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Robin Lynam

About two years ago, one of  Hong Kong's best known blues musicians packed his bags and moved back to  Britain.

Since then, Rochdale-born William Tang has been quietly working to build up a following  in his home country  and has been a hit at several  jazz and blues festivals.

This week, he returns for the first time to his second home, where he'll  release his album  The Other Side, with two concerts and a number of promotional appearances.

Hong Kong clearly means a great deal to Tang. He arrived here in 1989 and  became a professional musician.  For some, the Mississippi Delta does it. For others, it's the Pearl River Delta.

Playing at the Jazz Club, the Fringe and  other venues, Tang honed an impressive blues harp technique, going on to tackle other instruments, including guitar and bass.

During the 1990s, he played  all over town with the many incarnations of his regular band, Blue Wail,  with blues guitar prodigy Patrick Murdoch in a partnership called Xyan, and establishing  a recording studio.

His distinctive harmonica sound added a touch of Chicago to  Canto-pop records and concerts at the Coliseum.  An audiophile album, Blues Movies, which was produced by Clarence Chang and Andrew Tauson, brought his harp to bear on well-known film themes, and featured  leading lights of the local jazz scene, including Dave Packer, Eugene Pao and Paul Candelaria.

He was one of the most active musicians on the live scene,  playing several nights  a week. After 14 relatively high-profile years in Hong Kong,  he worked hard to crack the British scene.

'I joined two local bands doing the pub scene, then branched out into doing blues and jazz festivals,' he  says.  'Then I decided to try doing more of a solo thing, so I've  been concentrating on a lot of acoustic stuff.

'Because of that  I thought, 'I really need a new album', because the last one was Chicago blues, and I was doing more singer-songwriter stuff.'

Based in the north of England, Tang began looking for a suitable studio  and found Parr Street in Liverpool. 'It's quite well known because Coldplay and some of the Manchester bands recorded there,' he says. 'I was asking around about producers, and there happened to be a guy  there called Mike Hunter,  who'd worked with quite a  few well-known bands, including Mansun, Embrace and The Coral. I asked him, 'Would you help me out with this album?' We just went in and did it. It took about three days.'

Tang hasn't turned his back on  blues entirely. At least half the album's tracks employ blues structures or have a strong blues feeling,  and the virtuosic track Time of Day reaffirms his mastery of his first instrument -  although the album is dominated by Tang's voice and guitar.

'There's still harmonica on  it, but it's not as prevalent as it has been on previous albums, some of which have been all harmonica,' he says. 'I've been concentrating more on the song and the vocals, trying to have a wider appeal. It's more song-oriented than before although it's still got those roots influences.'

Tang has certainly had enough time to think about the music. It's been five years since his last album, Out of the Blue, and The Other Side is only his fifth since his  debut in 1996 with Movin' On.

This time, he wrote all the songs, and played everything  on all but one of them. The sound is sparse, and overdubs have been used sparingly. There are no electric instruments.

'It's just been acoustic guitar and vocals rather than a band, and making some percussive sounds with the vocals,' he says. 'There's also some percussion on there. The only other musician is Mike, who played some piano on one song. Otherwise it's just me.'

This is the style Tang will feature in his first show on  Saturday at the Fringe Club,  but fans of the old stuff won't  be forgotten.

'The launch at the Fringe will have two parts,' he says. 'The first half of the show will be just me doing my solo thing and songs from the album. The second half, I'm getting together with some of the guys I used to play with in Hong Kong for a bit of a jam, and the electric will come out for that. Dave McKirdy will be on drums and John French on bass.'

Tang will also introduce his new sound to local fans at the Hong Kong Arts Centre, on February 13. 'It will be a similar sort of thing, but a bit more staged, and we've got a couple of Chinese singers joining me,' he says. 'To me, the Hong Kong Arts Centre has always been a bit more local than the Fringe, and I wanted to play to a local as well as an expatriate audience.'

The album, released on the Zen Music label (owned by his brother), will be available in most of Hong Kong's main record stores, as is some of his back catalogue. Copies will also be  on sale at the gigs.

William Tang, Sat, 8.30pm, Fringe Club Gallery,  $120 HK Ticketing; Feb 13, 8.30pm, Hong Kong Arts Centre, McAulay Studio, $120 Urbtix.



Tang jumps off the blues train and starts his own movement