The Bill Durst Band
Bill Durst Band Reviews
City rockers, music leaders win plaudits ...
The credit goes entirely to my colleagues on the volunteer committee steering the Jack Richardson Music Awards, but we've just done a good thing. Two good things actually. The 2006 awards, the city's only not-for-profit celebration of London's music excellence, will honour rock band Thundermug as hall of fame inductees and former Home County Folk Festival artistic director Ken Palmer as recipient of this year's Dennis Brown lifetime achievement award. Palmer and members of Thundermug will be honoured at the free awards gala on the evening of April 30 at Club Phoenix. Fan voting determines 18 categories at the Richardson awards. The steering committee chooses these two honours. (The London Music Awards, spearheaded by Scene magazine, are a separate entity.) To celebrate the doubly good news, I went down to the basement and played my old Axe label 45 of Thundermug's greatest blast. That would be Africa, a No. 1 hit here back in 1972. Africa still sounds great, with Bill Durst's guitar ripping away and a kazoo solo keeping it loose. Africa includes wise words about the continent being the birthplace of it all and our being a family. Joe DeAngelis sings them, so they still rock true. With one lineup or another, Thundermug rocked parts of four or five decades in London. Our awards are named for Canadian record producer and Fanshawe College faculty member Jack Richardson, last year's hall of fame inductee. It's still a virtual hall, a project in the making at this stage. But with Thundermug in there, this London dream has a fresh rumble.Durst Delivers...
Feedback .. echo effect .. powerful singing, freak harmonic, buzz-sawing bottle-neck guitar and supercharged intensity are all components of Bill Durst's showmanship. Durst, London's legendary virtuoso guitarist, performed a radical re-interpretation of Jimi Hendrix's "Little Wing" which opened with some incredible mewings that squeezed out of his fret board, suggesting an overhead migration of gigantic seagulls"Bill Durst Band - The Wharncliffe Sessions (Indie)
For years, or more accurately decades, Bill Durst has been considered by many to be Southwestern Ontario's most accomplished guitar player. Durst gained national attention in the early days of Canadian rock as the lead guitar player and songwriter for Thundermug, who are best remembered for the single, Africa, which he co-wrote. The Wharncliffe Sessions is a rock-blues guitar album that features classic tunes most guitar players know, but few would dare record. If you are going to release a recording of so many familiar tunes, you'd better be an exceptional player, and Durst is exactly that. His versions of Little Wing and Voodoo Child are worthy of comparison to the originals. Durst's slide-guitar playing on Statesboro Blues is right on the money and his version of ZZ Top's, Tube Snake Boogie is a keeper: Drummer Ted Peacock and bassist Paul Loeffelholtz deserve mention for providing exciting support as well as keeping the grooves fresh. The Wharncliffe Sessions is a very strong debut by three of London's most accomplished musicians."Now and forever, guitar god, Bill Durst"
"The bottom line is that there is nothing Bill can't do with his guitar or, for that matter, his voice"
London, England is a hotbed for great guitar players, but then, in a city of about seven million, that is to be expected. The Canadian London, where Bill Durst halls from, is less than four hundred thousand in population, so we are only allowed one guitar god and as you will discover while listening to this album, Bill Durst is it. For over thirty years Durst has been honing his craft, always to great acclaim, most notably during his two tenures with the band Thundermug. If you've ever seen him play you'd know immediately that you are in the presence of a master. The bottom line is that there is nothing Bill can't do with his guitar or, for that matter, with his voice. As Durst enters his fifth decade of making great music, he's returned to the basics of the blues and put together a trio to carry it off that includes Ted Peacock, a first call drummer all over the country and bassist Paul Loeffelholtz, whose own career has run the gamut of every musical style one can think of. After only a few months of working together as the Bill Durst Band, the reaction has been so extremely strong that they went into the studio to prepare this taste of what they are about in concert. "The Wharncliffe Sessions" include original arrangements of some of Bill's favourite songs. There is also the first fruit of Bill's revived songwriting partnership with Joe DeAngelis, original lead singer of Thundermug and co-writer of their signature tune Africa - that song, "Jenny's in the Gin" has already become a show stopper. If you find the statements accurate within these notes, become a missionary for Bill Durst's first burst in this new phase of his career. Your friends will thank you for it.