New Year's Day with Stumptown

When it comes to Blues, the older you are the more street cred you get. So on that basis these four aging rockers should be legends and if you ever stumble across Stumptown you will find they are.

Not counting our mascot Max, Stumptown is a four-piece jump blues band with a distinctive, thumping heavy ‘North Mississippi’ sound.

Martin Boyd pulls the big wires and gives every Stumptown song a fat meaty bass, while Rod McCosker, pounds the skins, (he’s the youngster of the bunch, with way too much energy) and is the bruisingly tough timekeeper keeping the whole band on the rails.

Ron Kinson (better known for his time at Home Brew), is an extraordinary guitar player, with delightful silky guitar skills that many professional guitarists admire.

Front man, ‘Hound Dog’ Dave Bassett provides the gravelly vocals and a screaming blues harp that will transport you to the roots of the American blues belt 80 years hence.

The musical legacies of Slim Harpo, Howlin’ Wolf, Snooky Pryor, Willie Cobbs, Elmore James, Son House, Jimmy Rogers and many more blues legends are bought back to life with all the fire and passion of a preacher from the deep South. And let’s not forget Max, his job has been to round the boys up for practice each week, something he does with tireless persistence.

Stumptown is reigniting and reinventing Jump Blues, hauling it out of the 1940s and putting it back on the map, introducing a whole new generation to hip swinging dance music.

As they say, if you ain’t stomping your feet and shaking your booty by the end of the first song, then someone should check your pulse.