wonderfully swamp blues thanks to the rhythm section of the Ciggaar brothers and Croes’ solo.
What is striking about the album is that almost all vocals are provided by Siegal while Mastro also sings in his own band. “Miss your Cadillac” and “Quick to the gun” were the only songs that Mastro ended up singing, using his normal and distortion harmonica microphone.
That song titles come about in the craziest ways became clear when Ian told the anecdote about “Who’re is church”. He was on stage on a very hot day with Jimbo Mathus who shouted “I’m sweating like a “who’re” in church”. After a wonderfully slow start, the song got going and ended up lasting almost 8 minutes. The regular set was closed with “I won’t cry no more”.
The rhythm of this song is typically an Ian rhythm that you hear on more records, but the tearing harmonica makes it a wonderfully uptempo. Johnny Mastro meets Ian Siegal 01 Dec 2024 Building T-9245 To loud cheers from the audience, the band returned and the funky “oedipuss” written together with Luther Dickinson was played.
With lyrics like “She got no angels only curves” and a chorus that sounds a lot like eating P♥ssy, it is an ambiguous song but a wonderful ending to this beautiful afternoon. During the drive to Bergen op Zoom we wondered which other songs would be played because the album is only 47 minutes long.
In the end the setlist was a copy of the album but because all the songs were extended with many solos (what a fantastic guitarist Nick Croes is) the 47 minutes quickly became an hour and a half. Partly because of these long solos it became a fantastic afternoon and the hour in the car was more than worth it.
Partly because of this afternoon I want to see the band of the brothers Ciggaar and Nick Croes called “Minko” soon. Ciggaar and Croes both on guitar must be fantastic Thanks Gebouw-T for the hospitality and the extensive explanation about the places from where I was allowed to take pictures.
