Marshall Lawrence and John Rutherford play beautiful blues

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Marshall Lawrence and John Rutherford put on the best blues show of the year but nobody was there to hear it, Wednesday, Jan. 25.
 They took turns playing original songs as well as blues classics.

Marshall Lawrence and John Rutherford playing. Photo by Richard Amery
 They definitely showed how differently they could play the blues. Marshall Lawrence played upbeat Delta blues on several different acoustics as the two traded  good natured jabs with each other. Lawrence played several  originals including one of my favourites “Keep Walking,” as well as blues classics. Robert Johnson was the theme of most of the night for much of the set, though Lawrence threw in some obscurities from people like Willie Brown, who Lawrence said even Robert Johnson learned from.  Rutherford played numerous catchy, jazz tinged originals on a battered Stratocaster, many of them from one of his bands called No Guff.


One of Rutherford’s highlights was a sweet cover of  NRBQ’s “12 Bar Blues,” which had all five of the people in the audience counting along.
 Rutherford switched to an old national steel guitar and talked about saving it from an abandoned church closet
 Their second set included the duo playing off each other and jamming on a variety of songs including a lot more Robert Johnson.

— By Richard Amery, L.A. Beat Editor
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