Nice, I never heard of this guy before!

Interestingly enough, he sings the same sort of grace notes or melisma as he plays in solos!

He's technically perfect in this track, he never flubs a note and has extremely good timing.

I really enjoyed that track but he's just a bit too straight for me - his solos never get beyond the harmonic and rhythmic center of the basic blues, nor do his emotions rend my soul.

As a random counterexample from my past, I saw Sérgio Dias play with the band Os Mutantes on several occasion: they are more of a rock band, but with a strong blues influence on the solos.

They are highly recommended for all humans: their first album has been go-to party music for over fifty years.

Dias presents himself as a frontman and singer of this Brazilian pop band, more than a guitarist, so the first time I saw them and he barely played at the beginning, I thought nothing of it. But then as the show went on, it was more and more as if he was compelled to comment on what had just happened with the guitar.

I realized he always does the same thing at the last song - he first plays some really clever trick to please the music heads, and then segues into a conventional blues solo where he get to the highest note on the guitar right at the end.

The last time I saw him, in the "clever" solo, he did some quick, complex interlocked polyrhythmic thing and then transitioned into a lick when he then played like it was recorded on a tape loop that was slowing down - not through effects, but simply through the whammy bar and maybe a slide? and a lot of fingering. Individuals were cracking up all throughout the audience, but the audience as a whole loved the final, less challenging part.

He's a bit light on emotion, except good cheer and humor, but as emotions go that's OK by me.

I haven't listened to them in a long time, time to pull 'em out from the archive.

Question to you - are there any avant-garde or progressive blues bands operating these days?