Back in July I booked in a hotel in Ashford for the Ramblin Man fair, and checked in on Friday night to avoid a stupid O’clock start on Saturday morning. It was raining stair-rods that night, so there was little incentive to venture out into the town. But there was a band setting up in the hotel bar, so I thought I’d give them a listen.
They turned out to be Salvation Jayne, a rather impressive guitar-shredding blues-rock quartet. Much of their set was covers ranging from 60s Otis Redding numbers to several Joe Bonamassa songs, but they did include several originals that stood up well amongst the standards and suggested they have their sights on being far more than a local covers band.
The EP “I’ll Be Damned” contains three of those songs, and the raw live-sounding production captures the energy of their gigs.It kicks off with the hard rock boogie of “Black Eyes”. The title track is perhaps the weakest of the three; the awkward time changes don’t quite work, although Holly Kinnear’s solo at the end is impressive. But the undoubted highlight is the final number, “Secret Sin”, a powerful slow blues number that sees lead singer Amy Benham pulls out all the stops with a gutsy and impassioned performance.
The EP can be bought from the Salvation Jayne bandcamp page.
You do wonder if their name might have held Germany’s Vanden Plas back. Back in the 1970s and 80s it was British Leyland’s badge for the top-end models of their memorably terrible cars from the worst days of the British motor industry. It’s like calling a band “Skoda” or “Edsel”.