UCOL bands to open for Hurricane Shayn

BLUES STORM: Hurricane Shayn Wills is headliner guest at the Cross Creek Blues Club monthly show at the Tin Hut tonight. PHOTO SUPPLIED

A pair of UCOL Wairarapa student bands will help raise the curtain for elite Kiwi bluesman Hurricane Shayn Wills at the Cross Creek Blues Club show at the Tin Hut tonight.

Club spokeswoman Linda Sorensen said the monthly club night at the Tauherenikau venue will feature students from the UCOL Wairarapa Contemporary Music Performance course.

The two student bands - Bambi and Treblemakers - will help open the entertainment with sets including three classic blues tunes and an original song each, which will form part of the students' evaluation for the term, course tutor Cody Field said.

Artists the bands will cover include Muddy Waters, Howlin Wolf, and Gary Moore.

Club members will also perform ahead of headliner Wills, who has shared the stage with some of the greatest contemporary blues artists including Robert Cray, John Hammond Jnr, Albert King, Junior Wells, Canned Heat and Duke Robilard.

The Kapiti-based bluesman has played the coveted performances over almost 15 years from the early 1990s, according to the NZ Music Commission, and "to have played support gigs for one of them would be a musician's career highlight, but to have played support gigs for all of them you would have to be a musician of world-class standard".

Wills, 39, has been performing as a bluesman for close to three decades and his live act has matured into "something extremely special and unique", his biography states. Wills is no stranger to the club shows and his return performance will again feature his ability to simultaneously play harmonica, guitar and sing during his shows, which fellow Kiwi artist Midge Marsden described as astounding.

"Watching Wills play, it becomes glaringly obvious that he is something very special," Marsden said.

Wills boasts a "unique style of playing" that seems to "comes from a place of sincerity and heartfelt passion, and there is something about his playing that is distinctly New Zealand".

Wills regularly stages international concerts and he continues to make a living at home and abroad from playing the blues.

The Cross Creek Blues Club show starts at 7.15pm with entry costing $2 for members and $5 for non-members.