PDC, clearly, early doors Ric, as he (sugar)canes his version of the blues, across two stellar albums.
Release Date: 15th August 2025
Label: Talking Elephant
Format: CD (2 for 1)
CUNNING SECRET
Ric Sanders may have been in Fairport Convention for 40 years, but rewind back past that time and he was actually in Soft Machine, dozens of UK jazz-rock, and, before that, for his first paid job, Stomu Yamash’ta’s Red Bhuddha Theatre, for something even more experimental. But even those staging posts don’t fully denote his true love, which is the blues. As he said, in a recent interview, to describe his style across all his diverse genres: “That’s my cunning secret. I play everything like it’s the blues.” I think he’s being modest, but, y’know, it explains a lot, and hurrah to Talking Elephant for re-releasing these two mementos of his still occasional side-project, dating from 2015 and 2019 respectively.
Blues violin is a side alley well worth exploring, with rich pickings for any listener duly converted. As a teenager and his Grandma’s violin brought back down from the loft, Sanders tuned in to the violin riff from Willie the Pimp, on Frank Zappa’s Hot Rats and he was off. That player was Don “Sugarcane” Harris, who remains a key influence on Sanders’ style, along with other notables like Jean-Luc Ponty. Harris gets a namecheck on one of these albums, through a composition dedicated to his legacy.
MUSIC OF THE CHERWELL DELTA
So these are blues albums? Well, sort of and not quite. With the ragtime guitar picking of longterm Sanders sidekick, Vo Fletcher, and the loose but tight percussion of his old Albion Band buddy, Michael Gregory, this is a peculiarly English branch of the blues, music of the Cherwell delta. Similar, slightly, in style to Ian A. Anderson’s English Country Blues Band, so don’t go looking for any Chicago roar in Fletcher’s idiosyncratic vocals, which, deliberately, eschew most of transatlantic affectations expected from British bluesmen. But let’s press on, two albums and 25 songs, this can’t be yer usual Ogfest, room only allowing overview at best.
2015’s Standin’ On The Corner starts with that eponymous track, the first of two by the “Singing Brakeman”… Jimmie Rogers. A splendic romp, Sanders and Fletcher evoke the clatter of the tracks and it well sets the table for what can be expected. Fletcher may be no Pavarotti but he can yodel, which is fine by me. The more ragtimey What’s The Matter With The Mill offers sumptuous violin and hokey choral backing vocals from all, including the producer of both albums, Sander’s old Albion Band mucker, the Gryphon and Home Service guitarist, Graeme Taylor.
A RUSTY OLD MOTOR
You’ll recognise the stanza or two of the Allman Bros.’ Little Martha that introduces Poor Boy, displaying both Fletcher’s adept technique and Sanders’ gift for slipping into English pastoralism. Gregory seems to have a very odd and varied kit; here he conjures up the sounds of a rusty old motor. That’s before the second Rogers song, Muleskinner, sadly yodel free, taken at an Orange Blossom Special express lick, as Sanders swishes up and down the neck of his instrument. All change, then, as he switches to pizzicato for a raga-like Green Green Rocky Road, abetted by Gregory on what sounds like tablas.
A brief instrumental, Blue Corner Blues, niftily skedaddles up and down the scale, to give Sanders a writing credit. You half expect Fletcher to start up with Shortnin’ Bread, but it doesn’t come, he sticking to some dreamy walking bass, on his lower strings. Slowing things down, Fletcher then channels John Prine’s vocal delivery for Summer of ’88, with some lovely Hot Club glissandos from Sanders. A taste of Willie’s handjive then suffuses through World Gone Wrong, before Harry Belafonte’s (!?!) Done Laid Around becomes a cousin of Townes’ Waitin’ Around To Die. All of a sudden Fletcher’s unpolished voice has bedded in and now sounds closer to fine. The guitar and violin interplay on this one is exemplary.
A SLAUGHTERED LAMB?
Lewis Collins, rather than a paean to Bodie from TV’s The Professionals, is an old murder ballad, here buffed up by the remarkable percussion, which convulses all about the track, ahead the very swampy feel of Blue Sky Blues, which sounds like Mark Knopfler playing the Creedence Clearwater songbook, with Papa John Creach guesting. Which only leaves the bonus track, one much anticipated at that, being Warren Zevon’s Werewolves Of London. Shoulda, coulda and all of that, but it sadly falls flat, largely down to the naff vocal style adopted for this one, Fletcher straying into cod transatlantic TV news hyperbole. Pity, as the instrumental heft is immense and offers so much more.
That disappointment aside, Headspace, from three years later, canters off with what sounds alarmingly close to Matty Groves. Deliberate? I don’t know, but, as it becomes Big Boss Man, it is clear this is going to be an even deeper immerse in vintage blues. Sung and arranged in the style of John Lee Hooker, it ends on a deliciously long Sanders solo, that snakes and slides everywhere it can, and a few places beyond.
CHUGS ALONG WITH GUSTO
The back porch ragtime aspect of the trio’s repertoire then gets a delightfully lazy spot in the back porch sun for I’m Satisfied, before the rude awakening and scrapy exhortations of You Shall (Preacher), awash with Gregory’s tin pans and pots percussion. Another old favourite then pops up, the much covered who Do You Love, which shakes off ubiquity to become a gorgeously shambolic jugband of a version, with some aggressive bowing from Sanders and that tabla sound, from Gregory, making a return. Definitely a highlight of both albums, it chug a chugs along with gusto. The tablas remain for the swoony bottleneck driven Can’t Be Satisfied, and this disc is proving to have a greater cohesiveness about the overall quality of play.
Sanders always has that warm and syrupy thickness and richness to his tone, it being what distinguishes him from, say, the fiddle of Chris Leslie or of his predecessor in Fairport, Dave Swarbrick. Or of any other player in what is nominally folk-rock. Indeed, he is unusual, in that he, to my mind, is definitely a violinist and never a fiddler. That point gets fully borne to bear for the traditional Sail Away, which is perhaps the first to invoke a whiff of Cropredy to the event, his instrument dipping the tune into a contenting warm bath. A brief nod to his inspiration, Sugarcane, follows, but it is more the bottleneck guitar of conjoined track, Nobody’s Fault But My Own, that sticks, in a Rory Gallagher-esque outing for Fletcher.
NO HESITATION
Keen to keep up attention, some of that old wah-wah violin enlivens Slow Consumption Blues, with some bluegrass tropes then infecting a rousing bareback ride through John Hardy. I confess my fingers were crossed as Hesitation Blues began, it, in any of the many Hot Tuna iterations, being a staunch favourite. But no cause for any concern, the rendition’s a keeper, and Sanders pull all the available Papa John’s out and pops them back in, seamlessly. (So, now you remember now who Papa John Creach is, or was!)
One final blast of traditional murder ballad, Duncan Brady, before the album ends, again, with a more contemporary cover, but this time not just as a bonus. And deservedly not, as the version of Come Together is a veritable and certifiable triumph. Beginning with one of Gregory’s kitchen sink solos, Sanders’ violin is then so damn slinky as to transform the Beatles shuffle into an electric blues rock statement of intent, that keeps your feet well down your knees. I can’t help but think his “other band” could take a humdinger of a crack at this!
PDC
Here’s a live Standin’ On The Corner, aka Blue Yodel No.9, with some added PDC to start.
Wait a minute, someone’s still querying PDC, unaware of the re-worded version of Come All Ye, from this years’ Cropredy. Pretty damn cosmic, clearly! (Do keep up!!)
Ric Sanders Trio: Facebook / Website
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