Chris Finnen has been around for a good while; he really has paid his dues, as guitarist/singer, blues performer, world music enthusiast and all the rest: a life in music. British immigrant to Melbourne, he is now identified with his long term locale in Adelaide, from where he tours, and plays with different bands, including his own, and Matt Taylor’s Adelaide Chain. The extent of his recognition travels far, including awards from the New York Blues Hall of Fame and the Adelaide Music Hall of Fame. He told me, for example, that he had played with Les Paul, and I thought, oh yeah. Oh yeah, you play on a Les Paul, sure. Then I visited his beachy home and studio, and there was the snap of the two of them (and a host of others, Mayall, Bo Diddley, Buddy Guy, Roy Buchanan) pinned on his wall. His home is a studio, doubling as a rock museum and a place to sleep. It is adorned with the memorabilia of a rich and dedicated musical life, awash in stringed instruments and percussive devices including some I have never seen before. You can hardly move without picking up an instrument, or falling over one.

Finnen’s most recent CD release is To My Southern Town.  But now comes the Covid straggler, a beautiful DVD recorded under Covidtimes, Live in Lockdown 2020.

Understated here, as MC, Chris Finnen gently leads his fellow players through; not much banter, which he is otherwise known for. He is genial, and fluid on guitar and vocals, together with Trapper, on drums, Michael Winter on bass, and Ian Jefferey on percussion.  Eleven tracks, as follows. ‘Hat and Shoes’ bops and bounces, clean on the Gibson. ‘Weepin’ Spell’ follows, with slide and tricks; Finnen has always been big on guitar tricks, slide and vocal falsetto. Track 3 is one we associate with Ry Cooder, but which actually comes out of his Depression songbook from Alfred Reed: ‘How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live’, rhumba style, fingerpicking like Ryland and that characteristic use of phasing. Finnen alternates between guitars for particular sounds, as his bassist shifts between upright bass, Fender bass and Epiphone Jack Casady. Track 4 is ‘Restaurant Boogie’, guitar with capo, mimetic style, the strings laffing, tremolo, liquidity in the manner of the later Clapton. The lyrics could be about food, or even about sex. Who knows? Congas work perfectly as a kind of thin supplement, a gentle touch, in contrast to the more generally used keys. Track 5 is ‘Forty Four Years’, the necessary and restive slow blues interval. 6 is a surprise version of Hendrix, with Strat, ‘Stone Free’, rim tap on snare, a lateral evocative in approach of what Jackie Orzacsky did with ‘Manic Depression’ – don’t copy, change it! Hendrix lives again in ‘Little Wing ‘, that hauntingly beautiful song, with highs and lows and harmonics maybe reminiscent of Jeff Beck, and reminding me of Finnen’s high school nickname – Hendrix, indeed, whom he then resembled both in guitar and fashion style (he was always the livery man). ‘African Marketplace’, by Abdullah Ibrahim, follows, stringy, boppy, with conga fill. ‘PMT’, at number 9, is a Telecaster swing or shuffle, maybe evoking Ronnie Earl or Jimmy Vaughan, featuring a classy upright bass solo. # 10 is ‘Nuclear Wasted’, a funeral dirge, Apocalypse Blues, like a dying version of ‘Albatross’, with tympani sticks on drums.  The finale, and eleventh track, is a lovely version of the Pachelbel canon by way of exit, beautiful and austere, calm, undergirded by the gentle growl of Epiphone bass, highs and lows again. It closes like a benediction.

As the performance ends, you realise it was indeed a concert, and not just a gig in lockdown. One surprising key to this quality, in addition to the mood, the filming and recording, the combination of ease and ecstasy in the playing, is in the lighting. The lighting? Yup. Watch and see. But let me confess; for thereby hangs a tale. After the completion of my recent book on Chain’s Toward the Blues, Phil Manning apologised for the too late detail. What was the story? That album was a slow start; a difficult week in the TCS Studios in Richmond May 1971, no click; then on the last day there was finally that click, and you can hear it in the resultant album. It all came together. Now Phil told me, over coffee, that he had bumped into Peter Evans, who brought in his lighting setup on that last day, and now reminded him of the story. It transformed the mood from studio to gig, in effect; and the result is rock history. Snap! And so, watching Chris Finnen and his mates on DVD, I was also struck by just how important the non-musical was. Here: the lighting, by Nivven Barlow, is the final touch.

Finally, another confession. I was Finnen’s drummer, or he was my guitarist around 1969 and 1970, when we found ourselves together at Croydon High School. Together with my brother Fred on bass we shared the stage with the Chicago-period Aztecs at Thumpin’ Tum in Melbourne 1 January 1970. Finnen gave his life to music in all that has followed. We took on different lives, but are still joined by that moment. It was near perfect, and changed our lives in very different kinds of ways. This is small monument to a life’s dedication to music.