The Duke

For those of you who don't know, The Duke is the brain child of Rich Ward, who was the founding member of the band Stuck Mojo and Fozzy. So it is a very brave move for him to decide to create something completely new and have to work hard to establish himself once again by doing the smaller venues.

The Old Angel pub is a narrow room with a small stage at the far end of it, with no fancy gimmicks, no lighting rig, just the band and their instruments to impress the punters.

The Duke was wearing a red football t shirt- which on the back had his name emblazoned onto it, just in case there was any one in the audience who wasn't sure who he was!

To begin with the entire band had their backs to the audience, which did get rather annoying after five minutes! But once they turned round and launched into their set it became an enjoyable experience.

Their music is full of wonderfully woven guitar melodies and gently flowing vocals. Songs such as 'Summer' and 'Used To Be' taken from the album 'My Kung Fu Is Good' demonstrate this point perfectly.

It isn't only the melodic tracks that are well delivered. The Duke is also able to switch from clean melodic harmonies to dirty grunge sounding tracks such as 'Suicide Machine'.

The Duke certainly try's to give his band the full respect they deserve, at one point he told the crowd 'I really must thank the band for recording the album with me, otherwise it would have been the worst John Denver tribute album ever'.

The punters that had made the effort to come and catch The Duke were certainly impressed. I imagine that it will be a very long time before we have the chance to catch a band this good playing such a small venue.

Catch The Duke next time he visits your city, you won't be disappointed!

FUTURE GIGS

sorry, we currently have no gigs listed for this act.