Estonian Blues in Riga, Cēsis, Jelgava, and Sigulda

Kicking off his Baltic tour with a sold-out show at the Endla Jazz Club in Pärnu, Estonia this Friday, the internationally acclaimed Estonian guitarist Andres Roots will be criss-crossing Latvia next week, appearing at Atmoda in Riga on January 15th, at MALA in Cēsis on January 16th, at the BJMK rock school in Jelgava on January 17th, and at Valhalla Lounge in Sigulda on January 18th.

The tour concludes with a Tallinn concert at Kidrakuur Kultuuriklubi on January 25th that also features the Finnish quartet Blues Bizarre. In February, Roots will be performing in Finland and then take his acoustic slide guitar blues on the road in the UK in March, promoting his new release "Royal Spa Blues". The album was recorded live at Temperance in Royal Leamington Spa during last year's UK tour that also saw the Estonian perform at the Birmingham Jazz & Blues Festival and the Upton Blues Festival.

"You could be forgiven for thinking your ears or eyes deceive you, given it sounds like either there are two musicians/guitars involved, or he has six fingers on each hand," writes the FabricationsHQ critic Ross Muir about Roots' performance at the Harbour Arts Centre in Irvine, Scotland. "And that's because, as with guitar luminaries such as Martin Taylor, Andres Roots is an exceptional multi-parts guitarist; thumbing a bass line and picking out a rhythm while delivering a melody, highly individualistic phrasing or some nifty slide work, the latter sometimes incorporating two slides..."

Andres Roots' music has received airplay on five continents and his Golden Disc-earning 2016 LP "Roots Music" remains the only blues album ever to top the sales charts in Estonia. In 2024, he served as an official Ambassador for last year’s European Capital of Culture – Tartu, Estonia, where he has been living for the past 30 years.