Category: Blues


For the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.:Victor Wainwright and the WildRoots’ “Long Way to Go”

Filed under: Blues — Comments Off
January 17, 2010

Victor Wainwright and the WildRoots take the listener down the blues highway from Beale Street to the Bayou–Memphis horn soul blues tracks drifting towards the jazzy boogie of New Orleans. Yet, on “Long Way to Go,” songwriter/bassist Stephen Dees has crafted a song to bring us from Egypt to Israel to Memphis, a Beale Street blues for a telescopic history of men who could very well all have sung the blues—Moses, Abraham, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

On the occasion of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day 2010, “Long Way to Go” rides as a faithful companion, a song sung by Wainwright with intensity—not frivolity. This isn’t list held up like a trivial comparison. Abraham raising up a nation out of such a small group without a land of their own yet, Moses crying out on behalf of God’s people, and King calling on a nation to recognize all of its people. A song of such heady, lofty, and bold comparisons could sound trite, as if too quickly drawn up. But Dees has written, Wainwright sings, and the WildRoots play a deeply felt blues for the Old Testament, for Memphis and the American South, and even hinting at the Gospel blues waiting for Jesus to return again. “We still have a long way to go.”

While the Christian puts hope in Jesus returning and bringing all believers to eternal life, may Christian also see in this song a call to recognize that there’s still a long way to go in this life, a long road of calling out on behalf of others, a long road of raising our voices for equality, justice, and peace. “Oh, we’ve got to change.”

WildRoots Records

Tags:
Comment

Living in Some Songs:Billy Lavender’s Memphis Livin

Filed under: Blues — Comments Off
January 11, 2010

Billy Lavender and band get high marks for some songs but not the album. Like a blues set list that drags into the evening, some cuts are the ones that give you a chance to go order another beer. Unfortunately, after Memphis Livin starts with the classic feel of “Singin the Blues,” you can skip the table service and sidle up to the bar yourself on track 2 as Reba Russell takes lead vocals. She turns in a number of ballads here, and while she has a fine voice, has been a backup singer for B.B. King, U2, and others, her voice—and song choice—doesn’t make her unique enough to warrant the spot that high up in the track list.

It’s disappointing, because songs like “Just Chillin” and “Shake It” really hit a great groove. “Bad Boy” features Lavender’s blazing guitar solo that fades out the track all too soon. Let’s hope that future releases will live more in these kind of moments, so that Lavender, along with bandmates (and songwriters) Tony Adams and Brad Webb, can really shine.

Billy Lavender/I55 Productions

Tags:
Comment

Notebook Series Review:Samuel James’ Songs Famed for Sorrow and Joy

Filed under: Blues — Comments Off
January 2, 2009

The Music Spectrum Notebook Series digs into my handwritten notes and reviews on older releases still getting my attention.

The sepia tones of the album cover for Samuel James’ Songs Famed for Sorrow and Joy are the sepia tones of his music: blues for ghosts, yellowed newspapers, destroyed evidence, buried bodies, and government cover ups. At least that’s what I hear in the tragic tale of “Big Black Ben.”

James pulls out a country, finger-picking blues akin to what Keb’ Mo’ does without the softened pastiche. No, James keeps it gritty, lonely, live, and tragic. There’s a Dead Man Walking haunt to “Sunrise Blues.” “Sugar Smallhouse Heads for the Hills” is a finger-picking guitar, banjo blues for ragged loves, deadly relationships, tall tales of beauty, sexy obsessions, and folk tales of codependence. “One-eyed Katie” comes at the blues via Greg Brown’s folk from the Iowa-almost-Missouri hills.

Samuel James
Northern Blues Music

Tags:
Comment

Let All of the Rock ‘n’ Roller Chicks Come to Roost at the Feet of Super Chikan

Filed under: Blues — Comments Off
December 2, 2008

Sum’ Mo’ Chikan begins with “Freddy’s Thang,” a primer in the blues that led to Southern Rock. From there, James “Super Chikan” Johnson leads all the rock ‘n’ roller chicks home to roost at his feet.

I love how Chikan tells stories, especially involving his Mama. On the beginning of “Crystal Ball Eyes,” he talks about not wanting to eat dinner one night as a kid because he was afraid that his Mama had cooked up his rooster. His Wolfman Jack-like version of his Mama’s voice is tremendous. Then there’s “Hookin’ Up” about the young Chikan wanting to yodel. It’s a Bo Diddley rhythm where his Mama tells him to stop trying to yodel like Roy Acuff and instead yodel like John Lee Hooker—“A-haw haw haw haw/Boom boom boom boom.”

The variety of sounds that Chikan gets out of his unique, handmade chik-can-tars spans the electric blues sound—Mississippi, New Orleans, Memphis, and Chicago. It’s a talking guitar; it’s a walking guitar. There’s shuffle steps, and there’s smooth soul. All of this wraps itself into a sound that Super Chikan can call his own—polished, familiar, warm, rich, soulful, and from the core.

Super Chikan
Vizztone

Tags:
Comment

The Jazz Nightclub Corner Band of the Blues: The Matt Schofield Trio’s Ear to the Ground

Filed under: Blues, Jazz-influenced Rock — Comments Off
May 23, 2008

What I hear when I put my Ear to the Ground is Kenny Wayne Shepherd in a jazz combo. The Matt Schofield Trio lays down tight, crisp jams where each point of the triangle plays an important role. 2007’s Ear to the Ground runs through varied styles like a jazz nightclub corner band doing funk, soul, and blues.

“Room at the Back” is a funk instrumental built on drums and organ breaks as it cooks up and sends the wallflowers to the dance floor. “Someone” is the most Kenny Wayne Shepherd-like composition, whereas “Move Along” is the most jazz band-like. Find that jazz vamp again on “Cookie Jar” with a baseball stadium organ sound leading into a grooving, two-timing, cryin’-shame blues.

Matt Schofield Trio
Nugene Records

Comment

My Family Vacation Music:Gina Sicilia’s Allow Me to Confess

Filed under: Blues — Comments Off
October 5, 2007

While I was growing up, family vacations with our family friends meant music. Our parents’ music, a few cassette tapes worth put on heavy rotation for the week. The Big Chill soundtrack, Sam Cooke, the Temptations, the Beatles’ Rubber Soul. . .and eventually Michael Jackson was part of the selection, too.

Steeped in this Motown, 60′s soul, classic flavor for my vacation experiences, it is no surprise that the 22-year old Gina Sicilia’s 2007 album, Allow Me to Confess, fit right in with our family vacation last month with my parents. While along the North Shore of Lake Superior, just south of Two Harbors, Minnesota, Sicilia’s voice called back all of those great vacation feelings.

Gina Sicilia makes you a believer with her voice. I’d like to see her live, because I’m betting she can give Joss Stone a run for her money.

Allow Me to Confess jumps out with the swing jazz blues of the Lucas/Mendelsohn tune “That’s a Pretty Good Love” poured over some rockabilly drums. Sicilia’s originals include the doo-wop blues of “I Ain’t Crazy,” and the piano jump/”Minnie the Moocher”-type story song “One of Many” which completely draws you into the song’s world and has the bonus of a great harp solo by Dennis Gruenling.

Sicilia doesn’t quite seem settled into a ballad like “Try Me,” but she appears right at home on the 60′s Motown-like spin of the Clarke/Davis “Pushover” made famous by Etta James. The title track written by Sicilia is like a slowed down “When Love Comes to Town” (U2/B.B. King) with a similar Gospel feel/message although without such a strong metaphor.

But Allow Me to Confess suffers from Dave Gross’ glossed over production work. Gross lays down some good blues licks as guitarist, but the mix of most tracks is too smooth. You can’t feel any urgency or passion in the rhythm players’ sounds behind each solo–moved to the center speaker like a taped-on picture of a boat on a painting of a lake. Even Sicilia’s voice is a little too much on top of the mix. With the dirty blues quality to her sound, her sound should be down in the dirty fight of the song.

Thanks to Gina Sicilia, Swingnation Records, and the VizzTone Label Group for the review CD.

Comment

From the Incomplete Notes File:The Unfinished Bill Sheffield Journal on a Shelf Review

Filed under: Blues — Comments Off
September 22, 2007

This unfinished review was written back in May. Even back then, the review was long overdue. Rather than shelving my Bill Sheffield review until I could muster the words to finish, I decided to just share what I found scribbled in my steno pad (journal).

I guess I’ve been holding onto Bill Sheffield’s Journal on a Shelf fir a time such as this: a slightly muggy, no-sense-in-drying-out-cause-another-storm’s-coming morning in St. Louis. Returning to Concordia Seminary for the Day of Homiletical Reflection gave me the opportunity to walk my old neighborhoods–University City and Clayton; Washington University, Fontbonne University, and the Seminary. Sheffield’s acoustic blues of humidity made the perfect soundtrack for my wanderings of nostalgia and melancholia.

The Seminary always felt like a conflagration of two worlds. The haunting, timeless resonance of the choral chants filling the chapel with a reflection of our apostolic faith. The Mississippi River Valley’s thick, mossy, humidity of blues, crossroads, and archway to discovery. Perhaps that’s why Sheffield’s songs rang true for my morning walk–his blues contemplates the conjunction, convergence, and conflict of the old faith and the blues. . .such as in telling off the preacher in “Black Bottom” and the more universal approach to life in “I Don’t Hate Nobody” as opposed to the traditional conservative categorizing.

Thanks to Bill Sheffield and American Roots Records for the review CD.

Comment

Highway 61 in Cincinnati?Ellery at the Crossroads of Folk & Faith (Live Review, July 6, 2007)

Filed under: American Folk, American Folk-influenced Rock, Blues, Jazz-influenced Rock — Comments Off
August 12, 2007

Does Highway 61 go through Cincinnati? Because it seems the Ohio-based husband-wife duo of Tasha and Justin Golden known as Ellery connects with that fabled road of the blues in a crossroads of folk, jazz rock, faith, and temptation.

Performing at Cup O’ Joy—Green Bay, Wisconsin’s Christian coffeehouse venue, Ellery filled the room with their engaging songs which are far less direct than perhaps expected by the Christian radio crowd usually drawn to Cup O’ Joy. The evening’s host was even prompted to offer a half-veiled apology saying that Ellery communicate the Gospel in a different way—emphasis on different–perhaps meaning among other things that they don’t say Jesus very often in their lyrics.

Yet, introducing “Perimeter,” Tasha explained how the song comes from the fact that there are “no easy answers to the pains…Life is full of beauty, but it is complex and difficult,” so it is “better to write about it and sing.” She talks like any other folk artist as she points like a prophet but not with the precise dagger of Christian artists. Like David Wilcox’s approach, Ellery delves into the mystery and questions prompting a search for a grace being slowly revealed.

This is the kind of music our churches need—even more so considering that Ellery presents a fresh sound as well.

Even though they perform only as a duo—Tasha on piano and Justin on guitar, they play in such a way as to recall the full band sound of their albums. They began the evening with “Shadows in Your Eyes” which has a percussive feel even without the drums.

Tasha is Karen Savoca to Justin’s Pete Heitzman, although you can also hear Sarah Masen in Tasha’s voice. Additionally, on a song like “Anna,” there’s the jazz lilt of Charlotte Martin on the verses, while “Just One” has a growing, walking line reminiscent of KT Tunstall. The Martin/Tunstall sound came forward most prominently on “Pieces” with its scat-like lines as Tashsa moved in and out of head voice. It’s an urgent song with a haunting piano like and a final chorus that threatens to fall apart trying to deliver the full force of the song.

The Highway 61 connection comes on the bluesy tunes like “Arizona” and “Skeletons Outside.” The latter has hopeful chords and a driving tempo with just a bluesy hint on the edges. It also has a great line recognizing Jesus in His humanity: “Little more earthly than I’d like to believe.”

Ellery also doesn’t shy away from love songs—between two people not just love songs for God. Tasha called “Lucky” a “little love song,” but it has a rock heart. “Song for Lovers” is the kind of marriage song a couple really needs—truthful, honest, but still rising, emotive, and joyful.

Finally, Highway 61 does go through Memphis, so it is no surprise that a few country elements also appear. “Long Coat On” reminds me of my friend Emily Dunbar’s music (check her out!!!), although perhaps it helps you more if I say it has the country-jazz bounce of Bruce Hornsby & the Range.

Ellery included a new song, “So Lonely,” a sad country ballad with just enough folk elements. Yet, you could still imagine slow dancing cowboys holding onto their women for dear life while their buddies aren’t looking. Ellery presents God in that same way—while your guard is down, you find you’re holding on for dear life to that hope offered.

Thanks to Ellery and Virt Records for the review CD.

Comment

Live Art: Dorothy Scott and pat mAcdonaldat Manitowoc’s Acoustic Fest,Sunday, July 15, 2007

Filed under: American Folk, Blues — Comments Off
August 8, 2007


The gentle voice of Dorothy Scott greeted us as she began the Art of Music set at Manitowoc, Wisconsin’s Acoustic Fest on Sunday, July 15, singing her song, “Waterboy,” like a quiet call in the hills looking for a long-lost helper but not yelling to loud so as not to wake the sheep.

After two songs alone, Scott was joined by her Art of Music partner for the evening, pat mAcdonald. With his stomp board, harmonica, and buzzing Lowebow (cigar box guitar a.k.a. Purgatory Hill Harp), mAcdonald is anything but gentle. The pair launched into Neil Young’s “Tell Me Why” with a goal of waking up those sheep and waterboys.

The Art of Music is a series of shows mainly in Door County, Wisconsin, although the idea seems to extend elsewhere when Scott takes to the road. Combining different artists and styles, the impression the Scott/mAcdonald set gave is a of workshop on stage. There was no set list, and when the pair chose to sing together, they were often teaching other as they went. You could tell they love to collaborate, but the show was about discovering their collaborating not about seeing a well-rehearsed product of collaboration. In this sense, it was most genuine, enjoyable, and revealed the art of making music.

Unfortunately, for the crowd, the art may have been lost on them. After an afternoon and early evening of local favorites, many attendees packed up their folding chairs when the unknown (in other words, not from around here) folks took the stage. With a dwindling crowd, Scott and mAcdonald did their best to connect, but even the festival organizers were hard to convince. They talked loudly to their friends just off to the side of the audience, drinking beer, showing relative little attention towards their headlining guests–even almost missing Scott’s thank you and dedication of a song to them. It’s the kind of thing that makes me think the art of music is lost on my Manitowoc.

And there was art in the music. As I wrote elsewhere, Scott and mAcdonald laid down tones able to conjure up whole spiritual dimensions. That’s art. mAcdonald led Scott through a stomp blues revival that landed briefly on different classics–”Baby, Please Don’t Go,” “See That My Grave is Kept Clean,” “After Midnight.” After each excursion into a song, mAcdonald would bring them back to his stomp vamp. It was like blues dreams coming back, rising up in front of your vision to be vivid and strange, and then sliding back into the ethereal.

Elsewhere, Scott played a version of Van Morrison’s “Caravan” that kicked it up onto a clap-along rhythm matching her stage presence which is a bit manic, slightly anxious, but truly endearing. At times her voice even seems to have a touch of an Irish brogue furthering its tender, fantastical qualities.

Yet, on “Pass It On,” Scott displayed an urgency like an early Shawn Colvin. The folk singer format may hide the blues ready to come growling out of her music and voice. If let loose, she may even have that acoustic thrash folk of Hamell on Trial.

Calling upon a song from Steel Bridge Songfest, a songwriting workshop and concert to save a bridge in mAcdonald’s Sturgeon Bay, mAcdonald took a bluesy walk into something akin to John Lennon. But when the Beatlesque sounds faded, and mAcdonald played “My Little Dark Angel,” it was as if Neil Osborne from 54*40 had arrived with the song’s post-punk turn of phrase (“My little darling/my little dark angel”) and a bluesy core.

When Scott invited mAcdonald to join her on John Prine’s “Angel from Montgomery,” I kept imagining that mAcdonald would be wicked on that guitar if left to really let loose. It’s not what we got at Acoustic Fest, and he even said after show it wasn’t the right event to let it all fly. However, I am eager to see him where the amps are cranked high, although given his wandering and false starts, I’d really like to see what he’s like being led by a band to follow that wicked streak out to its rocking flame.

Thank you to Dorothy Scott and pat mAcdonald for the review CDs.

Comment

2007 National Youth GatheringMusic Reviews:Blues Deliveredby The Gathering Praise Band

Filed under: Blues — Comments Off
August 6, 2007

Part of a series of reviews of concerts at the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod National Youth Gathering, July 28-August 1, 2007

When the Gathering Praise Band played “Callin’ Jesus” with a true blues approach, I danced with a pure joy. I danced for God; I danced for freedom; I danced for the love of a musical style that expresses so much of what is faith.

This may not make sense to people outside of my little circle in the world (the 2.5 million people in the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod). Either you’re in a church that has a tradition of using much more variety of musical styles or you are not a part of the church wondering what’s the big deal about the blues. The LCMS has a beautiful tradition of hymns—songs written to teach and confess our faith in Christ, but stylistically we’ve had a narrow approach.

Which meant I have grown up in a church that hasn’t often embraced the blues, but I know the blues. I know the music; I know the feeling; I know the power. To finally hear the Gathering band unleash a bluesy song in front of 26,000 youth and leaders, well, I couldn’t contain myself. I called to Jesus with my dance; I called to Jesus with my heart; I called to Jesus with the blues.

And I know that Jesus calls us with His answer to the blues—the Gospel, the Good News, the soul-soaking salvation of the cross and resurrection.

The Gathering Praise Band, as a whole, was an excellent collection of players from around the country. They led us with great energy, passion, and drive, which helped our youth to be involved in worship each day. Special shout outs to Jaclyn Gibson who delivered that bluesy “Callin’ Jesus” with such deep soul. Kip Fox is an outstanding vocalist who doesn’t over-extend his emotion on the crowd; rather, his more restrained, inward focus helps to invite all people into worshipping the Lord. Dru Huston and Eric Samson teamed up for some truly inspired percussion and drum work. Finally, the Gathering band’s fluid moves from style to style wouldn’t have been possible without the contribution of Charlie Lair on electric guitar. He plays the blues with panache; he rocks out without making it a rock concert. Thanks to the whole band for making the music a true highlight of the Gathering.

Comment
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.