Joe Kelly & The Royal Pharmacy

It’s easy to consign the idea of the itinerant blues singer to myth (Robert Johnson) or caricature (Seasick Steve) and for quite some time, Joe Kelly was as close as you could get to the real thing. 

After spending years living out of various cars, vans and caravans, touring the UK, Australia and New Zealand with just a broken-necked guitar and a battered case of harmonicas, Joe Kelly found shelter in an old Victorian police station just in time to ride out the storm that was the covid-19 pandemic. 

It was in this time that Joe Kelly was able to focus on consolidating the vast wealth of songs written in transit into an album that could encapsulate the spirit of those years on the road.