The Blind Lemon Gators - Gatorville (2019)

The Blind Lemon Gators project came together in 2017 when Greig Taylor reconnected with Iain Donald at a music festival in Italy. Taylor has been cited many times as not just one of Scotland's hardest working musicians, but one of the UK's finest blues vocalists, as first heard with the 'GT Boos Band', featuring guitarist John Boos and a stint with the Glasgow based 'Brian Rawson Band'. But more recently Greig has truly come into his own with a number of projects including 'The Greig Taylor Blues Combo', a full electric blues rock and covers outfit. Iain Donald, through immersive and emotive slide playing, has a bigger musical vocabulary than many an orator has through the spoken word. What makes his expressive playing all the more remarkable is that Iain is from Alloa in Scotland and not Memphis or the Mississippi Delta, where such roots blues talents are usually born. But a family descendancy from Scottish travellers is telling; Iain Donald's influences span the blues decades (from Elmore James to Ariel Posen) but there's a little Gypsy-Django in there, too. Nor was slide guitar his first instrument of choice. Iain played bass guitar before an impromptu party, featuring him on a broken bottle neck with his musical brother in arms Greig Taylor, unlocking a natural understanding of both the instrument and the blues medium. The band began as a two-piece with stomp box but they quickly decided to bring in a drummer/percussionist, the former John Martyn drummer, Dave Cantwell. This Blind Lemon Gator doesn't shed crocodile tears. What you see and hear is what you get, genuine expressive emotion. 'Gatorville' was recorded at Tolbooth Studios in Stirling by Mark Lough, and mixed and mastered by Wayne Proctor at Superfly Studios.