Music to soothe your soul this weekend

It could be a richly musical blueslike weekend around the Burgh, if you're willing to part with a few bucks and do a little driving in exchange for pleasure way beyond the total of that effort. And maybe a beer or two. Sure, times are tough, but that's what the blues is all about. 

Tonight you have a tough choice, with two very promising shows at opposite ends of town (can we get a witness for a high-speed rail line between Moondog's and the Thunderbird Cafe?).

Moondog's is hosting Jimmy Thackery tonight (Friday, for those of you who are easily confused). He's on the road supporting his fine new album, "Inside Tracks" (reviewed here by the famous BlueNotes), which seems to be part of Jimmy's new musical direction and filled with creative juices that show of a whole new side of the former blues-rocker-Nighthawk. Or maybe former is the wrong word. Let's just say that Jimmy is playing to his own drummer now. He explained these new directions and other assorted thoughts in a phone interview we did last week. And don't forget, he was actually born here. (But then, so was BlueNotes, so we know what that's worth.)

But also tonight, way cross town at the Thunderbird Cafe in Lawrenceville, is soulman and harp player Tad Robinson. I've never heard him, but everything I hear about him makes me want to do just that. Sweet soul music always makes me jump and shout.

In fact, the T-Bird is promising a weekend of soul by following up Robinson on Saturday night with our own blue-eyed soul guy, Billy Price. There's even a special $25 admission for both nights. If you love these classic sounds, it sounds like these could be the nights for you. Both of these guys are playing music from the soundtrack of my mind. Look for me sitting right behind the drummer.

But don't go away yet. On Sunday night, at the Thunderbird, the very fine and very great Roomful of Blues will hold forth with their crackling blues and R&B sound. These guys are always good. Yeah, it's a school night, but it's a great way to go to work blues-free and smiling on Monday morning. That's the great thing about the blues -- the sound of heartbreak always backfills the hole in your soul.  

Blues Nues: Shirley King, Chicago Fest, PBS, SRV

Here are a few things I've found on the Net lately while pretending to do actual work:

Good viewing

A couple of very nice performances by Bettye LaVette and Pine top Perkins from the PBS show Austin City limits are available here. I saw LaVette last summer at the Western Maryland Blues Festival, and she was in great form. Seems like I've seen Pinetop everywhere lately, and he's a genuine American treasure.

Shirley King

Shirley King, B.B. King's daughter, has been putting together a recording career for the last decade or so, and reportedly has a new CD in the works. It will be her third since her recording debut in 1991.

Ms. King, one of BB's 15 children, is 59, and is coming to blues late in her life. She once told a an interviewer that she had felt kind of intimidated by her father. I hope she'll turn out to be a fine blueswoman. Check her MySpace page here. (Does anyone else think that MySpace pages are overrated? They're often hard to read, out of date and filled with what I would loosely term junk. But that's just BlueNotes' cranky old self.) 

Less fest

It looks like the Chicago Blues Fest is going to fall on bluesworthy hard times next year. The city of Chicago says it will cut the fest (along with the Jazz Fest, and other public events for financial reasons. The Blues Fest will go from four days to three, if the cuts hold. That's a shame. One of the good things about that festival is the sheer abundance of great blues it presents. It's always been free, but it's hard to imagine that festgoers wouldn't be willing to spend maybe $10 a day to help keep it going. Shoot, I saw $10 worth of beer spilled every couple of hours.  

SRV revisited

One of the best places online to find some thoughtful blues writing and reviews is Blogcritics, where you could find this post about the album "Family Style," featured brothers Jimmy and Stevie Ray Vaughan, release shortly after SRV's tragic death in 1990.

BlueNotes, Jimmy Thackery take to the airways

Jimmy Thackery has a new album ("Inside Tracks") and a new date at Moondog's in Blawnox Friday night, where he's likely to show off some new songs that are a bit of a departure from his harder-edged past.

Also new is BlueNotes appearance this week on the PG podcast on music, "Believe Your Ears," with an phone interview I recorded with Thackery last week, talking about his CD, and his new "sort of blues" music.

He kind of makes me wonder if we aren't a little too loose with the word "bluesman" sometimes. But even Thackery pointed out in our intereview that his music has roots made of blues. He said that Elvin Bishop got it right when he described himself as a rock 'n' roll musician who played some blues.

But It was a good interview, and Jimmy was patient and easy to talk to. And it's BlueNotes podcasting debut. What a deal. Listen to it here. Then go out and see him Friday night. Remember, he was born in the Burgh, if not the blues.

Joe Louis Walker is "Witness to the Blues"

Joe Louis Walker is one of the best bluesmen that too many people have never heard of.

His latest CD, "Witness to the Blues" (Stony Plain), is a fine reminder that there i still plenty of great blues and blues-rooted music out there for those who take a few minutes to find it.

Walker is a singer-songwriter-guitarist who show off all those skills here. His guitar and vocals both tend to work in the higher registers, and that works from funky stuff like the opening track, "It's a Shame," through the shuffling "Midnight Train" and soaring soulful duet with Shemekia Copeland, "Lover's Holiday."

Then when he feels like it, Walker shifts down home in to a bluesy acoustic slide number, "I Got What You Need." He finishes up here with two tough blues: "100% More Man," with its magnificantly extended stinging guitar solo and some tasty piano fills, then wraps up the CD with some sensuous harp introducing "Sugar Mama." Both of these tracks are sweet little blues gems, running into the seven-and-eight-minute range.

Here are samples of "100% More Man" (listen to the great guitar intro):

 The fine guitarist Duke Robillard produced the CD and plays guitar on five cuts. It's his acoustic slide that illuminates "I Got What You Need." Duke has put together a crackling session here, as the musicians in this crackling little band trade solos, and wrap Walker's vocals with just the right style.  

Rory Block's tribute to Son House

Son House was one of the most intriguing and influential of the Delta bluesmen, an enigma existing with one foot in each of the blues' twin worlds -- the scared and the profane. If the conflict between church music and devil's music was ever symbolized by one man, that man would be Eddie   "Son" House. His early recordings from the late 1930s and early '40s was among the most primal of blues.

His life was filled with contradictions. He was a young preacher. He was a primal bluesman. He would give up his powerful music for extended periods of time. He preached apocalyptic musical sermons. He satirized the church. Even an ordinary blues song in his hands was turned into a primal exercise with pounding, string-snapping guitar playing and other-worldly vocals that howl with the pleasure of the blues' pain. His music represents

His unusual guitar work and intense vocal style have never been been easy to emulate, and it's those characteristics that helped make him so unique.  Among the many aspiring musicians that House met after his rediscovery in the '60s was 15-year-old Rory Block, who was learning to play acoustic guitar in the style of the old masters.

You learn this and much more in the eloquent liner notes that Block has penned for her latest album, "Blues Walkin' Like A Man: A Tribute to Son House" (Stony Plain).

You also learn much more in her eloquent musical re-creation of 13 House songs. It's not just a matter of trying to duplicate the words and notes.  Block has been playing this music for about  40 years now, and is one of its stone masters. What she does here that's so special is to capture the elusive spirit of House's very darkly spirited blues.

A good example, and one of my favorites is "Preachin' Blues," in which Son seems to be  having a little fun at the expense of the preaching he once did:

"I'm gonna get me religion, I'm gonna join the Baptist church,
I'm gonna get me religion, gonna join the Baptist church,
I'm gonna be a Baptist preacher...  sure won't have to work."

This is an album of high points, as Block stretches the strings and strains her voice to capture the essence of this selection, including the grimly classic "Death Letter." The tracks: My Black Mama, Downhearted Blues, Preachin' Blues, Jinx Blues, Dry Spell Blues, Shetland Pony Blues, Death Letter, County Farm Blues, Grinnin' in Your Face, Low Down Dirty Dog Blues, Depot Blues, Government Fleet Blues, I Want to Go Home on the Morning Train.

This is a tribute, sure, but it's more that that. This CD serves as a reminder of the creative matrix of the blues. Listen to the poetry of the lyrics. Imagine how they lept from the mind of a man like Son House. Imagine what the blues would be like without them.

Block's artistry reminds us how powerful the music can be. And her efforts are a reminder that there are still musicians carrying that spirit, and willing to share it. It would be a shame to lose this kind of human artistry, and Rory Block is trying to make sure that we don't. Just keep preachin' the blues.

I tried to find a couple of videos that would show Block and House performing the same song, but couldn't come up with any. But I did find this powerful performance of "Forever On My Mind" by House, followed by Block's interpretation of "Preachin' Blues."

First, Son House:

Rory Block:

The blues (and photographer) go to Iraq

An e-mail from fellow blues-lover and fine blues photographer Joe Rosen reminds me that Bluzapalooza Tour 2 of blues musicians traveling to entertain troops in Iraq and Kuwait gets off the ground today, and that Joe himself as been asked to provide a photographic documentary of the tour. I've mentioned it before, but it's worth mentioning again.

And you can follow their adventures as they go in a couple of blogs: Joe will be blogging with the New York Daily News, under World News and/or Entertainment, and their war zone blog.

Also, Chip Eagle, publisher of Blues Revue Magazine, will also be posting a blog through their online magazine, BluesWax.

I'm a big fan of Joe's blues photography, and if he brings back his usual good stuff from Iraq, it should worth a look.

The musicians on this tour include Michael Burks, Shemekia Copeland, Deanna Bogart, Zac Harmon, Moreland & Arbuckle and Tony Braunagel and The Bluzapalooza All-Star Band.

A wayward comment on Wild Bill Dailey

 A BlueNotes reader posted a comment early today, but it wound up on my blog profile instead of on a blog post (dadgummed Internet - the pipes must be clogged again!).

Since the comment reflects so well on Weirton, W.Va., bluesguy Bill Dailey, I thought I should make it an actual post. I had run into Dailey at a blues show at Moondog's in Blawnox a while back, without knowing who he was, and he laid a copy of his new CD on me, which I happily wrote about here.

The comment was a fine little tribute to Wild Bill, who I hope to have the pleasure of meeting again one of these days. Here it is:

I live in Wake Forest NC.  I know Bill Daily (the blues guy).   I can remember back in the day when we would all gather round' after hours and Bill would play and sing and we would all get out our "spoons" and tap them along,with his singing.  I haven't seen Bill in quite awhile, but he is also an amazing photographer, makes the most beautiful puzzle rings, jewelry, and is just a fun person to be around.  He has many friends, wherever he goes.  He is a most unique individual, yet would give you the shirt off his back.  I have his other CD, but I haven't gotten a copy of this one yet.  He is always at the Weirton 4th of July parade, taking pictures.  He is so proud of his community and brings fun and joy wherever he goes.  Love you Bill!  Mary Easterling (Britton-Lengyel).  It was wonderful to see your article!  Brings me back to the good ole' days in Weirton WV. 

'Rich Man's War' -- blues protest music

The blues as a musical form isn't exactly known as protest music, a label probably more appropriately applied to the folk genre.

Maybe it's because, in it's earlier years, what protests the blues did contain were more subtle and personal protests of the human condition, of the musician's lot, of the cultural suppression of the people who played the blues. They were seldom the outspoken political outcry that we now associate with protest music -- Joan Baez, Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs and so on.

But there were, and are, blues protest songs. Here's a quote from a Wikipedia page on protest music, that gives you a sample:

The 1920s and 30s also saw a marked rise in the number of songs which protested against racial discrimination, such as Louis Armstrong's "(What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue" (1929), and the anti-lynching song, "Strange Fruit" by Lewis Allan (which contains the lyrics "Southern trees bear strange fruit / Blood on the leaves and blood at the root / Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze"). It was also during this period that many African American blues singers were beginning to have their voices heard on a larger scale across America through their music, most of which protested the discrimination which they faced on a daily basis. Perhaps the most famous example of these 1930s blues protest songs is Leadbelly's "The Bourgeois Blues", in which he sings "The home of the Brave / The land of the Free / I don't wanna be mistreated by no bourgeoisie".

I might disagree with the Leadbelly example a little, because Billie Holiday's exquisitely painful version of "Strange Fruit," which became a staple of her repertoire, was one of the most powerful examples of this music. Her anguished delivery, once you've seen it, never quite leaves your mind. Here's a very strong performance video:

All this is a roundabout way of introducing you to a brand new CD of protest blues, "Rich Man's War," produced by Kenneth Bays, managing editor of The Blues Revue magazine. It's being distributed by a German blues label, Ruf Records

He says this about his new CD in an interview on West Virginia Public Broadcasting.

“I keep hearing people say that blues music isn’t about anything, that these days most blues songs are about romance or about celebrating the blues itself, and so I set to prove to people that there are songs about topical issues that affect all of us,” said Kenneth Bays, managing editor of The Blues Revue magazine and the CD’s producer.

I haven't heard the CD, but here is a list of the tracks. It looks like they lean toward the contemporary side, and all sound interesting:

1) Bob Brozman – “Follow the Money” 2) Guitar Shorty – “We the People” 3) Norman & Nancy Blake – “Don’t Be Afraid of the Neo-Cons” 4) Matthew Skoller Band – “Handful of People” 5) David Evans – “Bring the Boys Back Home” 6) Candye Kane – “Jesus and Mohammed” 7) Charlie Wood & the New Memphis Underground – “You Don’t Really Wanna Know” 8) Pat Boyack Band – “Mr. Wesola’s Lucky Number Dream Book Part II” 9) Roy Zimmerman – “Chickenhawk” 10) Michael Hill – “Fear Itself” 11) Eddy “The Chief” Clearwater – “A Time for Peace” 12) Doug MacLeod – “Dubb’s Talkin’ Politician Blues”

And just for fun, here are some links to protest music articles, blues and otherwise:

• From Blogcritics in 2004, a list of the best protest songs.
• A history of protest music.
• The best protest songs of the 21st Century.   
• Protest music in North America   

Mick Fleetwood goes back to his blues roots

Remember Fleetwood Mac? You probably think of them as the silky, sometimes bluesy, sometimes soulful, sometimes rocking band that produced late '70s hits like "Don't Stop" and "You Make Loving Fun."

But before that, back at the beginning, right after the Big Bang, in the lat '60s, they were a British blues band. They hadn't yet acquired either of their fine female vocalists, and the guys -- Peter Green, Mick Fleetwood, Jeremy Spencer and Bob Brunning, joined shortly after by bass player John McVie. But their first couple albums were British versions ofr the blues, like many groups at the time.

Sooner or later, all things come around, and the Mick Fleetwood Blues Band has just released a blues album ("Blue Again") with Rick Vito , Lenny Castellanos and Mark Johnstone, and are touring until early next year, when Fleetwood Mac itself gets together again for a tour.

Here's an article from a British paper that caught my eye, with an interview with Fleetwood, now 61, and apparently enjoying a visit to his roots. Seems like soooner or later, it all goes back to the blues. Here's a video clip featuring guitarist Peter Green in that early band, probably '67 or '68.  A very mellow reading of a blues ballad.

If that's not going back far enough for some blues influence, listen to yesterday's PG podcast -- "Believe Your Ears" -- in which country music critic and historian Rich Kienzle looks at some old-timey music, including blues, from Mayberry's Andy Griffith. Here's a YouTube video from an old show, with everybody singing "Boil Them Cabbage Down."

Lightnin' Malcolm and Cedric Burnside: '2 Man Wrecking Crew'

The deep, rich blues of the Mississippi hill country has survived, kind of hidden away, unlike their Delta cousin, which stepped out and hopped a freight north  to become the most popular of the blues forms.

Meanwhile, the hill country blues, an intense, droning, emotional music with hypnotic effect, just kept on keepin' on. One of its most prominent practitioners for years, the late R.L. Burnside, helped make this music what it was. Today, his grandson, Cedric Burnside (son of the great blues drummer Calvin Jackson), is helping keep that hill country tradition alive by playing to beat of his own drummer, letting a few funky influences seep into his music

He's paired with another old-fashioned country bluesman, guitarist Lightnin' Malcolm, on their first CD, "2 Man Wrecking Crew" (Delta Groove), an audacious CD with 14 original songs rooted in traditional hill country blues, but dragging in a little more outside flavor.

Both are younger bluesmen (Burnside is 29, Malcolm is 33) , but both have spent their lives deep in the roots of this primitive-sounding music.  Both are accomplished musicians, vocalists and songwriters. For the most part, this album is their own -- two musicians creating a unique sound together, adding their own influences without diminishing the power of their source. That alone is a fine tribute.

These blues are not quite as accessible as the kind you might be used to. They throb with deep feeling ("My Sweetheart"), but aren't above an unusual tenderness ("She's Got Somethin' On Me").  I especially like their duet on "Stay Here In Your Arms," where the harmonies verge on sweetness in front of the tough drumming and guitar work.

I think it's interesting that while Burnside is descended from a heritage of black blues, Malcolm is a white blues dude, not usually thought of as growing up with the chops for this kind of traditional music. But he's got them. Together, Malcolm and Burnside are taking powerful music from a powerful tradition and making powerful contemporary blues.

Here's a shaky video of the two of them at work: