“They should have pulled the plug on Kirk Special…That said, he will probably turn out to be Australia’s next great bluesman.” Anon.
Adelaide has a reputation for being a little conservative.
They don’t call it ‘the City of Churches’ for nothing.
So when you wheel out someone like Kirk Special at a blues gig it’s not long before anyone over the age of 25 starts with the predictable this-ain’t-the-blues type commentary. And anyone under the age of 25 says ‘turn it up’. Kirk represents the new breed of musicians who have marinated themselves in the blues but do not seek to replicate the sounds they hear on the old records.
Kirk will shudder when labelled a ‘blues musician’, knowing too well how the genre has been sanitised and homogenised by middle aged men sporting pony-tails and black waistcoats.
Some say he sounds like the love child of Patti Smith and RL Burnside. A Southern Fried Ramone maybe?
‘The Fewer the Facts The Stronger The Opinion’ is 20 minutes of anti-blues insanity.
If we were to pigeon hole him we’d say he plays garage-punk-blues. but who wants to be in a pigeon hole? He’s a one-man-band that wields a kick/snare/telecaster combination that is equal parts boom, crash and fuzz.
Kirk was a crowd favourite at the Minneapolis Deep Blues Festival in the US before winning the Killing Floor Blues Challenge at the 2009 Juke Joint Blues fest.
2010 has seen him tour the east and west coasts and travel through Canada on the back of appearances at the North By North East music festival.
