Billy and Steve are  both energetic and spontaneous  performers and their union  brings a dramatic and distinctive edge to blues music. Billy's frenetic and blistering guitar style is original and breath taking to watch and blended with Steve's warm and powerful  rhythmic playing they create a huge sound filled with many surprises.


Both men are band leaders, song writers and performers and each have found ways to be truly innovative with their guitars. Steve is a master of open-chord tunings and uses his magic thumb to power along driving bass line rhythms.

“If you closed your eyes you would have thought they had sneaked on a slap bass player, such is the virtuosity of Steve’s guitar playing.”

Helen Rich / Blues In Britain

Billy, a legend in his own lifetime, is prolific, profound and pro-active in his approach to music.

“The guitar-playing is often manically breathtaking, and .... touches the heart as well as the head and the funny bone.”       

John Fordham / The Guardian

 

Revered arts and life commentator Charlie King saw the HITB! show at The Studio Theatre Catford.


“Take Me Back” was Steve’s ode to redemption and acceptance, forcing Billy to play a touching solo that he tried to hide behind a “Pansy Potter” smile, little realizing that happiness. God forbid, could be the dangerous emotion he might have to deal with in later life. Morrison, with a little Karl Marx in his make-up to match Billy’s Groucho – his earth to Billy’s water, as ‘Thud’ might put it – is old-fashionably and beautifully eloquent on songs like “We Are People” and “Something’s Over”.


“This is amazing,” he told the bloke next to him. “I didn’t realize the Blues could be like this. I thought it was supposed to be deadly serious all the time.”


“Steve’s open-tuned guitar (whatever that means) is the perfect foundation for Billy’s multi-shaped and multi-coloured bricks, and Steve’s own solos – as fans of his band, Blues Abuse, will testify - are well worth picking up the trowel for.”

Intimate tonal perfection for festivals, folk clubs and small arts centres!

Here Is The Blues! CD - “Tryst”

Steve and Billy are well-suited foils: Billy stays on the right side of bringing an inspiring vital jazz-tinged, edgy energy, without stepping into overly-busyness and there’s a brooding-shadow that pervades the nature of Steve’s guitar tones. This is an inspiring release from Steve, of whom it has been said: ‘In a better world this man would already be a legend’, and Billy the anarcho-jazzifist

Frank Franklin / Blues Matters