Groundhogs at Worthen - a review
by Pete Jameson

"Those low-down dirty Worthen blues"
British blues-rock heroes are homing in on south Shropshire this year - Peter Green at Pontesbury, Robert Plant at Bishop's Castle,
and now Tony "TS" McPhee, who brought his band The Groundhogs to Worthen village Hall on Friday 8th December 2000.
The concert, promoted as part of Shropshire-based Real-Music's "big names to small places" drive, featured local band Wild Honey
as support, and attracted over 200 to the compact venue.

Ages ranged from 60s-vintage Groundhogs-watchers to sub-teens. "Playing in small venues isn't so unusual for us," said McPhee, who
acknowledges that the height of the band's success pre-dates the stadium rock era. Worthen is also close to home for the
singer-guitarist, who settled in Shrewsbury 15 years ago after tiring of London
and finding East Anglia desperately lacking in bass players and drummers "unless you wanted to play country music."

In any case, McPhee's music feels more at home in a rural setting than it would
in the vast cavern of the NEC Arena. He walked on in a Robert Johnson T-shirt, and began his set with an
unaccompanied acoustic
version of the tormented Mississippi bluesman's 32:20. This was followed by unplugged songs
from Howlin' Wolf and Fred McDowall. McPhee's total mastery of the rhythmic twists and raw,
edgy dynamics of country blues is mesmerising.

The Groundhogs' bassist and drummer then joined the leader on electric guitar for a set
dominated by the band's 70s tunes, including Eccentric Man, Split Part 1 and the magnificent
Cherry Red. When he's blasting out waves of distortion and feedback, McPhee sounds like a
man wrestling a melting reactor core, yet he never lets go of a dark, deep blues feeling.

His British blues-God contemporaries - Clapton, Page and Green among them
- followed the cleaned-up, urban sophisticate route of BB, Albert and Freddy King, but Tony McPhee
digs into something deeper. He formed the band in 1964 to back John Lee Hooker, a man who never lost his
grip on the elemental power of the early blues, and last night's encore saw McPhee,
unaccompanied again, playing Hooker's Groundhog Blues.

Maybe it's something to do with the floods, but Worthen, Shropshire, suddenly felt a
lot closer to Natchez, Mississippi.

(This review appeared in the Shropshire Star, Saturday 9th December, 2000)