Harmonica virtuoso Norton Buffalo and his band, the Knockouts, brought their dynamic musical magic to town last night and delivered with a powerful set of tunes. Slide guitar wizard, Roy Rogers opened the show, backed by his bass/drums accompanists, the Delta Rhythm Kings. Rogers astounded the audience with his brilliant stylings on slide guitar. He achieves a unique sound by amplifying his guitar through a Leslie, a device more often used with the Hammond B3 organ. Their traditional blues "power trio" approach was exciting, peaking at the end of the set with a great rendition of "Terraplane Blues". Then it was time for Norton Buffalo & the Knockouts. The energy level went up a few notches more as Norton, on keyboards and harp simultaneously, opened his set with a moody, jazz inflected instrumental. Then it was time to rock and Norton took off with a song, 'Aint No Bread in the Breadbox' and further heated things up with 'Do The Mess Around' which featured some flat-out runaway train harmonica soloing. Norton slowed things down a bit with a cool blues 'The Odds are Against Us'. By this point, the light to moderate sized audience had gathered down in front to soak up the great sounds as they rolled off the stage. Buffalo worked his harps in an unbelievable manner, leaving no doubt as to his command of the instrument. Bassist David Brown, a veteran of Boz Skagg's old band gave the whole thing solid bottom, drummer Tyler Eng, formerly with Charlie Musselwhite, was fantastic and guitarist Johnny Vie formerly with Elvin Bishop's band, turned out impressive licks, working wah-wah pedal and bottleneck slide soloing into 'King Of The Highway'. The evening was studded with high points, one of which was Norton's beautiful working of 'Amazing Grace' segueing into a frenzied "Crossroads" to a cool shuffle interlude and then right into Freddie King's classic "Tore Down". Virtually the whole house was up and dancing for the Bo Diddly beat propelled "Buffalo Cajun Mambo". This was a great evening of music and a great opportunity to enjoy one of the worlds finest harmonica stylists. While much of his music was blues based, Buffalo's talents are vast and go way beyond the blues. His playing is often reminiscent of the legendary Toots Thielmans, who is perhaps the grand master of the instrument. Hopefully, Norton and the Knockouts will extend their touring territory to the midwest and East coast soon so everyone can experience this living harp dynamo in a setting that truly does his talents justice.