BY MICHAEL CHOWNE

A wonderful Sunday night at The Water Rats near King’s Cross on 20th September 2026 seeing 6 incredibly talented musicians all new to me.

Kristy Cox, known as Australia’s Queen of Bluegrass, headed up the band made up of Jason Bailey on mandolin, Andy Brown on electric upright bass, Tyler Griffith on acoustic guitar (along with Kristy), Tijmen Veelenturf on fiddle and Thierry Schoysman on banjo. Kristy is originally from Adelaide but now lives in Nashville, Thierry is Belgian (and still lives in Belgium), Tijmen is Dutch but lives in Nashville and the others are all American.

Kristy said they’ve been on the road for 8 weeks and this was the last show of their tour before flying home today. How you make the economics of a touring band of that size work I have no idea but I’m grateful they managed it!

This was a relaxed seated gig and Kristy and the guys gave us some fantastic mostly upbeat bluegrass, with a little gospel, across two sets. 21 songs in total, mostly Kristy’s original music written in traditional bluegrass style, including tracks from Kristy’s brand new album currently available only on CD.

I particularly loved ‘Wrong Girl’, ‘Sally Flatt’, ‘Good Morning Moon’ and the closing encore song ‘Move It On Over’, as well as Kristy’s latest single ‘No Regrets’.

There were also a few covers – Kristy said they’re basically a wannabe Hank Williams covers band (!) and it was good to hear ‘Hey Good Lookin” and ‘Jambalaya’ along with a lovely version of ‘Amazing Grace’.

After being on the road for so long the band had a great chemistry and clearly had a lot of fun at what was very much an end of tour show. Whilst Kristy was telling one story they surprised her with ‘Skippy The Bush Kangaroo’ which was even funnier as Australian Kristy didn’t recognise it. Queue much embarrassment!

So great that we get to see top music like this from across the world right here in the heart of London. Thanks so much to Graham Smallwood of Folkandroots for organising this one.