HOLMAN, HILTS & DELANEY

Holman, Hilts & Delaney are authentic swamp. Hailing straight from the bleakness of the Fen delta, their fusion of southern soul and country via British guitar invasion will leave you thinking “there’s something in the water down there”. A jam band with tight, blood harmonies, purveying their own cuts of little heard tracks with a greasy undertow that would and should be patented if it wasn’t so hard to pin down… their sets are often littered with special guests, musicians hopping up to cut in, like some highway diner parking-lot love in.

Holman, Hilts & Delaney could have slipped straight out of Louisiana, or cut drunken takes with the stompers in Memphis. Think Little feat, but stripped down to its bare bones, or Delaney and Bonnie and Friends, but the power trio - pan boiled right down to its very essence - version. Think Leon Russel’s mad dog band, but when all but the last three sessioners are left soldiering on after the other road-worn gig casualties have flaked off in to rehab or obscurity.

Yeah, greasy. The band are so greasy you can smell it. It’s the heavy hang in the air funk of po’boys, chitlins, fried chicken and the faint background aroma of home grown country weed.

Always roots, always heartfelt, they are an enigma, no one knows where they really came from, or when they’ll see them again, if ever. But they are out there, picking their way in to the sunset somewhere.