Claude Bourbon w/ Janelle Haskell – October 6, 2023

Ready for a unique and talented take on a wide range of musical traditions? Claude Bourbon is known throughout Europe and America for amazing guitar performances that take blues, Spanish, and Middle Eastern stylings into uncharted territories.

Claude’s inimitable style incorporates all five digits on each hand dancing independently but in unison, plucking, picking and strumming at such speed and precision that his fingers often seem to melt into a blur. Thousands of people in the UK, Europe and USA have enjoyed listening to this virtuoso and for the majority of his audience it is an experience that compels them to return again and again to hear and watch him play, as his fingers lightly dance over the strings of his guitar and create a unique sound that is ’Claude’.

Now based in the UK, some of this guitarists’ influences allow us a fascinating insight into this remarkable musician; Paco De Lucia: Deep Purple’s Richie Blackmore; Joaquin Rodrigo; JJ Cale; JS Bach….

Claude has played countless venues, including Glastonbury Festival, Isle of Wight Festival, Colne Great British & Blues Festival, Rock O’Z Arene, Avenches, Switzerland, among others. He has shared the stage in Europe and the USA with countless musicians, Calvin Russel, Charlie Morgan (Elton John, Gary Moore), Jan Akkerman (Focus), Steve Grossman (Miles Davis), Herbie Armstrong ( Van Morisson), Jose barrense Dias and many more.

“Claude Bourbon weaved his songs through the audience as if on a journey through life taking in different flavours of Europe and beyond… from classical openings, across a whole continent of cultural roots, holding audience attention under a musical spell, his music would not have been out of place in the courts of Emperors and Kings.” (G. Munn)

On the one hand, it might seem surprising for a longtime world-traveling jazz clarinetist and saxophonist to suddenly pick up a guitar and start writing folk songs.

On the other hand, for Janelle Haskell it also makes perfect sense.

On many an afternoon, as Janelle walked along Broadway from the Manhattan School of Music after jazz classes up to her apartment in Harlem, it wouldn’t be the soulful sounds of John Coltrane playing in her headphones, but rather the soft strumming, sweet melodies, and soul-stirring stories of Joni Mitchell.

Almost as though called by the words from one of Joni’s songs, after 10 years in the big and often lonely city, Janelle returned to her hometown of Ann Arbor, Michigan. She went there looking for many things: peace and quiet, wide open sky, and also something she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

But years later when the pandemic hit and all of Michigan was put on lockdown, Janelle found just what she’d been looking for in the most unlikely of places: a dusty old guitar that had been hanging on her wall for years.

“It was the most unexpected thing,” Janelle recalls. “One day I was sitting at my desk working and I looked over at this guitar on the wall. With what seemed like all the time in the world now suddenly at my fingertips, I walked over, picked it up, and started playing any chords I could remember. A few months later I wrote my first song, Michigan, about coming home.”