theSpace @ Venue45
Edinburgh Fringe, 2023
The French say “joie de vivre”, the Germans, “Lebensfreude”. For blues musicians, you take ‘groove’, add ‘mojo’ and when the room is just right, it brews that sweet elixir – the joy of living. For the Rhythm and Booze Project, they’ve cracked the recipe because they have the secret ingredient – whiskey.
Felipe Shrieberg (lap steel guitar and vox) and Paul Archibald (drums and washboard) are true bluesmen and as purveyors of live music experiences, like wizards with their alchemy. It’s a potent brew; a sensory marriage that will seat you at the table of the gods. Two highly somatic stimuli, aural and alcoholic, envelope your being and leave you with a deeply healing case of the warm and fuzzies.
Shrieberg’s rich, gravelly voice intones with soul and experience, like it too was aged in an old, oaken barrel. He slides to whispered sweetness with such gentleness you submit to falling inside his sublime guitar-work as it sings a sombre lament of the soul. Watch out, the washboard’s out, and in the hands of the immensely talented Archibald, the crowd whoops with delight as we rock along to a time-warp that puts a skiffle rhythm in rhythm and blues.
Along with three samples of top notch whiskeys, you’re also tasting a blues education, from Willie-Dixon-era Chicago blues, to the deep south and Mississippi Delta, they draw from rich seams of blues history. The audience participation was like the drink, spirited. If you conjured correct adjectives for your nips (a small portion of whiskey), you got a second one but don’t worry, they’ll teach you how to talk about it and access the enchanting treasures of the drink.
It felt like everything had that rare ‘in the pocket’ perfection, until you realise these master entertainers have deliberately cultivated that feeling to make their show the sweetest night of the Fringe. They played, ‘I put a spell on you’, a classic tune originally recorded by “Screamin’ Jay” Hawkins when he was totally drunk on whiskey. Reeling from this magic, the night already feels like a dream – a warm and fuzzy one.
Stuart Bruce
Mumble Music 