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HOT GIG TICKETS

THE WILDERS + Piney Gir + The Hot Seats

Sun 25th Jan 2009

What's Cookin' presents
THE WILDERS
+ Piney Gir
+ The Hot Seats

Doors 7.30
£10 cash on the door

8.00 The Hot Seats (40)
8.50 Piney (15)
9.20 The Wilders (80)

"They play their wooden instruments like they're trying to set 'em on fire. They've always emphasized rampaging rhythms and a hellbent attitude, but on their upcoming album 'Throw Down' they mature into a can't-be-denied group that relies on virtuosity and tight ferocity more than on novelty." [Nashville Scene]

The Wilders, from Kansas City, Missouri, renowned as the "hillbilly hurricane", in full, unstoppable flight blow everyone away. The Edinburgh Festival Fringe favourites are back to thrill crowds again following sell-out shows both here and in the UK. Since this white-hot band first tore Doc Watson's MerleFest apart in North Carolina in 2004, they have been invited back each year to build on their reputation there as event show-stealers.

Returning to the UK for a big main stage appearance at Glasgow's Celtic Connections in mid January, this will be the band's first ever appearance in London. Reviews are every bit as whiz-bang as the band themselves.

'They generate the kind of tunes that should by rights leave vapour trails,' said one enthusiastic writer.

'If this were old Salem, they'd be burned at the stake,' said another – 'They play like they're possessed.'

"Hard-rocking bluegrass that'll have you stumbling home by the time they're through with you. The Wilders live up to their name with some serious fiddle tunes." (About.com)

Don't be surprised if tickets for this one end up changing hands for silly money on eBay!

Supporting this evening are The Hot Seats.

When you hurtle down the musical helter skelter as these guys do, friction burns become a hazard of the job. It is fitting, then, that performances have frequently been described as "white hot".

In the summer of 2008, when formerly known as Special Ed & The Shortbus, they tore the biggest festival in the world - Edinburgh Fringe - apart, and won a coveted Herald Angel, the Festival's equivalent of an Oscar, for their outstanding contribution to the event. The Herald, Scotland's best-read broadsheet, described them as "sensational". The hot seats that time around were in the front row for each of the nightly shows at the prestigious Famous Spiegeltent.

So, the name may have changed but the content remains just as potent and entertaining as ever. Stablemates The Wilders, call them "crazy bluegrass scientists." Others have attempted to pin them down as a "bubbling fountain of virtuosic insanity" and "bonkers but brilliant." Maverick magazine said: "Great musicianship aside, it's near impossible to explain what makes them so fantabulous as the show is so stuffed full of multi-faceted delicacies."

The band has been together for seven years, fine-tuning their skills on the redneck bar and college club circuit where they experimented with a suitcase-full of assorted toys to supplement the guitar/mandolin/banjo/fiddle/bass line-up, employing everything from kazoo and jawharp to washboard, tin can percussion and Chinese blocks. It's an irresistible combination with elements of jug band, Vaudeville, country blues, old-time - and even Zappa - all brought to sizzling point by five very fine musicians.

They were the "fave rave" act at Leicester's Summer Sundae Festival and stand-out crowd pleasers at Maverick magazine's first big summer bash in Suffolk.

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