There are guitarists who play the blues. There are guitarists who can play frighteningly fast. And then there are those rare musicians who have spent so long living inside the music that the guitar simply becomes another voice.

Aynsley Lister belongs firmly in that last category.

For around three decades he has been one of the most distinctive figures in modern British blues-rock — guitarist, singer, songwriter and bandleader, but above all a musician who understands that a great guitar solo means considerably more when there is a great song underneath it.

That distinction matters.

Lister has the technique to blow the doors off virtually any room he walks into, yet his playing has never been about empty pyrotechnics. It is about touch, tone, dynamics and…