Live Review + Photos: TROY REDFERN at Temperance, Leamington Spa UK – 1st March 2025

Photos by Peter Coates – https://www.facebook.com/InsideEdgePhotography

A scintillating slide guitarist from the Welsh Marches in the UK, Troy Redfern exhibits a technical prowess and reckless passion in his playing, even when in an intimate venue with a capacity crowd of about 50! He said it would be a pretty stripped back performance tonight, and then proceeded to rip through a blistering couple of sets, accompanied by the percussion of Nicky Waters on snare and tom.

This was the opening night of a month of dates around the UK, and in one way could be described as the delta blues version of Royal Blood – but with more passion and soul in the guitar playing, and very few of the loops and tricks required. This is raw, rootsy and frankly jaw-dropping, and even more so when sitting less than 3 feet from the man onstage! Nicky Waters provides the beats and energy underpinning the guitars and while there is slight lack of bass depth in some of the tracks, you barely notice given the warmth of the lower register guitar lines employed.

We got a selection of rare and special guitars, the much-loved resonator being around 100 years old, and a selection of tracks from the last 4 albums – Shakin’, Take Me High and Taking My Soul, before the extraordinary sounds from the Sitar guitar took us into the epic The Calling, and Native, both from the most recent Invocation album. Troy did use a basic loop on Western Horizon just to deepen the melody, before closing out the first set with an outstanding John the Revelator.

After a short break, Troy and Nicky returned with All Night, and then the evocative Van Helsing, before getting back to the early days with an extended workout on the old resonator for Sweet Carolina. The set got abridged in numbers of tracks, but there was a lot of extra guitar work through Come On and waiting, and the immense version of Sanctify from 2021’s The Fire Cosmic that closed the set was a perfect climax. An encore was acclaimed, but Troy asked if we thought he could top the version of Sanctify, and we agreed it was impossible – and the appreciative crowd at this fantastic little venue, that supports Americana, Blues and Folk artists from across the world, were happy to leave it at that.

Noble PR

Album Review: Troy Redfern – The Wings of Salvation
https://lifemusicmedia.com/album-review-troy-redfern-the-wings-of-salvation/

Album Review: Troy Redfern – The Fire Cosmic
https://lifemusicmedia.com/album-review-troy-redfern-the-fire-cosmic/