Someone once remarked to me how odd it seems that Tenby, a town of a mere 5,000 or so souls, manages to appear most nights on the BBC weather map following the main news bulletin. There is little Tenby, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Cardiff, Norwich and Glasgow. It's a town which punches well above its weight. Part of its success is down to such inspired things as the annual Arts Festival, and the Blues Festival, and last, but by no means least, the Caffe Vista. These are magnets which attract talent and tourists alike. They make Tenby an even better, brighter place in which to live, or to visit.

Caffe Vista has the wonderful knack of consistently signing-up musicians of exceptional talent and appeal. They make the journey westwards regularly every month or so. They have national and international reputations. They pack the Caffe Vista, and sometimes Church House when demand exceeds the capacity of the former. This was exactly what happened on Saturday evening when Brooks Williams, one of the foremost artists on the acoustic Roots and Blues scene, came to town and wowed the crowd in Church House.

Brooks Williams, one of Rolling Stone's top 100 acoustic guitarists, is a prodigious all round talent: a gift for writing catchy and upbeat songs; a voice silky for ballads, soulful for blues, and driving for rocking Americana numbers; and last a guitar virtuoso, equally gifted on the resonator slide guitar and the six-string acoustic.

Perhaps the guitar playing stood out above everything else. Subtle, sophisticated, and imaginative in everything he played; and always the guitar was heard to speak simultaneously in two or more distinct voices, each standing out perfectly clearly within the texture of the whole guitar sound. Williams didn't need a rhythm or bass voice to complement his beguiling melodic lines, he provided these himself. It was a bit like having one half of Alison Krauss's 'Union Station' up there on stage in support.

The blues numbers sung had their roots in Williams's home state, Georgia, USA. We heard several of these including 'Statesboro Blues' and 'Weepin' Willow Blues'.

Leaving the south in his late teens, Williams moved north to cut his teeth in the clubs, bars and coffee houses of New England and New York, venues that earlier had featured the likes of Dylan, Baez and Vega (and in his voice on Saturday there were occasional reminders of Dylan and of James Taylor).

Since then he's criss-crossed the world, a long journey which ended, on Saturday evening at least, in Tenby. His second encore was 'I Got it Bad and That Aint Good'. Well, we who were there to hear him certainly got it good, and if he don't come back, well, that aint good!

R.J.S.