The Deaf Institute is a room where a guitar solo hits differently. Low ceiling, tight crowd, no gap between the stage and the front row of phones trying to catch it.
Garret T. Willie opens, and straight away it’s clear why he won’t be a support act much longer. Fresh off his second album, Bill’s Cafe, his voice carries more grit than his 26 years suggest, all gravel wrapped around old-soul blues and rock. Chatting after his set, he tells us he’s been playing for twenty years, since picking up a guitar at six with one target in mind: playing like Angus Young. That lineage runs right through his set. This is his first trip to the UK, and on tonight’s evidence it won’t be his last.
Ally Venable takes over, a long way from the church choirs of Kilgore, Texas, where she started singing at four before picking up a guitar at twelve. She’s touring behind her sixth album, Money & Power, cut in Nashville with producer Tom Hambridge. From the first notes of the opening song the room knows exactly what it’s getting.
‘Brown Liquor’ follows, introduced with a story about the song being written about her favourite drink. ‘Texas Louisiana’ is the track she recorded with Buddy Guy, and hearing it live spells out where she sits as a guitarist. Buddy Guy doesn’t lend his name to a duet out of politeness. A cover of ‘Going Down’ later in the set proves she’s just as at home tearing into somebody else’s song as her own.
This room knows its guitar playing, and it shows. The crowd has the look of people who came for the solos as much as the songs, lapping up every bend and run she throws at them. At one point Venable drops to her knees at the front of the stage, still playing, still locked in, and the room roars its approval.
She’s out in a bandana and sequinned skirt, that hand-painted Les Paul slung low, covered in colour, a guitar that says this is identity as much as tool. As a player myself, that relationship between musician and instrument is always the first thing I clock, and hers is unmistakably personal.
Bobby Wallace holds down bass, Elijah Owings sits behind the kit, the two of them working tight in a small space. Wallace runs through a string of different basses across the set, a white furry-bodied one the clear standout, while Owings stays locked in behind the cymbals. It’s the chemistry you only get from a band that’s spent weeks living on the same bus.
Venable doesn’t need to rush to prove herself. Her hands on the neck carry real command, bends held just long enough, vibrato used with intention rather than habit. Between songs she smiles easily, throws a heart shape to the crowd, small gestures that close the gap between stage and floor in a room this size.
The lighting tells its own story, warm amber giving way to deep blue and violet, the mirror ball scattering light across a packed floor. By the time the room’s gone the darkest shade of blue, one spotlight on her, it feels like the whole set has built to this.
Setlist
The Deaf Institute, Manchester, 13th September 2026
Brown Liquor
Texas Louisiana
Going Down (The Alabama State Troupers cover)
Note: setlist.fm lists this as a partial, fan-submitted setlist with running order unconfirmed. The full setlist for the night was not documented.
