Peaky Kats

We all love the Peaky Blinders - an excellent TV series filmed on location at Black Country Living museum as well as other locations of course. We, Kal's Kats are delighted to play at BCLM for both the 40's events mid year when we present in our other line up as The Kalamazoo Dance Band and then of course in September for both weekends as we then become Kal's Kats - One of our highlight moments will be performing the theme tune as written and sung by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - namely Red Right Hand - a dark and mysterious song evoking all sorts of emotions and conjuring up an exact representation of those 1900's and all that that era brought to bare.

As Kal's Kats - we present in three very distinct but somewhat overlapping styles or genres those being 50's swing style, 20' Great Gatsby and of course our Peaky Blinder offering. Each style is represented in an entirely different way what with 50's style being in our vintage suits and 20's being more in our pin stripes and then we of course go to Peaky Blinders style with the broad penny collar style or the Grandad shirt style and watch fob neatly in place and all nicely bedecked with the 8 panel news boy/Baker boy hats on our heads.

We have recently added Red Right Hand to our repertoire and whilst it might not necessarily pique everyone's fancy, we think this song is superb right from our guitarist Fred maintaining a single note pulse throughout the song on his guitar, to Jordan playing the Anvil note in B on his Nord Stage 2 and then of course to a fab horn section of Roy on Trumpet and the very talented Paddy on Clarinet and Alto sax, then across to James on tenor sax with Pete bearing the big notes on Bari sax - then delving in to the dark and sinister back line of the band with Ben effortlessly ringing out the walking bass line and then to the maestro that is Brian doing a fantastic job on the drums with precision timing on the China cymbal to give those shattering shimmering smash sounds through the solo break before yours truly brings it all back in about nightmares and switching off the TV.

Such a great and talented group of guys to work with and having just posted up our video that we recorded the other night onto youtube and facebook, can already see that views are up in the thousands with some superb comments including some of the organisers where we are performing at 40's events asking us to play red right hand as well - as they say, 'he who pays the piper'

Unfortunately our long standing guitarist Fred has announced his departure from the band and so Red Right Hand thus becomes his swansong - We all wish you well Freddy Boy and thank you for your fun, Friendship and great support to the band - You will be missed by everyone in the 'family' and now we have the arduous task of finding a new guitarist who can read chords and improvise and wants to take on a massively stacked diary of gigs extending out into 2020.

In the meantime, we shall continue our journey and this weekend sees our other line up The Kalamazoo Dance Band playing a fantastic 40's Dance at Hotshots Elvis in Oldbury, Sandwell. Thanks to all our supporters as always for the great feedback and comments and see you at the gigs. Here is the Youtube link of the rehearsal and another of us in action

https://youtu.be/6O-wT_Sjts0

https://youtu.be/bGojE6QNGZ4