The BluesTrain UK French Tour June 2009

BluesTrain at sea...

First stop was near the river Loire, 5 hours from Calais, for a summer evening gig on the evening of June 17th to a great audience in a big barn in the town of Les Rosiers near Saumur. On a hot night, with wine and food, and after a beautiful sunny day, the blues went down really well and at the end of the evening the mixed French and English audience clamoured for so many band CDs that they had to be rationed, to save some Blues in the barn for the rest of the tour.

BluesTrain in the barn ...

Next stop on a warm Thursday night 18th June was a great venue, at the Moulins de le Vergne holiday centre at Pons near Bordeaux, where BluesTrain, bounded by an open air crowd of very knowledgeable blues fans on one side, and the river  Seugne on the other, enjoyed another successful gig and again found that their Chicago blues had tremendous appeal to the French, Dutch and English audience.

Open air blues ...

On Saturday 20th June the BluesTrain rolled in to the deep south west of France, arriving at Beaumont de Lomagne, near Toulouse. Here they played to a   crowd of 120 people – French and English – intent on enjoying themselves to the early hours of the morning. The country house venue, Le Vieux Chêne, provided the audience with the delights of southwestern food and wine, and a stage bounded by lemon trees and a swimming pool. BluesTrain served up a loud and rocking night, and at the end the passengers were most reluctant to leave such a great venue and such a fun night.

Another day, another gig. The next day, Sunday, saw the band performing inside and out of the Salle des Fêtes at St. Daunes, a village not far from Cahors. The occasion was a Midsummer Blues fund raising evening for cancer research, designed, because of BluesTrain’s appearance, around blues connections in the southern states. 120 guests dined and wined at tables all named after stations on the Amtrak route 59 from Chicago via Memphis to New Orleans in keeping with BluesTrain’s music. The menu was from Louisiana and Mississippi. Before the feast the band busked their blues outside in what was scorching sunshine, and then played their normal set inside during the evening which raised 2000 euros. 

Blues busking at St Daunes ...