Ben Prestage - a one-man band with a new CD

One-man bands are a fine tradition in the blues, although there aren't too many around any more. One that I'd never heard before is Ben Prestage, out of Florida, where he's been honing his blues skills with swampy, gritty, singing and playing -- on a specially made drum kit and sometimes, a cigar-box guitar with a fierce slide.

Prestage was a 2008 International Blues Challenge runner-up in the solo/duo category, and a listen to his latest double CD -- "Live at Pineapple Willy's" -- shows why.

The man comes from a deep blue musical family --  his great-grandmother was a vaudeville musician who toured with Al Jolson and in medicine shows. Her daughter was a boogie pianist. His grandfather was a Mississippi sharecropper who
turned Prestage onto the sounds and culture of Mississippi and blues. Of his background, Prestage says: "When I was growing up there was only one kind of music in the house. Whether it was played on an instrument or an old recording, it was blues."

Ben's blues are a fascinating blend of acoustic old-timey music, down-home blues, and nicely crafted original tunes.  If you set them to some scratchy background noise, they could easily have been ripped from old 78s.

There's enough variation in the styles and the songs here that the one-man band backing doesn't get monotonous. Prestage is a dexterous picker and talented guitarist, so there's plenty of different music styles to go around.

He also picks up on a few classic blues as well, from the deliciously salacious Mississippi John Hurt tune, "Candy Man," to Muddy Waters fine old "Can't Be Satisfied," with some appropriate slide work, and the Robert Johnson warhorse, "32-20 Blues." Here's a sample of "If You're a Viper"

This is a fine little album. It's fun to play sides like these and get the kind of real enjoyment that you get from discovering something fresh and new. Ben Prestage may not be a household word, but his music should be welcome in every blues household.

This is a live CD, recorded, as the title implies, at someplace called Pineapple Willy's. Anyplace with that name has to be a fine blues bar, so I looked it up and found that it's in Panama City Beach, Fla., founded by a guy named -- Panama Willy -- with a rum drink of the same name. Sounds like it could well be the southern branch of the BlueNotes World Headquarters.

Here's a YouTube video of Prestage at the 4th Annual Cigar Box Guitar Extravaganza at the Flying Monkey Arts Center June 21, 2008 in Huntsville Alabama.

And just for fun, here's a video of one of the most famous of the one-man blues bands, Charles Isaiah "Doctor" Ross: