Six dates into his first UK tour, Garret T. Willie walks out at The Deaf Institute to open for Ally Venable, and from the first note it is obvious this is not a support act coasting through the middle of a run. He plays like every show still matters, throwing energy at a twenty-minute slot that most bands save for a headline set.
The playing itself gives away where all that comes from. Willie has talked in the past about growing up on Angus Young, wanting to perform the way Angus performed, and it is there in the way he moves as much as the way he plays. Dig underneath that AC/DC influence though and the real education shows through, Albert King, B.B. King, Chuck Berry, the blues players AC/DC themselves were built on. Live, that layering comes through as vocabulary rather than imitation.
The clearest nod to all that comes mid-set, when the band drop into a cover of AC/DC‘s ‘Sin City’. It is not a novelty or a crowd-pleasing detour, it is a direct tribute to the hero who put a guitar in Willie‘s hands in the first place, played with as much conviction as anything of his own.
That grounding runs deep. Twenty years on the instrument shows in the small things, phrasing that breathes instead of rushing, the confidence to leave space in a solo rather than fill every bar with notes. For a support act barely a week into his first UK tour, control like that is rare.
As a player, that’s what jumps out watching him. Big riffs and fast runs are the easy part to notice, the harder skill is knowing when to leave a gap, and plenty of far more seasoned touring guitarists still fill every bar out of nerves. Willie doesn’t. Watching him lock in with the rhythm section, sitting in the pocket instead of fighting it for space, told me more about the hours he’s put in than any solo could on its own.
It is not just Willie enjoying himself up there either. The whole band looks like they are having the time of their lives, and it comes through in the photographs from the night as much as it did in the room. Manchester responds in kind. This is an artist most of the room has probably never heard of before tonight, and the reaction is still one of the warmest of the evening, people won over and letting him know it.
Willie‘s new album, Bill’s Cafe, is a brilliant record, exactly what you would expect from a guitarist of his calibre. It only confirms what the set already showed, these songs carry the same weight live as they do on record, which is not always a given.
Opening slots like this one are usually just a foot in the door. On this evidence, Garret T. Willie will not be on the other side of that door much longer.
