The Fortunate Sons

Its not often I get to praise a good new Scottish blues band. Despite having some great blues singers over the years such as Frankie Miller, Big George and the Business (Rod Stewart, lol), there have been relatively few blues bands risen above the pub covers scene, with the exception of the Nimmo Brothers. Perhaps its because of our own heritage for other forms of roots music. What makes the Fortunate Sons an interesting band is that they blend some of these folk roots into their blues based sound.
The band were formed in Glasgow in 2005, and have now released their self titled debut album. I went to see the band in a small club in Edinburgh and was very impressed with what I heard and bought their album.
One standout is their singer/rhythm guitar player Sam West who is an excellent vocalist (and a giant). I can hear shades of Paul Rodgers and Anthony Kiedis in his vocals. All the songs on their debut are sell penned with good rhythm, fluid guitar playing, strong choruses and vocal harmonies. Unlike most blues based bands is that they also have violinist.  The violin fits pretty well in to their music, in some ways like a harmonica would do. It helps to bring a driving urgency to some of their songs the frantic "This Train". Other songs I'd recommend you check out are the blues rocker "Say Nothing", "Slave Chain" with which features particularly strong vocals and the opener "All I Need". Available on Itunes etc
The band has received some welcome airplay on several Scottish radio stations to date  and Mark Lamarr's also played them in two successive weeks on his BBC Radio 2 show.
Whilst most gigs are currently in Scotland, they’ve played in London, Newcastle and Germany in recent months, check them out if you can.
Here are a couple of links:
Youtube link to This Train:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=NKt1-t2mY … re=related
Myspace site:
http://www.myspace.com/fsons