The late Jeff Healey’s unpretentious, no-frills approach to blues-rock was perhaps best experienced live, so this DVD of the band at Belgium’s Peer Blues Festival in 1993 is a very welcome addition to their catalogue. As with many blues performers, a Jeff Healey show wasn’t about pyrotechnics and showmanship (in fact, Healey’s blindness made him a more than usually static performer), yet the combination of his powerful voice and stunning guitar playing is the opposite of dull.
On this occasion the three-piece band were augmented by keyboardist Washington Savage and two excellent backing singers, giving them a more soulful, even gospel-tinged sound than usual. The focus of the concert is the then-current Feel This album, but there’s a smattering of old favourites too.
Despite warnings in the sleevenotes about shortcomings in the source material, the visual and audio restoration is so good that the quality never feels less than excellent. Drummer Tom Stephens alludes in the notes to the painstaking process involved in bringing the DVD to fruition, but the effort was more than worthwhile.
