Teacher’s Blues

Actually, that should probably read blues teacher (see below).
We went to see the brilliant South African blues guitarist, Dan Patlansky, at the Deaf Institute in Manchester last night. It’s four years since we last saw him perform (coincidentally at the same venue) as covid put the kibosh on a tour planned for 2020.
Weirdly, I don’t recall booking tickets for this gig. Late last year I noticed I’d saved a pdf called “Dan Patlansky Tickets” and initially assumed it was the ones from 2018. Fortunately, I opened the file to check it before deleting and saw that it was tickets for last night. No emails about the booking though which was strange. A check of old bank statements revealed I’d bought them in June 2021. Quite why I’d then forgotten about them, I have no idea! But we were not disappointed. A superb hour and a half of virtuoso blues guitar playing, ably backed by a very tight rhythm section.
At one point Dan explained that during lockdown he’d made a living by giving online guitar lessons. And one of his pupils was a young lad from Manchester who he had invited to join him on stage to give his first public performance. And the lad might only have been 14 years old but, by God, he knew his way around a fretboard. Trading riffs and solos with Dan, you would think he had been performing for years. After a virtuoso performance, he left the stage to well deserved applause. Definitely someone to watch out for in the future.
A strict 10pm curfew at the venue and a lack of roadworks on the M6 even meant we were back home in Kendal by 11.30 - result.