Ally Venable Band - La Belle Angele, Edinburgh 15 October 2025
Reviewed by Iain McArthur • 18 October 2025
I met my pal Alan in Bannerman’s before this gig. It was absolutely rammed in there but the punters were actually going to five different gigs within about 200 metres of each other – Chris Holmes (WASP) in Bannerman’s; Dirty Sound Magnet at The Hive, Spear of Destiny at The Caves, Wild Hogs at Whistlebinkies and the one I was going to; Ally Venable’s Edinburgh Blues Club gig at LBA. And that’s not counting the folks who had already left to go to Glasgow for Y&T. You have to ask WTF is going on and whether anybody actually talks to each other when they’re booking shows these days but it is still good to have a choice, I suppose and I was very happy with mine.
I got a bit of a shock when I rolled into LBA – there were rows of seats set up down the front! Not only that, the “mature” element of the Edinburgh Blues Club must have been up before breakfast and put their towels down, as there were no spare seats to be had. That just meant I had to stand at the bar, where they were dispensing some outstanding pints of Outcider, which did nothing to spoil my enjoyment of the gig, but my note-taking may have suffered!
Young Texas blues guitarist Ally Venable is a bit of a hot-shot on stage. She first appeared in Edinburgh in 2019 as part of Ruf Record’s Blues Caravan along with Ina Forsman and Katarina Pejak and the potential she showed then as a teenager has now matured into a well-rounded performer with great guitar skills and an impressive catalogue of recorded material, not least her most recent LP ‘Money and Power’. Tonight, she is resplendent in a mini-kilt (MacFranandanna tartan) and full of southern “y’all” bonhomie between songs while she dispensed admirable guitar skills and a Texas honey voice.
The guitar fireworks start early and Ally is never slow to hit the SRV pedal on her rig – not least on ‘Unbreakable’, but there’s also some funky stuff and plenty of top-quality electric blues. Clearly Ally has come a long way since we last saw her, and I don’t mean just the Atlantic Ocean. She’s had some heavyweight collaborators too. Joe Bonamassa of course (funny how he collaborates with every female blues player), on ‘Broken and Blue’ and also with Buddy Guy. The excellent bass player EJ Bedford stepped up to do Buddy’s part on ‘Texas Louisiana’ and by the time she finished her main set with ‘Tribute to SRV’, Ally had the crowd in her pocket (well, no pockets in a kilt but you know what I mean) and earned a worthy standing ovation from those who were able.
Weegie Delta blues purveyors Blue Milk (not to be confused with Bridget Jones’ blue soup) ran through a very enjoyable support set of standards and originals. As far as I could see around the pillar, there were four of them - singing guitarist, bass, talking drummer and a mouth-organ Bez. In fact, the harmonica was the lead instrument for a lot of the set.
There was an early song called ‘Down by the River’. Of course there was – this is Delta blues! If you ever lose a blues player you’ll know where to look for them as there must be hundreds of them on that bloody riverbank. It was a that point that I started my own drinking game based around delta blues word bingo. Naturally there were mentions for the devil and Memphis before my imbibing got the better of me, but it was still a very decent set indeed.
The Edinburgh Blues Club put on great shows most months of the year in Edinburgh. You can join or simply buy tickets as you please and they are worthy of your support.