The Royal Oak

Saturday night saw JBB make a very welcome return to the Royal Oak, Blackpool and I’ll tell you something, this place is rapidly becoming one of those venues I genuinely look forward to walking into with the cameras.

It’s just a cracking place for live music.

Great stage, room to move, a proper dance floor and most importantly a crowd that doesn’t need much encouragement to get involved. You can have the best band in the world on stage, but without an audience giving something back you’re only getting half the experience.

That certainly wasn’t a problem on Saturday.

From pretty much the first note the Royal Oak crowd were up for it. Singing, dancing, laughing and generally having a bloody good time, exactly how a Saturday night with a live band should be.

There was, however, one slight change to the usual JBB line-up.

The regular drummer couldn’t make it, so up stepped Joe to save the day, bringing with him a drum kit that looked like it required its own postcode. 😂

Now, stepping into another drummer’s seat is one thing. Stepping into it with JBB when Chris has the ability to randomly call a song with approximately zero seconds' warning is something else entirely.

At one point Chris did exactly that.

No warning. No discussion. Just basically, “Right lads, we’re doing this one…”

And Joe?

Not even a flinch.

Straight in, bang on it and played it like he’d known it was coming all night.

That’s musicianship.

As the evening went on, the Royal Oak did what the Royal Oak seems to do every time JBB turn up — the dance floor got busier, the singing got louder and the whole room seemed to lift another gear.

And from my position, usually lurking somewhere around the edge of the dance floor with a Sony stuck to my face, that’s the stuff I love photographing.

There’s a really nice relationship developing between JBB and the Royal Oak crowd. You can see the band feeding off the room and the room feeding straight back off the band and when that happens, my job becomes very easy.

And Joe…

Considering Chris apparently decided the set list was more of a rough suggestion than an actual plan, you absolutely smashed it. 😂🥁

Thank You for the Support

A huge thank you to everyone who came out to support us on Saturday; you did us proud. If you took any photos or videos, we’d love to see them! Please share them with us; we’d be proud to feature them right here on our site and on our social media channels.

Jack Burr Band (JBB)