They’re making plans for Nigel at Berts jazz bar where the blues-jazz guitarist and singer Nigel Mooney is appearing with pianist Scott Flanigan.

In his blues incarnation in the 1980s with his Gripewater Blues Band Mooney honed a sound he had built from his interest in the blues dating back to his schooldays and early listening to Eric Clapton, John Mayall, Peter Green, and BB King. Years later with the band that listening would be closer to the source still opening for BB when the blues great’s relentless touring reached Dublin. Now in his early-fifties, with the Gripewater band in his early twenties it was “playing all those Willie Dixon numbers and then discovering the jazz stuff, searching for a new style,” he says. That new style would come tumbling down, first via Jimmy Smith’s organ and George Benson’s guitar. Mooney would also be listening to some Charlie Parker, some John Coltrane, and some Ahmad Jamal along the way. 

Mooney grew up on Dublin’s south side, in Rathfarnham, and moved out to Wicklow, but now lives in the north of County Wexford. The blues scene in those distant days in Ireland included such totemic figures as Belfast scenester Jim Daly. In terms of the vocals side of his performances Mooney says as a listener he likes Chet Baker, Frank Sinatra and Joe Williams as well as Tony Bennett, Nancy Wilson and Sarah Vaughan. He’s not a devotee of Ray Charles Mooney told Marlbank earlier in the year but even so ‘Ain’t That Love’ on his latest album The Bohemian Mooney shows a deep understanding and flair for the High Priest of Soul’s approach. The real tour de force of the album perhaps is ‘Bohemian Moondance’ where Van Morrison classic ‘Moondance’ metamorphoses effortlessly into ‘Milestones’ by Miles Davis, a natural fit in Mooney’s hands. The bandleader says he used to play ‘Moondance’ at gigs which he mentions tactfully was requested “too many times”. So after a while he decided to rewrite the bridge, change the tempo, and play it “a bit different and hoped nobody would notice!” Ah well, that cat’s well and truly out of the bag.

Catch Mooney top left and Flanigan, in organ mode, above after 9pm at the Skipper Street spot in Belfast tonight inside the Merchant (no cover charge). Steve Davis is on drums