One out of the blues box . . .

GISBORNE’S thriving blues club will next week host some unholy dirty blues in the form of South Island harp master “Stomping” Nick Jackman.
Jackman is currently on tour in the lower part of the North Island but will head this way to guest at Poverty Bay Blues Inc’s Tuesday jam night.
And he will do more than his share. Club member Doug Snelling says that, as well as kicking off the evening by playing a “traditional” three-song jam night bracket, Jackman will round off the night with a full-length set.
Though he may have to be wary of being shut down by the club’s notoriously strict “captain”. Jackman’s music doesn’t really fit into the traditional blues box. It is, he says, a kind of a blues-rock ‘n roll hybrid using elements cherry-picked from the territory between punk, country and the classic Chicago and Memphis boogie of the 1950s.
In the style of the classic one-man band, using nothing but his hands, feet and mouth (and, obviously, instruments), he aims to “unleash a powder keg of distorted guitar, wailing harmonica and pounding drums”. No backing tracks. No loop pedals. None of that fancy stuff at all.
A multi-instrumentalist skilled on everything from from the harmonica and the guitar to the washboard, the banjo and the drums, Jackman says he is a performer “battle-hardened” by countless gigs in venues from major festivals to flatbed trucks.
And that was even before the Lyttelton artist had to go through the earthquakes of 2010 and 2011, witnessing the loss of some of his favourite local venues and holding on to “fond memories of places that suddenly ceased to exist”.
Before that, Jackman had already released the album Punk Blues One Man Band — under the moniker Stomping Nick and His Blues Grenade — and he says there’s likely to be another on the way.
In an interview with one-man-band enthusiast James G Carlson (October, 2011) the musician said that, after the quakes, “I kind of withdrew from the world and wrote a bunch of songs . . . so that period is now starting to bear fruit as the songs get arranged, performed and recorded”.
While the quakes and the thousands of aftershocks had messed with people’s heads, Jackman was “feeling okay about things now”, he told Carlson.
“The shaking has died down lately, although we all appreciate that another big one could happen at any time,” he said.
“(This has showed us to) live and love while you can because you could be taken out at any time.” ■ “Stomping” Nick Jackman plays at Poverty Bay Blues Inc’s jam night, next Tuesday at the Poverty Bay Club.