Vika & Linda – bringing some joy to iso(lation)

Vika and Linda Bull are two roots artists that may not have come across your radar. You ought to remedy that straight away! They are two sisters, based in Melbourne, who have been singing, harmonizing and rocking for many years, delighting audiences in their Australian homeland. Along the way, they’ve supported the likes of Billy Joel and have performed with Iggy Pop. The sisters are members of Paul Kelly’s band – Kelly is a hugely successful Australian rock music singer-songwriter and guitarist, whom a Rolling Stone writer claimed to be “one of the finest songwriters I have ever heard.”

Vika and Linda released a new album this year, called Sunday (The Gospel According to Iso, a fabulous album of rootsy, bluesy gospel songs and we got chatting to Linda about it.

But first of all, because a lot of people in the US and Europe may not be familiar with Vika and Linda, despite their success in Australia, I asked Linda how she would characterize their music?

“Well,” she said, “we’re very hard to pigeonhole. We love harmonizing together and singing together and we cover a lot of different genres. We don’t like being pigeonholed. But I think it’s basically roots music is where our heart is – and harmony. Vika and I have got very different tastes, Vika is more rock and I’m a bit more country. And in between we can cover blues, soul, R&B and gospel. And we love to do that. We love to just sing together – regardless of the genre, we just love singing together.”

Turning to the new album, I wondered what “iso” means. Turns out it’s Australian slang for “isolation.” Linda told me:

“Because we made the album in isolation in the first phase of lock-down in Melbourne, not knowing then that we would have two. The background of the record is that we’ve been singing gospel music for probably about 35 years now.” She and Vika have made a few gospel-tinged recordings along the way, but “this one in its entirety is kind of the next step. We had restrictions with lock-down, so we made it minimally. And I think gospel music actually works really well like that. It works really well when you have very few instruments.”

The album is something of a gem, really pared back, largely featuring the wonderful harmonizing of the two sisters, and backed mostly by piano with those lovely sort of gospel chords that you get with the piano.

“We have piano all over it, in every track, and our musical director, Cameron Bruce, is a beautiful piano player. We’ve worked with him in Paul Kelly’s band, and he took charge of everything with us, helped to select the songs with a lot of zoom meetings. Cameron arranged the songs and then sent them back to us as files and we sang over the top.”

The Gospel According to Iso has 13 gospel songs (with a bit of latitude, we’ll count Simon & Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water and Chuck Berry’s Downbound Train as gospel!), mostly old traditional songs or spirituals like Sinnerman, Walk With Me Lord and Jesus on the Mainline. The album kicks off with a rockin’ version of Claude Ely’s Ain’t No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down, and once you hear these two sisters harmonizing, and the bluesy vocals, you know this is an album you want to hear. The high quality is sustained throughout, and even though the arrangements are relatively sparse, there’s a nice variety to the way each of the songs is handled.

The album, Linda told me, all sprang from a weekly Sunday sing-song that she and Vika started to do when everything stopped in Australia early in the year. “I went out on Facebook and Instagram live every Sunday morning at 11:00am and we did one gospel song. That grew in popularity to the point where we thought we could make a record. We’d just ring a friend, they played guitar, we’d sing over the top, and we thought we could make a record like that.”

Why, I wondered, did they choose this particular selection of songs?

“We had lots of gospel songs in our back catalogue that we’ve been singing over the years, but we wanted to do something new. So I dug into the gospel collection that I had amassed over the years and we had about 70 songs from all different sources. Then we whittled it down and the focus was mainly just to do something that meant something to us and bring a bit of joy because it was pretty sort of sad over here – and everywhere.

“But we wanted also songs that people knew. So we have Bridge Over Troubled Water and Amazing Grace. But then there are other songs that we thought, we’ll just throw those into the pot because we love singing them – songs by Mahalia Jackson and so on. That’s how it came together.”

It’s a great selection of songs, but I particularly like Rosetta Tharpe’s Strange Things Happening Every Day. It’s got a very distinctive Rosetta Tharpe feel about it, with both the piano and guitar work echoing her original version. Linda said she liked Rosetta’s “rock and roll attitude. That’s kind of right up our alley.”

The other song I asked about was Elder Curry’s Memphis Flu. Curry was a singing preacher and guitar player who preached fiery sermons through his songs, backed by the barrelhouse piano of Elder Beck, and featured the stomping feet and clapped hands of his congregation. Recorded in 1930 for Okeh Records, Memphis Flu refers to the flu’ season of 1929 which was the worst since the 1919 pandemic. Death rates were very high, particularly in the Memphis region. The song is often thought of as the first rock’n’roll record and the original is a toe-tapping rocker all right. But Curry’s lyrics are pretty harsh. For Curry influenza was a manifestation of God’s wrath at sinners and there was little compassion for the large numbers of people who’d died as a result of the flu’.

Linda said that when she stumbled across the song, she thought how perfect it was for the current situation – but “the lyrics were very direct. So we tweaked them a bit in the choruses. It’s a gospel song of course, but you’re not going to die if you don’t go to church! But we thought the song was perfect for record. We weren’t sure whether people would love it or hate it!”

Actually, you can’t help but love Vika and Linda’s version, driven by a rollicking barrelhouse piano. The amended version of the song is well-chosen, actually, so timely, and with a great message talking about the epidemic getting the rich and the poor alike, and saying that it’s going to get a whole more if you don’t listen up and behave. Wear your masks people!

I asked Linda if there’d been any sort of pushback against science and wearing masks in Australia?

“There was a bit of a pushback. Yes, there were marches and demonstrations and anti-mask-wearing demonstrations, but all in all, you know, in the middle of all this, there was a black lives matter movement, and people were very observant of wearing a mask and they still went out and protested, so people in general were pretty good. No one loves wearing a mask or being told what to do – I get it, you know, but the result was good.”

Talking about black lives matter, the spectre of racism is something that we’re all increasingly aware of these days. What, I asked Linda, has been her experience in Australia, with her Tongan background?

“Well, yes, we have dark skin. So obviously we look different. So we have experienced a certain amount of racism, but nothing like our mother experienced.” The sisters’ mother came to Australia during the White Australia Policy, which from 1901 basically sought to forbid or restrict people of non-European ethnic origin, especially Asians and Pacific Islanders, from immigrating to Australia. It was only legally disbanded in the mid-1970s.

The racism encountered by Linda and her sister has been “nowhere near as much as the previous generation. So it’s getting easier in some ways, but we feel very strongly about being treated equally, and why shouldn’t we? We are respectful, but we are direct, so I always say we stand up for ourselves.”

The sisters are half Tongan – Tonga is a Polynesian neighbour of Australia, and it’s a heritage they feel proud of.

“Polynesian culture is very strong in our family. And the way they sing – when they sing in church, time pretty much time stops, it’s so beautiful. That’s how we were raised. We were raised listening to the Tongans sing in church, and that’s where we get our voices from. Because they taught us, our mother taught us.”

From listening to Linda and Vika, I’d sure love to visit one of those Tongan churches.

“Everyone we take cries when they see the Tongans fire up…as soon as you walk into the church and they start singing and they get into it, how can you help but not be moved?”

The album finishes with a beautiful, unaccompanied Amazing Grace. The slow tempo and the pure quality of the voices make it an appropriately emotional end to the album. There’s something about this song that seems to appeal to almost everybody, so I asked Linda what she thought it is about gospel music that has such a wide appeal even to people of no faith?

“I think that it’s uplifting and it’s one of those sort of genres that you can lean on when feeling a bit down, or when you could do with an uplift. It lends itself naturally to that sort of universal feeling. You know, we all want to live a little bit better sometimes. Although we grew up in a church and had a very religious upbringing, we think this music is for everybody. And I think that we love singing it because for us, it’s a release. I think it’s ultimately our aim with a gospel record to make people feel better, whether they believe or not.”

Sadly, with the restrictions still in place because of the pandemic, the Bull sisters haven’t been able to go out and play on the road. But, Linda told me, they can’t wait to sing these songs to a live audience. Hearing these two sing these songs live is going to be some experience. I just hope I get the opportunity to hear them.

Adam Gussow and the Brotherhood of the Blues

He’s a top-notch harmonica player whose playing, American Harmonica Newsletters says, is characterized by “technical mastery and innovative brilliance that comes along once in a generation”; he’s been nominated for a W.C. Handy award; in a career spanning over 30 years, he’s played major blues, jazz and folk festivals, and on stages with Bo Diddley, Buddy Guy, David “Honeyboy” Edwards, Otis Clay, and Johnny Winter; he’s the subject of a popular and moving Netflix documentary, along with Sterling Magee, the other half of the duo Satan and Adam; and he’s a popular harmonica tutor with students all over the world benefitting from his online video lessons.

And if that’s not enough, Adam Gussow is a professor of English and Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi, where he teaches courses in American and African American literature, the blues tradition, southern autobiography, and, would you believe it, the literature and culture of running! He’s the author of a number of award-winning blues books including a memoir of his days playing with Sterling Magee, a novel, and Beyond the Crossroads, which was voted “Best Blues Book of 2017” by the readership of Living Blues. And one which enhanced my own understanding of the blues greatly when I read it a few years ago, Seems Like Murder Here: Southern Violence and the Blues Tradition, which won the Holman Award from the Society for the Study of Southern Literature.

So, with this rich background as a blues historian, blues artist, blues mentor and teacher, Adam Gussow clearly has a thing or two worthwhile to say about the blues and its history and tradition.

Down at the Crossroads was pleased to get chatting to him recently, and I suggested, first of all, that 2020 had been quite a year for him, with a new book being published, a new album being released and then, of course, that Netflix film.

He pointed out that the film had come out first of all at the Tribeca folk festival back in April 2018, but began to show up on Netflix last year. At that point, his email box blew up with lots of people he’d never heard from telling him how much it had touched them. If you haven’t seen it, don’t hesitate, it’s a great show and tells a remarkable and heart-warming story.

It charts the story of Adam’s relationship with Sterling Magee, beginning with his 1986 Harlem street jams with “Mr Satan,” at a time of considerable racial tension, and stretching through the next 23 years as they became a touring duo, were included in U2’s Rattle and Hum documentary, and released a number of albums before Sterling Magee mysteriously disappeared. What happened next is remarkable and I’ll not spoil it for those who haven’t seen it.

Adam said he had nothing to do with the way that director V. Scott Balcerek told the story but that he was pleased with the way it turned out. The film begins with Adam meeting Sterling on the street and beginning to jam, but what the film doesn’t explain is that Adam by that stage was an accomplished harmonica player. He had been tutored by Nat Riddles, a New York blues master. “Nat Riddles was a very important figure in my life, my mentor, and I had been a busker in New York, played solo, then played with two different guitar players, and then spent two months in Europe in the summer of ’86. So there was a whole lot of dues paid.”

Overall, though, Gussow said, “I think V. Scott Balcerek did a really good job and the proof of the pudding is that people again and again, say ‘it brought tears to my eyes.’”

He went on to explain the importance of that more sentimental aspect of the film, by mentioning Martin Luther King’s ideas about the beloved community, the interrelatedness of humanity. “I think,” he said, “there’s a lot of people who imagine that that idea just kind of somehow faded away. And I think that what our film does, is that it offers a kind of story, a narrative, living proof of that forged long-term brotherhood kind of relationship. And I think it gives people hope with all of this identity politics stuff.”

“I think that Sterling and I were kind of race rebels in some way, playing on the streets during a rough period of New York history in which young black men died. There’s no question that it was a rough time and he and I were out there, and he was very conscious, and he helped me be conscious, of the way in which we were offering a kind of a living image of brotherhood… after a while I sank into the woodwork. It was like I was just a part of the street scene. And all the guys who hung out around us…I was just wanting to be one of the guys. But what I would say is that 99.9 times out of a hundred, the response that I got, when people came up, and it wasn’t like they were praising me, it was more like it was a chance for them to talk, even connect in some ways.”

Gussow talked about what had happened in December 1986 in New York when a white mob in Queens had severely beaten three African Americans who’d been stranded when their car broke down, one of whom had been killed whilst trying to flee. Gussow had been away in California for a couple of weeks and when he came back in early January, he found Sterling and began to play on the street with him again. “At least two hundred people came up to give us, to shake my hand, which is to say, people were saying, basically, not only are they not associating me with the whiteness out at Queens that had killed this black guy, they were saying, we’re glad you’re here…we have a partnership. What’s going on in Queens can’t touch the brotherhood that you all are putting out right here.”

I asked Adam about his new book, called Whose Blues? Facing Up to Race and the Future of Music, in which he contrasts and discusses two opposing views of the blues. One he calls blues universalism, where there’s “no black, no white, just the blues,” with a recognition that the blues is played and appreciated globally. And the other is “black bluesism,” which insists that the blues is black, and wants to resist cultural appropriation and to ensure the trauma of black communities which is inherent to the blues is properly safeguarded. It’s an important question, and one which Gussow deals with in a thought-provoking and sensitive way. He has, after all, come face-to-face with the issue in his long-standing engagement with black blues artists over many years; and, his in-depth knowledge of the blues and the social history of the blues gives him the tools with which to open up the discussion for the rest of us.

I asked him who the book is aimed at and he suggested there were several.

“One audience is probably white, Anglo, American blues aficionados, blues fans and blues musicians…What I’m determined to do is to think about the way that we talk about the music and to sort of educate. My generation of blues players, and I’ll say white blues players, came up at a time – and I know many musicians who fit this mould, including the guys a generation or half a generation ahead of me, like Rick Estrin and Kim Wilson, white harmonica players – came up at a time when, if you’re going to learn the music, you were in predominantly black or all black contexts, some part of the time you were in bands backing up African-American players, and you were getting all of this mentoring, all of this understanding. If you’re Paul Oscher, you were in an all-black context in Chicago.

“And there’s a number of us out there who had that sort of training, which is to say we can’t think about blues without thinking about African-American mentors, teachers, friends, who you’re on the road with. It’s your family. So that’s how we grew up. That’s how we learned the music. That’s how we think of the music. And so, you know, the phrase blues is black music obviously has a kind of weird paradoxical resonance for us, because on the one hand, we know the guys we learned from, we have played with. We also know that we’re a part of it though.

“So there’s a paradox there. So, what we don’t want to hear is that phrase and think you’re trying to tell me I don’t have a right to play this, to carry on a tradition that I was mentored into with somebody who trained me and valued the training he gave me…those guys would often talk about these younger white musicians as their sons.

“But there’s a younger generation that didn’t have that experience at all. And as blues goes around the globe, there are cultures in, it could be Ireland, it could be Chile and Argentina, where there’s no African-American presence to speak of. And so somebody might hear the phrase, blues is black music, and really not even feel the tension that I feel. Really not even get it. And so part of what I’m trying to do is speak to that audience. And I’m trying to say, let’s go back, at least before we move on into the future of this music, let’s go back into that.

“Before we go to the future, let’s go back and understand how the music really came into being with all of the paradoxes – one of my favourite little anecdotes is that in the 1920s, you get this handbook basically for would-be white blues singers written by two African-American blues songwriters that is saying, you must empathize with the lowdown feeling. The music is full of paradoxes, but there’s no question that it has a sort of black Southern identity in some profound way.

“It’s in the language, it’s in the call and response. So I want to make sure that everybody is grounded in that. And that was where, as somebody who taught blues literature, I was invested in saying, here’s how thinking about W.C. Handy can help you. Here’s how thinking about blues conditions, blues feelings, blues expressiveness, the blues ethos, here’s how those concepts can actually help ground you in this. And so that’s one of the audiences and I didn’t want to push that audience away from the music at all.”

Adam’s second audience, he says is the Corey Harrises of the world, black American artists who feel somewhat possessive about the music. “I want to say, I understand that. I want to think critically about the phrase, no black, no white, just the blues. I’m trying to understand what the people who use that think they’re saying. And why people who don’t like that, don’t like it. Maybe diffuse a little bit, I’m trying to see things from a range of perspectives.”

The third audience, he says, is academic readers, people who might be teaching the music. “So that’s why in some of the chapters I talk about the way in which I teach the blues. And my hope would be that those chapters might be of interest to people who teach the blues or are thinking about the blues. It may be in a school context and might help people think a little more clearly about stuff.”

That’s a very interesting section of Whose Blues? where Gussow talks about the worldwide interest in the blues, particularly in his own area of harmonica. He introduces us here to harmonica players around the world who have been keen to learn from Gussow’s library of video tutorial material at www.modernbluesharmonica.com, some of whom have become accomplished players.

In conversation, Adam talked more about blues around the world, noting the role that B.B. King had playing the blues in around 55 countries and seeding the blues in places like Japan and Russia, African American blues artists going to play festivals in Europe, the British blues explosion in the sixties, and the role of American and British radio stations over the years. The blues has truly become a worldwide phenomenon.

In the book, Gussow says, “These are in the process of mastering the music as best they can and making it a part of their own developing cultural inheritances. Should we celebrate this change or condemn it? Should we embrace the postmodern globalization of the blues as a kind of progress, a victory for blues music as a cultural form, or critique that global spread as a crisis of cultural expropriation and dilution, a tragic erasure of the burdens and meanings of black history into the very fabric of music?”

The reality is, Adam told me, that if we were to do “a census of all of the people in the world who listened to blues today, and all of the musicians who played the music, we’d find that African-Americans are the least part of it these days. But in global terms they’re still there. They’re not irrelevant at all. In fact, a lot of the images, the music, the language – everybody knows Hoochie Coochie Man, I’ve got my mojo working, right? And those are all that kind of hoodoo stuff that goes directly back to sort of African rituals. That’s blues music.”

Gussow seems keen to, as he says, embrace the globalization of the blues, but at the same time wants to ensure the blues history, its tradition, its feeling is not lost. And he wants to ensure that the African-American presence is still felt.

Zora Neale Hurston

Which was why he says he thought it was important to talk about blues literature in his book. One of the interesting things you’ll find in the book is the considerable amount of discussion Gussow has about blues writers, as opposed to just musicians: Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, and Zora Neale Hurston. I would hazard a guess and say that most blues fans don’t know them at all. Gussow suggested to me that “blues is more than music,” which you discover when you read the blues literature, including authors he doesn’t deal with in the book, like poets Sterling Plumpp and Tyehimba Jess.

So, as well as acknowledging the reality of people responding to, and wanting to listen and play the blues around the world – and encouraging that, and welcoming that – Adam Gussow is anxious that the way in which the blues is rooted in Black history is kept to the fore.

“Blues is history. Blues is survival tools. It’s a site of memory. I try to make this point in my book, of memory for the traumas of slavery and Jim Crow. Blues indexes the sufferings of Jim Crow. And it’s a way of connecting with that history. And I think it’s so important that we not forget that, that we not imagine blues as just music. I don’t think of blues as just music. I think it is a music, but it has a power that’s deep, and it has some deep magic in it that I’ve certainly felt as long as I’ve been alive.”

Adam Gussow’s deep experience of the brotherhood of the blues, forged through decades playing with Sterling Magee and other African Americans, is on the one hand able to transcend race, but on the other it is rooted in the historical reality of the blues as a complex response to the context of social and political oppression of African Americans. That seems to me to a good pointer to the future. The globalization of the blues just is. But we need voices like Adam Gussow’s to keep us mindful of the reality of the blues.

Since call and response, as Gussow explains, is a key part of the blues, it’s appropriate, I think, to conclude with this joint statement – first the Black Arts Movement spokesperson Larry Neal (in italics), then Gussow’s commentary, echoing and expanding on Neal’s pronouncement.

“The blues were shaped in the context of social and political oppression…the blues are basically defiant in their attitude toward life. They are about survival on the meanest, most gut level of human existence. They are, therefore, lyric responses to the facts of life…These blues are not sorrow songs but survivor songs: the soundtrack of a spiritual warriorship that refuses to say die. These blues wrest far more than their share of swaggering lyric joy out of an evil world, inscribing personhood and sustaining the tribe in the process.”

Whose Blues? Facing Up to Race and the Future of Music by Adam Gussow, is published by University of North Carolina Press.

Happy Birthday W.C. Handy (and me)

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Acclaimed “father of the blues,” song-writer and band-leader W.C. Handy was born this day 137 years ago. He’s an important figure in the history of the blues – the first real superstar, through his sheet music compositions, his 1914 St. Louis Blues, and his claim to recognizing the “world famous blues note.”

And, whatdayaknow, I share a birthday with W.C. Handy! Handy, of course, is credited with recognizing the blues for the first time in the plaintive slide playing by a man on his guitar at a station in Tutweiler, has a statue in a park named after him in Memphis, and his compositions are played to this day.

Me, I was a member of the winning sprint relay team in the Belfast primary schools’ interschool competition at Dunmore dog-racing stadium in the late ‘60s and am the proud author of this blog.

But, of course, I’ve one thing going for me over Mr. Handy. I’m still here! Though with each passing birthday, you’re painfully aware of the passing of time. You’ll never be in the sprint relay team again, your hair gets thinner and just about every muscle group in your body heads south. As Jackson Browne says,

Time may heal all wounds
But time will steal you blind
Time the wheel, time the conqueror.

But, there’s no point is dwelling on that too much, I reckon. I like the attitude of acoustic blues master, Rory Block, who’s now over 70 and who told me when I spoke to her a while back:

“Getting older or passing years is only what you make it. You know, you may make a disadvantage of it, but honestly, I don’t go there. I see it as an advantage. Now maybe I’m crazy, but I see it as a real opportunity to know more, to do more with what you know, to feel more…your fruit ripens! And to me it’s like I don’t feel old. What are you talking about? I’m more clear that this is what I was put here to do. You know, really, I see it that way. And man, I’m just getting started! I don’t feel a limitation at all and I don’t feel old – my goodness, not at all!”

So, as I celebrate my something-somethingth birthday, I’m with Rory. There are books to be written (a new one coming out soon); albums to be reviewed (though I’ll never keep up with the prolific and quite wonderful Rocking Magpie); guitars to be played; family and friends to cherish; grandchildren to greet into the world; and a big old hurting world in which to try and make a small difference (with God’s help).

Bob Dylan’s Forever Young from his Planet Waves album in 1974 – which, incidentally, someone gave me as a birthday present – hits the right note, I think:

May your heart always be joyful
May your song always be sung
And may you stay forever young
May you stay forever young.

And now, to help W.C. and me celebrate, here are a few blues songs.

Louis Jordan and his Tympany 5’s big band Happy Birthday Boogie gets the party started. “Happy birthday to you, and I hope you have many more”

Sammy Mayfield gives us a more bluesy version of the song.

And B.B. King has his Happy Birthday Blues, with a bit more blues feeling

And check out this bit of fun from Chris Kramer and the Beatbox, who hopes all our dreams come true.

And finally, it’s not the blues, but it’s a celebration, and it is Bruce Springsteen. Written for his wife Patti, but now dedicated to everybody who’s having a birthday today:

So teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart. (Psalm 90:12)

Election Blues

It’s being billed as the most important US presidential election in history, a “battle for the soul of America.” Judging by the number of votes case two days before election day – 92m, about two thirds of the total votes cast in the 2016 election – Americans clearly agree with that. We in Europe, along with others around the world, also see this election as incredibly important, given the enormous influence that America has on the world.

Despite the way in which the present administration has disengaged from various world bodies and engaged in trade protectionism, Donald Trump has cast a huge shadow over the rest of the world. As well as giving encouragement to strong-arm leaders like North Korea’s Kim Yong-un, India’s Narendra Modi or Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, his utter disregard for the truth has had a dreadful effect of normalizing lying in the public square around the world.

So, yes, we’re all watching keenly America’s election. And, of course, many of us have American friends and there is so much of America we’ve loved. Not least the music. So, on the eve of this momentous election, here are a few election songs for you to enjoy and consider:

First up is Sunnyland Slim’s 1983 Be Careful How You Vote. It’s a cautionary tale, warning that politicians inevitably let us down:

Be careful how you vote
On every election day
‘Cause the one that you vote for
He just might let you down.

When the time comes for him or her to take their seat, all those election promises have somehow flown out the window. That politician you voted for was going to lower prices, create employment and “help the poor and the senior citizens”. Funny how these get left behind as corporate interests are rewarded, tax breaks favour the rich and, as inequality continues to rise, the poor don’t get a look in. Drain the swamp, I remember someone saying. The swamp just got bigger and messier.

Here’s Sunnyland Slim version, followed by Walter Trout live, playing his version from his 2019 Survivor Blues album:

Next up is Rory Gallagher’s Smear Campaign from 1987. The Irish blues-rock guitarist puts the spotlight here on all the dirty tricks that political campaigns get up to when so much is at stake.

The dirty tricks department is working overtime
Trying to stop the candidate from getting this time
The wheels are now in motion all the traps are set
Under this commotion will he walk into this mess.

Smear campaigns are probably as old as politics. If you read Cicero, it’s quite clear that deliberate campaigns to spread false rumours were well-practiced in ancient Rome. In the US, the first smear campaign in presidential politics was against Andrew Jackson in 1824. And here we are in 2020, with Rudy Giuliani and his allies using a mix of unsubstantiated assertions about the former vice president, and innuendo and salacious material about his son, while the President just outright lies about what his opponent has said on a number of policy items.

Our next song is Peace Blaze Foley’s Election Day, this one sung by Lyle Lovett. The singer seems to be a homeless person who is being harassed by the police and pleads for leniency:

Hey Mr. Policeman, please don’t take my stuff
It cost me too much money, and it probably ain’t enough
To get me through Election Day
Didn’t I hear you say
That it’s alright, it’s alright, it’s alright?

The song is a stark reminder that no matter whether there’s a Democrat or a Republican in the White House, it isn’t likely to change things much for the poor in America. The American Dream has passed millions of Americans by – particularly people of color, many of whom are trapped by systemic racism in education, housing, and economic policies and practices over generations. 35m people in the United States in 2019 suffered from hunger. For a wealthy country, that’s appalling. There’s likely one of the two candidates who cares more about this than the other, but it’ll take much more than the current election to make the sort of change that’s needed.

In 1964, John Lee Hooker certainly felt that one of the two parties was better for those who were poorer off. In Democrat Man he sings:

I ain’t got no shoes, no shoes, no shoes don’t fit
But I ain’t goin’ to that welfare store
You know why? It won’t be long ‘fore election time
Democrats be in.

Lyndon B Johnson, a Democrat who won the election of 1964 in a landslide, instigated a “War on Poverty” which rescued millions of Americans from poverty during his presidency.

Cindy Berryhill’s 2007 When did Jesus Become a Republican hits an important note, particularly for people of faith:

When did Jesus become a politician,
And whisper to the preacher man
To tell the congregation exactly who to vote for?

From a distance of 5,000 miles, it’s very difficult to understand the support of so-called evangelicals in America for Donald Trump. We just shake our heads in disbelief, quite frankly, when we see people who claim to be Christians supporting a man who lies incessantly, who treats women the way he does, whose business dealings are under such question, whose public discourse is so coarse and divisive, who gives succour to far-right racists and who demeans and belittles at every opportunity, In an essay published in the last week, conservative theologian, John Piper bemoaned the fact that “flagrant boastfulness, vulgarity, immorality, and factiousness are self-incriminating, but also . . . they are nation-corrupting. They move out from centers of influence to infect whole cultures. The last five years bear vivid witness to this infection at almost every level of society.”

I read a few days ago about “patriot churches,” a group of non-denominational evangelical churches, which want to “take the nation back for God.” Their buildings typically sport large American flags and members pray for a Trump landslide. Sadly these people have missed the point of Christian faith, which is to give allegiance only to Jesus and his values of kindness, love for neighbour and the immigrant, truth, faithfulness and non-violence. Those values are unlikely to be focused on much by any political party, but Donald Trump? Come on.

Arcade Power’s 2017 I Give You Power features the wonderful Mavis Staples. It’s a nice reminder that in a democracy, the people have the power to install or remove politicians (although, come on America, can that archaic electoral college system of yours really be said to be properly democratic – fair and equal representation, where everybody’s vote counts? If you’re in any doubt, just watch this video: )

And to finish, on a lighter note, check out this Jimmy Durante’s comedy routine with Bing Cosby, featuring Election Campaign Song.

And finally, here’s Steve Goodwin with Election Year Rag, from 1971. Steve Goodwin’s lyrics are always clever, and he clearly remains just a tad cynical about elections!

You know the winner’s always somebody else
And the loser is always us.

Our best wishes and prayers for you America.

 

The Blues as Protest

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The blues emerged in the context of the oppression and suffering of Black communities in the southern US, and singing the blues was a means of responding to that oppression – of giving voice to great sorrow, lamenting the current state of affairs, but also of expressing dignity in the face of injustice. The blues also were a means of protest against this injustice.

That’s worth noting at this time when the United States is facing a reckoning for the systemic racism that has dogged it for such a long time. The push-back against white supremacy, police brutality and a myriad of social barriers faced by Blacks and other people of colour can’t be ignored or written off – notwithstanding Trump’s attempts to do so.

There have been plenty of today’s artists protesting the current lamentable state of affairs and all that has led to it – Leyla McCalla has just released Vari-Colored songs, an album’s whose centerpiece, Song for a Dark Girl, is a stark account of a lynching “way down south in Dixie,” a powerful reminder of the relatively recent history of terrorism against Black communities.

Gary Clark Jr.’s This Land is a howl of protest which rails against the suspicion he gets as a Black man in Trump’s America; Shemekia Copeland’s Would You Take My Blood on her America’s Child album gets to the heart of racism; Otis Taylor’s trance blues in Fantasizing About Being Black, a history of African-American life, from slavery onwards, has Jump Out of Line, an edgy piece about civil rights marchers’ fear of being attacked; and Eric Bibb’s last album had What’s He Gonna Say Today, protesting the “bully in the playground,” aimed directly at Trump.

But the history of the blues is littered with songs protesting inequality, discrimination and White violence against Blacks. Given the huge inequality that existed, and the whole structuring of society that existed under Jim Crow, it would have been impossible for blues artists to sing protest songs in the way that they were sung in the 1960s when the Civil Rights’ movement had gathered momentum. Often the protest was coded, although sometimes it broke through the surface quite clearly. Although the majority of blues songs are about the troubles of love, there is a steady stream of social protest from the early days right through to the present.

In 1930, Huddie Ledbetter – Lead Belly – recorded a song entitled simply Jim Crow, in which he bemoans the state of affairs facing him every day of his life, everywhere he goes:

I been traveling, I been traveling from shore to shore
Everywhere I have been I find some old Jim Crow.

He can’t get away from the racial discrimination he faces – it’s there even when he goes to the cinema to be entertained:

I want to tell you people something that you don’t know
It’s a lotta Jim Crow in a moving picture show.

And finally he pleads with his hearers, “Please get together, break up this old Jim Crow.”

In the early 1930s, nine Black teenagers from Scottsboro in Alabama were accused of raping two white women aboard a train. The case highlighted the racism of the Jim Crow system and the injustice of the entire Southern legal system. In a series of trials and re-trials, which were rushed, and adjudicated on by all-white juries and racially biased judges, the nine boys suffered incarceration in the brutally harsh Kilby Prison in Alabama, and attempted lynching and mob violence.

After three trials, during which one of the young white women who were alleged to be victims had confessed to fabricating her rape story, five of the nine were convicted and received sentences ranging from 75 years imprisonment to death. The one who received the death sentence subsequently escaped, went into hiding and was eventually pardoned by George Wallace in 1976. The case was a landmark one and led eventually to the end of all-white juries in the South.

Lead Belly recorded Scottsboro Boys in 1938, where he warns Black people not to go to Alabama lest they suffer the same fate as the Scottsboro nine:

I’m gonna tell all the colored people
Even the old n* here
Don’t ya ever go to Alabama
And try to live

Lead Belly was clearly not afraid to voice his protest against what he experienced. He also wrote Bourgeois Blues, perhaps the most famous example of 1930s blues protest songs. Leadbelly here sings about his experience of discrimination in the nation’s capital city:

Well, them white folks in Washington they know how
To call a colored man a n* just to see him bow
Lord, it’s a bourgeois town
I got the bourgeois blues
Gonna spread the news all around

Lead Belly talks about looking for accommodation and being turned away by the white landlord:

Well, me and my wife we were standing upstairs
We heard the white man say “I don’t want no n*s up there.

America, according to Lead Belly may have been hailed as “The home of the Brave, the land of the Free,” but it was just somewhere where he was “mistreated” by the “bourgeoisie.”

The Great Depression hit black communities in the South particularly hard. Skip James’s 1931 Hard Time Killing Floor Blues captures the grim reality of the time for many people, with James’s high eerie voice and his D-minor tuned guitar. “The people are drifting from door to door” and they “can’t find no heaven.”

Hard time’s is here
An ev’rywhere you go
Times are harder
Than th’ever been befo’.

One of the blues artists who was most articulate about civil rights during this period was Josh White, who was born in 1914 and recorded under the names “Pinewood Tom” and “Tippy Barton” in the 1930s. He became a well-known race records artist during the 1920s and 30s, moving to New York  in 1931, and expanding his repertoire to include not only blues but jazz and folk songs. In addition, he became a successful actor on radio, the stage and film. White was outspoken about segregation and human rights and was suspected of being a communist in the McCarthyite era of the early 1950s.

In 1941 he released one of his most influential albums, Southern Exposure: An Album of Jim Crow Blues. The title track pulls no punches:

Well, I work all the week in the blazin’ sun,
Can’t buy my shoes, Lord, when my payday comes
I ain’t treated no better than a mountain goat,
Boss takes my crop and the poll takes my vote.

The album of mostly 12 bar blues songs, included Jim Crow Train, Bad Housing Blues, and Defense Factory Blues. White attacked wartime factory segregation in the latter with, “I’ll tell you one thing, that bossman ain’t my friend, If he was, he’d give me some democracy to defend.”

In Jim Crow Train, he addresses the segregation on the railways:

Stop Jim Crow so I can ride this train.
Black and White folks ridin side by side.
Damn that Jim Crow.

On White’s 1940 Trouble, he leaves no doubt about the cause of black people’s problems: “Well, I always been in trouble, ‘cause I’m a black-skinned man.” The rest of the song deals with the failed justice system of the time and the inhuman conditions which black inmates suffered when incarcerated:

Wearin’ cold iron shackles from my head down to my knee
And that mean old keeper, he’s all time kickin’ me.

As a black man under Jim Crow, all White could expect from life was “Trouble, trouble, makes me weep and moan, Trouble, trouble, ever since I was born.”

Big Bill Broonzy was one of the most popular and important of the pre-World War II blues singers, who recorded over 250 songs from 1925 to 1952, including Key to the Highway, Black, Brown, and White, Glory of Love and When Will I Get to Be Called a Man. He was a very talented musician, song writer and singer, who Eric Clapton said was a role model for him in playing the acoustic guitar.

Broonzy claims in his autobiography that he joined the army sometime after 1917, and fought in World War I in France, and on returning to the South, he found conditions there quite intolerable. A more recent biography of Broonzy doubts his story of joining up, but there can be no doubting the injustice which Broonzy encountered as a black man in the South. He refers to the way in which black men were referred to disparagingly as “boy” by whites in his 1951 song, I Wonder When I’ll Be Called a Man.

When I was born into this world, this is what happened to me
I was never called a man, and now I’m fifty-three
I wonder when…I wonder when will I get to be called a man
Do I have to wait till I get ninety-three?

Black, Brown and White, recorded in 1951, rails against the discrimination that Broonzy found everywhere, be it getting a drink at a bar, being paid less money for doing the same job, or even just getting a job:

They says if you was white, should be all right
If you was brown, stick around
But as you’s black, m-mm brother, git back git back git back.

Muddy Waters also highlighted the patriarchal attitudes of whites to blacks in his 1955 release Manish Boy, which on the surface is a rather sensual blues song declaring, “I’m a natural born lover’s man,” and “I’m a hoochie coochie man.” (The hoochie coochie was a sexually provocative dance that became wildly popular in Chicago in the late nineteenth century. The dance was performed by women, so a “hoochie coochie man” either watched them or ran the show). In the context of a black man never being recognized as anything other than a “boy,” however, the song asserts black manhood in the face of white suppression. “I’m a man, I’m a full grown man,” sings Muddy, “I spell M-A, child, N”

Another major and influential blues artist from Mississippi was John Lee Hooker, son of a sharecropper, who came to prominence in the late 1940s and 50s. His House Rent Boogie from 1956 protests the all too familiar tale for black American of losing a job and not being able to make the rent payment; “I said fellows, never go behind your rent, ‘cause if you did it, it will hard so it’s cold in the street.”

The wail of protest in the blues continued on into that decade most associated with protest songs, the 1960s. From 1961 we have the guitar – harmonica duo of Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee singing Keep on Walkin’ which takes up again the theme of Blacks being worked hard for little pay:

The bossman was so mean, you know, I worked just like a slave
Sixteen long hours drive you in your grave
That’s why I’m walkin’, walkin’ my blues away.

And then we have Vietnam Blues by J.B. Lenoir, from 1966. Drawing an elegant parallel between the US’s presence in Southeast Asia and the Jim Crow South, Lenoir demanded of President Lyndon Johnson, “How can you tell the world we need peace, and you still mistreat and killin’ poor me?”

Lenoir came to Chicago via New Orleans and became an important part of the blues scene there in the 1950s, performing with Memphis Minnie and Muddy Waters. He was a fine singer and a great showman, sporting zebra striped costumes and nifty electric guitar licks.

But Lenoir composed a number of political blues songs bringing sharp social commentary to bear on events going on around him. Songs like Born Dead, which decries the fact that “Every black child born in Mississippi, you know the poor child is born dead,” referring to the lack of opportunity in his home state; or Eisenhower Blues, which complains that the government had “Taken all my money, to pay the tax.” Lenoir also composed the haunting “Down in Mississippi,” which he performed on his 1966 Alabama Blues. “Down in Mississippi where I was born, Down in Mississippi where I come from,” sings Lenoir,

They had a huntin’ season on a rabbit
If you shoot him you went to jail.
The season was always open on me:
Nobody needed no bail.

He concludes about the place of his birth, “I count myself a lucky man, Just to get away with my life.” The definitive version of the song, however, was to come some 40 years later, when Mavis Staples recorded it on her album We’ll Never Turn Back, Staples adding a little to the song about segregated water fountains and washeterias and how “Dr King saw that every one of those signs got taken down, down in Mississippi.”

Mavis Staples had already made her protest against three hundred years of injustice in 1970 with the no-punches-pulled When Will We Be Paid? The song demanded an answer to the exploitation of Black Americans in the construction of America’s roads and railroads, in the domestic chores their women have done and the wars in which their men have fought. Despite this contribution to the making of America over 300 years, all the remuneration Staples’s people got was being “beat up, called names, shot down and stoned.” “We have given our sweat and all our tears,” she sings, so, “When will we be paid for the work we’ve done?”

In a similar vein, complaining about the discrimination they faced, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee & Earl Hooker in Tell Me Why in 1969 sang,

Every war that’s been won, we helped to fight
Why in the world can’t we have some human rights?
Tell me why?

They give the cruel answer themselves – “It’s got to be my skin, that people don’t like.”

And one of the most hard hitting of songs in the blues genre is Mississippi Goddamn, written and sung by Nina Simone in 1964.

Hound dogs on my trail
School children sitting in jail
Black cat cross my path
I think every day’s gonna be my last.

The song was Simone’s response to the murder of Medgar Evers in Mississippi and the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, which killed four black children. She performed the song in front of 10,000 people at the end of the Selma to Montgomery marches.

The blues chart the history of the indignities face by African Americans over the decades. The blues allowed Black Americans to assert their humanity and dignity in the context of an oppressive system that declared they were less than human. Whether the songs expressed explicit protest at this or not (and most blues songs didn’t), the blues, nevertheless, was Black music and, whether they were complaining about unfaithful lovers or problems with the landlord, whether they were performed as dance music in the juke joint or sung on the street corner, they reflected the abuse and indignities suffered by blacks under Jim Crow and beyond. No wonder Black theologian and writer, James Cone, said, the blues are “the essential ingredients that define the essence of black experience.”

Willie Dixon gets it spot on when he says “The blues are the true facts of life expressed in words and song, inspiration, feeling, and understanding.” In telling the truth about the misery of black experience, but as well as that, a hope for change, the blues were a part of the endurance and resistance of the Black community.

For many white listeners to the blues, the blues are at heart a genre of music, a certain musical form, twelve bars, flattened notes, blue notes. But if we listen carefully, we can hear the history of people who have been sorely mistreated; we can, perhaps, get some understanding of what it means to be Black. But it does require careful listening. And that listening is as urgent as ever just now.

Finally, to help us stop and listen, here is the ultimate protest song written by Abel Meeropol and recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939. Strange Fruit.

Adapted from The Gospel According to the Blues by Gary W. Burnett

Hanging Tree Guitars

Lynching is a terrible stain on the history of the United States. Between 1882 and 1968, around 5,000 people were lynched, 73% of them black. It was a form of terrorism on the black community, particularly in the Southern States, with the Klu Klux Klan and other paramilitary groups ruthlessly defending white supremacy. Lynching was brutal, and involved torture, mutilation, hanging and burning.

One man who remembers the terror of lynching is Freeman Vines, born in 1942 in Greene County in North Carolina. He’s the focus of a quite remarkable book, which features a stunning set of photographs of Vines, his guitars and his environment by Timothy Duffy and input from folklorist Zoe Van Buren.

Vines is an intriguing character, who has had a colourful life reflective of the struggles and hardships of African Americans in the 20^th century, and I had the opportunity to chat to him about his life and the book. But the focus of the book is on one particular aspect of Vines’s life – his crafting of guitars from a tree near where he lived that had been used for lynching. In one sense this may seem somewhat morbid, but the project serves to highlight the horror of lynching and how its spectre still hovers over America. And, indeed, the ongoing white violence that many people of colour still face.

For Freeman, having been given the black walnut wood which he had been told had come from a lynching tree, he was simply building more guitars, looking for the elusive sound he had been searching for over many years as a guitar maker. That was the holy grail, it seems, that had driven his art during his life.

But as he worked on the guitars at night, “strange things started to happen,” and the guitar work seemed to take on a life of its own and he ended up carving “some horrific figures” on them. “You had to see ‘em and play ‘em to know what I’m talking about.” About the finished articles, he told me he was glad to see them go, because “I was real uncomfortable with them around me.” The project took a considerable emotional toll on Vines; he said he was worried “about how that boy had to die,” referring to Oliver Moore, a young man who was last person to be lynched on the tree in 1930. His body was riddled with over 200 bullets.

The book documents photographer Timothy Duffy’s investigations about where the wood had come from, resulting in him meeting a woman whose great-grandfather had orchestrated the last lynching to take place on the tree. Freeman didn’t want to know the details about what had taken place, because he told me, “some of them people still live down here,” obviously anxious about relations with his neighbours.

Freeman Vines has lived with racism all his life. When he was growing up the Klu Klux Klan was very active where he lived and billboards declared “You are in the heart of Klan country: welcome to North Carolina.”

“I remember all kinds of stuff,” he told me, before going on to relate a horrific story of an old man he knew when he was a boy who was falsely accused of exposing himself to a white woman and who was abducted and dragged behind a truck until he died. “The white man,” he says, “is a dangerous man.” Even today, I asked him, in 2020? “Yeah, it ain’t no joke, man.” Racism he said, “is about the same way it’s always been.”

Tim Duffy, self-portrait

Hanging Tree Guitars is also about the photographer, Timothy Duffy, who met and befriended Freeman Vines and began to photograph the guitars he made. Duffy specializes in collodion wet plate processing for his photography, an early form of photographic processing which requires a darkroom in the field. Although invented at the end of the nineteenth century, there has been a revival of interest in the method, and certainly, Duffy’s photographs, which are a major feature of the book, are nothing short of stunning. They have an aged quality to them which entirely suits the subject matter, and you’d buy the book just for the photographs.

Duffy says that the journey he took photographing Vines’s work and pursuing the story behind the hanging tree “has had a profound impact on me, all of which I have yet to understand.” The book, then, is very much the story of the intersection of two artists, from two very different worlds, one white, one black, and both working in completely different media. The two formed a seemingly unlikely friendship, helped it seems, according to Freeman, by Duffy’s wife’s feeding him the “best rice and chicken I ever ate.” At the same time, Timothy Duffy and the book’s author, Zoe Van Buran, speak of the hospitality they received on Freeman’s porch.

But ultimately, the book is about Freeman Vines and the insight his life gives us to the past and its legacy. Freeman, whose very name points back to America’s troubled past, was born in poverty in North Carolina. His family lived on a white man’s farm where his mother worked as a “housewoman,” cleaning, washing and cooking and being paid in groceries and clothes. Vines said it was worse than the days of slavery because “you had the idea that you were free, but you weren’t.”

By the time he was fourteen Freeman Vines was doing time in the penitentiary. When I asked him about that, he preferred not to talk about the circumstances surrounding this, except to tell me that he learned to read and write from comic books in the prison library.

He started building his own guitars after playing the blues from a desire to find his own sound – “I didn’t want to sound like the average blues man.” He had heard a gospel musician play a guitar when he was young and that sound has haunted him ever since – “a most disturbing sound, but pleasing and comfortable.”

“Each wood has its own sound when you’re cutting and sanding on it, but you have to be alone to hear it.” The sound, he says, “is already there,” and all you have to do is do the carving and release it. I asked him if there was a particular wood that he liked, maybe cedar or walnut or pine, and he told me that the best wood he’d ever found was the tight-grained pine from the soundboard of a 175-year-old Steinway piano. Freeman Vines is not your regular luthier.

He built guitars for over 50 years, experimenting with woods and pick-ups, but has never yet found what he’s been looking for – “I know I ain’t never gonna find that sound, because I’m too old now.” Yet his guitars made their way into the hands of various professional, touring musicians, both blues and gospel artists. “They was ugly guitars,” said Freeman, “I didn’t even know they sounded so good until I heard them on recordings.” Freeman had never been satisfied with what he heard from Fender and Gibson electric guitars and always felt his guitars, although not finely finished, lacquered or stained, were superior.

Freeman Vines has four sisters who make up the famous gospel group, the Glorifying Vines Sisters, who first recorded in the 1970s and are still making music. Freeman went a different direction, but in the book he is quoted as saying he had been very moved by his sister being healed at a gospel meeting and was considering becoming a Christian himself. Sadly, he told me, the recovery didn’t last, but Freeman said he was still thinking about faith.

The book quotes Freeman as saying, “A person has to have a purpose to live.” I asked him what his purpose has been. For Freeman, it’s all about his work as an artist – “What excites me is wood I can communicate with.” And he’s got a new batch in, “highly figured,” which he was clearly pretty excited about. It’s a great thing, to still be excited about what you do when you’re nearly 80 years old.

The story of Freeman Vines and the hanging tree guitars is a remarkable one and a sobering one. It holds a mirror up to the troubled past, and present of America. At the same time, the book gives a quite remarkable picture of the deep engagement of two artists, Vines and Duffy, over a period of years, and the impact that had on both men. It is an utterly absorbing work, disturbing in some ways, and quite unique. Zoe Van Buren’s handling and presentation of the material is masterful and her afterword quite beautifully written.

There is a companion CD available to go with the book, 12 songs from Duffy’s archive. along with three songs performed by the Vines family, which provide a glimpse into the music that inspired Freeman Vines’s lifelong search for a tone.

The project was supported by the Music Maker Relief Foundation, which was founded by Timothy Duffy and his wife Denise Duffy and which seeks to give relief to senior American roots musicians. Hanging Tree Guitars is published by Bitter Southerner in conjunction with Music Maker Relief Foundation.

Find out more at www.hangingtreeguitars.com All photographs by Timothy Duffy.

 

 

Van Morrison, Conspiracy Theories and Protest Songs

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The protest song has a long history in popular music. One thinks of Meeropol’s Strange Fruit sung by Billie Holiday, that chilling song about lynching; Sam Cooke’s A Change is Gonna Come; Dylan’s Blowing in the Wind or A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall; or Nina Simone’s Mississippi Goddam. There are a great number of songs, composed or performed by artists who effectively use their position to raise awareness of an issue of justice – racism, war, domestic violence, discrimination, or environmental destruction. And we’re grateful to them for being prepared to put their heads above the parapet and risk losing some of their fans for the greater good.

But my goodness – Van Morrison is releasing three tracks to protest the anti-virus safety measures in the UK. He refers to “fascist bullies,” wants “no more lockdown” and claims “crooked scientists [are] making up crooked facts.” In this he joins that other UK grumpy anti-science musician, Noel Gallagher, who is refusing to wear a face mask, despite the legal requirement to do so. Morrison’s line about government measures enslaving people is actually downright offensive.

Van Morrison’s so-called protest songs are unlike real protest songs which rail against genuine injustices. He’s tilting at windmills when he goes against the scientific community’s growing body of evidence regarding mask wearing, social distancing and large gatherings of people.

The Northern Ireland Health Minister has rightly called Van Morrison’s songs “dangerous.” With the ‘R’ number for the virus over 1 in Britain and Northern Ireland, and the UK Prime Minister (whose own performance during the pandemic has been less than impressive) saying that the UK is now seeing a second wave of the virus, it’s no time for conspiracy theory touting by well known artists. We’re all frustrated by the restrictions the virus is enforcing on us, but wealthy artists venting their frustration? Pul-ease.

If Van Morrison wants to write a protest song, there is plenty of material to do with the virus. There’s the abysmal record of the UK government in dealing with the virus by being slow to lockdown, failing on PPE for medical staff, failing on testing and tracing, failure to close borders on time, and failing to protect its elderly population in nursing homes. All resulting in terrible loss of life. And then there’s the government’s failure to plan properly for the economic impact of the virus, which has resulted in Britain’s economy being hardest hit of any advanced economy – which in turn has hit its poorest and most vulnerable citizens the hardest.

That’s before we even get to the problems worldwide for the poor and disadvantaged whose lives have been devastated by the pandemic.

There’s so much here to genuinely rail against, that Van Morrison’s impatient moaning looks utterly self centred.

Here’s Nina Simone’s real protest song:

All I want is equality
For my sister my brother my people and me
Yes, you lied to me all these years…
You don’t have to live next to me
Just give me my equality
Everybody knows about Mississippi
Everybody knows about Alabama
Everybody knows about Mississippi goddam, that’s it

20 Blues Train Songs You Must Hear

The railroad has a special place in the blues. Lovers leave on the train, singers go searching for them by the train, the gospel train is on its way, and the ramblin’ bluesman needs to board that train and ride.

Railroads were one of the major infrastructural and economic achievements of the nineteenth century and loomed large in the lives of people as the blues began to develop. You recall that the story of the very beginnings of the blues was at a railway station – in 1903, whilst waiting for a train in Tutweiler, Mississippi, bandleader W.C. Handy heard a man running a knife over the guitar strings and singing. He said,

“A lean, loose-jointed Negro had commenced plunking a guitar beside me while I slept. His clothes were rags; his feet peeped out of his shoes. His face had on it some of the sadness of the ages. As he played, he pressed a knife on the strings of a guitar in a manner popularized by Hawaiian guitarists who used steel bars. The effect was unforgettable. His song, too, struck me instantly. ‘Goin’ where the Southern cross’ the Dog.’ The singer repeated the line three times, accompanying himself on the guitar with the weirdest music I ever heard.”

Handy later published an adaptation of this song as “Yellow Dog Blues,” and became known as the “Father of the Blues.”

Freed slaves had built the railroad with their blood, sweat and tears, and in the early years of the twentieth century, it was the primary means of transport for people for longer distances. For itinerant blues musicians like Robert Johnson, trains allowed them to move from place to place and ply their trade. Johnson’s sister, Annye Anderson, in her book, Brother Robert, remembers Robert “hoboing” around on the train, going back and forth from Memphis to the Delta for his music. His famous train song, of course, is Love in Vain.

The train was the means of escape, too, for black people wanting to leave behind the injustice of the Jim Crow South and seek a better life in the North and West. From 1916 onwards, around 6m people moved away from the racist ideology, the lynching and the lack of economic opportunity to cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit and New York. Famously, McKinley Morganfield – Muddy Waters – boarded a train for Chicago in 1943 to become the “father of Chicago blues” and pioneer electric blues.

Trains in the South were, of course, segregated. In the “colored” section, there were no luggage racks, requiring travellers to cram their suitcases around their feet; and the bathroom there was smaller and lacked the amenities of the “whites” bathroom. All these were subtle and not-so-subtle reminders that you were not as good as the people in the other section.

So James Carr’s Freedom Train of 1969 was significant. Attorney General Tom C. Clark had organized a Freedom Train as “a campaign to sell America to Americans” to try and bolster the sense of shared ideology within the country. The train was integrated, but several Southern cities refused to allow blacks and whites to see the exhibits at the same time, and the Freedom Train skipped the planned visits. Carr’s song celebrates a new Freedom Train, free from segregation and discrimination. where “every man is gonna walk right proud with his head up high.”

So, here’s to trains, and may the Freedom Train keep on rollin’ down the track!

Here are 20 blues train songs for you to enjoy.

Trouble in Mind (1924)

In this old blues standard, things are so bad, the singer wants to end it all – he’s going to lay down his head on that old railroad iron, and let that 2.19 special pacify his mind. It never really gets to that point, happily, because, “sun’s gonna shine in my back yard some day.” First recorded in 1924, it’s been done by Nina Simone, Janis Joplin, Snooks Eglin, Lightnin’ Hopkins and many more. I like this jaunty version by Brooks Williams from his Brooks Blues album of 2017.

Railroad Blues , Trixie Smith with Louis Armstrong  (1925)

Trixie Smith, not related to Bessie Smith, paid her dues in vaudeville and minstrel shows, as well as performing as a dancer, a comedian, an actress, and a singer. Here she is backed by Louis Armstrong’s muted horn, as she is “Alabama bound” on the railroad.

The Mail Train Blues, Sippie Wallace (1926)

The Texas Nightingale recorded 40 songs for Okeh during the 1920s before going on to be a a church organist, singer, and choir director, and then eventually reviving her performing career in the 1960s. In Wallace’s 1926 Mail Train Blues she bemoans her sweet man leaving her and wants to go looking for him aboard the mail train.

Spike Driver Blues. Mississippi John Hurt (1928)

This and other songs recorded by Hurt in 1928 were not commercially success and he reverted to the farming life until being found in 1963 by Dick Spottswood and Tom Hoskins, and persuaded to perform and record again. John Hurt had a wonderful guitar picking style which is credited by many guitarists as their inspiration. Spike Driver Blues is a John Henry song where the “steel-driving man” dies as a result of his hammering a steel drill into rock to make holes for explosives to blast the rock in constructing a railroad tunnel.

Long Train Blues, Robert Wilkins, (1930)

Wilkins was a versatile blues performer from Mississipi who gave up playing the blues to become a gospel minister in 1936. An excellent guitarist, he came to light again in the 1960s and recorded some of his gospel blues. Long Train Blues, which he recorded in 1930 tells the tale of a lover who has run off on the train.

Too Too Train Blues, Big Bill Broonzy (1932)

There’s some nifty acoustic guitar work here by the hugely talented Bill Broonzy, with another “my baby done left me aboard the train” blues. Broonzy sustained his career successfully from the 1920s to the 1950s, performing both traditional numbers and his own compositions, recording more than 300 songs.

The Midnight Special, Leadbelly (1934)

Recorded in 1934 by Huddie William “Lead Belly” Ledbetter at Angola Prison for John and Alan Lomax, the song has been covered by a host of artists, notably John Fogerty’s Creedance Clearwater Revival. The Midnight Special is said to be the name of a train that left Houston at midnight, heading west, running past Sugarland prison farm, the train’s light becoming a symbol for freedom for the inmates. The song also references the injustice of black men being incarcerated for minor infractions.

Love in Vain, Robert Johnson (1937)

Famously covered by the Rolling Stones for their 1969 Let It Bleed album which featured some tasty electric slide guitar, Love in Vain is a Robert Johnson song recorded in his last studio session in 1937. Johnson’s guitar work is outstanding, as is his singing. The sense of loss is palpable, and you hear Johnson crying out his lover Willie Mae’s name near the end of the song.

This Train, Rosetta Tharpe (1939)

This old gospel song has been around since the 1920s and has been extensively recorded. Bruce Springsteen’s Land of Hope and Dreams takes This Train as its starting point but reworks the ideas of the original so that everybody can get aboard. Tharpe’s more original version has “everybody riding in Jesus’ name”; it’s a “clean train, which won’t take “jokers, tobacco chewers and no cigar smokers.” The song was a hit for Tharpe in the late ‘30s and again in the ‘50s. This live performance gives some sense of what an expressive and incredible performer Tharpe was, not to mention her impressive guitar chops. The 1939 version was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame

Lonesome Train, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee (1952)

Just a great train song, with Sonny Terry’s harp driving the train down the track in this instrumental track. There are a few “whoooos” hollered along the way by the duo, who had a 35-year partnership. A masterclass in harp playing. The song was recorded by Sonny Terry in 1952 along with the Night Owls.

Mystery Train, Junior Parker (1953)

Mississippi bluesman Parker’s 1953 hit inspired a number of later versions, notably Paul Butterfield Blues Band’s take in 1965. In Parker’s version the drums mimic the rattle of the train on the track and the tenor sax the wail of the whistle. Butterfield adds a nice bit of harmonica.

Southbound Train, Muddy Waters (1957)

This is another Big Bill Broonzy song from 1957, which Muddy Waters recorded on his tribute to Broonzy in 1960, Muddy Waters Sings “Big Bill.” Broonzy had mentored Waters when he came to Chicago. Waters version isn’t too far removed from Broonzy’s, both piano driven blues, but Water’s version features some nice harp from James Cotton. The song has the singer heading South to the lowlands to escape his faithless lover.

Freight Train, Elizabeth Cotton (1957)

The song actually is about dying and being laid to rest at the end of Chesnut Street, so “I can hear “old number 9 as she comes rolling by.” Remarkable really, when Cotton said she composed the song as a teenager (sometime 1906-1912). She recorded it in 1957 and it’s been covered by many artists, including Peter, Paul & Mary, Joan Baez and Odetta. Cotton was a great guitar picker and this song has been a favourite for aspiring acoustic guitar players to learn. (Guitarist – check out Tommy Emmanuel’s lesson here (easy!!)

Freight Train Blues, Bob Dylan, 1962

Bob Dylan here echoes Elizabeth Cotton’s song in this 1962 recording from his debut album. Dylan tells a tongue-in-cheek but atmospheric story of poverty, rambling and the freight train. It’s typical early Dylan, all strummed acoustic guitar and harmonica.

Freedom Train, James Carr (1969)

A 1969 R&D hit for James Carr, Freedom Train reflects the Civil Rights movement of the sixties: “It’s time for all the people to take this freedom ride, Got to together and work for freedom side by side.” Born in Mississippi, Carr grew up singing in the church, but his R&D success led to his being called “the world’s greatest R&D singer.”

Hear My Train A-Coming, Jimi Hendrix (1971)

Hendix’s train song is typical Hendrix – overdriven, psychedelic guitar pulsing. It’s on his 1971 Rainbow Bridge album, but Hendrix performed the song in a BBC performance in 1967. He has also been recorded doing an acoustic version of the song on a 12-string guitar, giving it a Delta blues sound, Hendrix clearly familiar with the style of the acoustic blues masters of the past. Here’s some rare footage of Jimi Hendrix playing acoustic guitar.

Get Onboard, Eric Bibb (2008)

The title track of blues troubadour Eric Bibb’s 2008 album. Bibb, in his customary positive fashion, wants us to get on board the “love train.” There’s “room for everybody,” he sings as the band, including some nice harmonica, rattles us down the track.

Slow Train, Hans Theessink, 2012

Good times, bad times, tired and weary – Dutch guitarist and songwriter Hans Theessink has been singing the blues for a very long time and knows how to craft a blues song. This one is from his excellent 2012 Slow Train album, and features Theessink’s superb acoustic finger-picking and his rich bass-baritone voice.

When My Train Pulls In, Gary Clark Jr. (2013)

“Everywhere I go I keep seeing the same old thing & I, I can’t take it no more,” sings Clark, surely against the backdrop of racism in America. Hailing from Texas, the Grammy winning Clark is an outstanding guitarist and prolific live performer. This performance of the song which appears on his 2013 Blak and Blu album, showcases Clark’s guitar chops and his classy vocals.

Train to Nowhere, J J Cale (2014)

Eric Clapton recorded this previously unreleased J J Cale song on his tribute to Cale, The Breeze in 2014. The song features Mark Knopfler singing and playing guitar and is both unmistakably a J J Cale song and a train song. The lyrics look to be about that last train ride we all have to take and are a little bleak.

This Train, Joe Bonamassa (2016)

It’s full steam ahead for Joe’s train, in this case his baby who “comes down like a hammer” and “hurts him bad.” It’s all good stuff, with the usual Bonamassa guitar pyrotechnics. But Bonamassa has become a fine singer as well, which This Train amply demonstrates. The song is on his 2016 Blues of Desperation album, but there are some great live versions available too.

 

Catfish Keith is keeping the vintage vibe, but making it new and alive.

“The real acoustic blues king” Rock ‘n’ Reel

Catfish Keith is a wonderful guitarist and a fine exponent of acoustic blues. With his resonator and vintage-sounding guitars, and a fine ear for wheedling out old blues and folk tunes that he can re-work for a modern audience, he’s been entertaining people all round the world for nearly forty years. He’s been nominated for Grammys and Blues Music Awards on a number of occasions, has headlined major music festivals, and appeared with legendary artists like John Lee Hooker, Ray Charles, Robert Cray, Koko Taylor, Taj Mahal, Jessie Mae Hemphill, and Johnny Shines.

His latest album, Catfish Crawl, is a wonderful eclectic mix of material from Big Bill Broonzy, Blind Blake, Furry Lewis, Johnny Shines, Jessie Mae Hemphill, the Carter Family, the Nassau String Band and others, as well as some original material. It’s great fun, the guitar work is outstanding and Keith’s arrangements of the songs are masterful. Check it out, you’ll enjoy it!

We were delighted to get the chance to chat to Keith and ask him about the album and his life in music. First of all, I had to ask – where did the name Catfish Keith come from?

“Well,” he told me, “I got called that when I was a young fella. For a brief period of time, I lived on a sailboat in the Virgin Islands. I’d just left home and I’d never really seen the ocean before, but I had a friend who had a sailboat and he let me crew on it. So I was down there, living on the boat and we used to go fishing with this guy and he would say, “Hey man, you are nothing but a catfish swimming around.” I had no idea what he was talking about, but every time I’d see him, he’d say that.

“So, a handful of years goes by, and the time came for me, when I was maybe 22, to do my very first album. Using my given name, (Keith Daniel Kozacik) proved to be very cumbersome and people didn’t know how to spell it. So, I thought, well, if I’m going to change my name now is the time to do it. So I decided to go with Catfish Keith, because, you know, it kinda made me part of the blues animal kingdom! Now some people call me Cat and some just call me Fish!

What’s more, Keith told me, the song Catfish Blues, had been very formative for him. The song has been recorded by many artists over the years, including Honeyboy Edwards and Muddy Waters but it was Robert Petway’s original version, recorded in 1941, that had really turned him on to the sound of the National guitar, making him want to play a resonator.

I asked Keith about Catfish Crawl, his 18th album, which I’ve been listening to and enjoying enormously.

“I recorded it at a place called Flat Black Studios, which is not far away from where I live, run by a guy named Luke Tweedy and it’s just a nice place to record. It’s an old converted barn and I’ve gone there for about five or six of my albums. I think I took nine guitars – I have a lot of guitars! – and set them all up in the studio. And over the course of four or five days, I would go in for about three or four hours and record a handful of songs and I just kept at it until all the tracking was done and then we mastered it. The way I work, I’m well prepared when I go in the studio.

“I have 20 or 30 songs I could try. And then I go ahead and go through them. And if they don’t work after two or three or four cuts, I just move on to the next one. And so pretty quickly it reveals if a song’s truly ready or not. I guess I used 13 songs on that album and I like to use a number of different guitars just to vary the sound. Some songs I’ll play slide guitar, usually on my baritone Nationals. And I play a lot of the little handmade guitars, including the Santa Cruz Catfish Special and guitars by Ralph Bown, who’s a British guitar builder.

“There’s a whole bunch of great luthiers that have made guitars for me kind of in a vintage style. People like Dale Fairbanks at Fairbanks Guitars, Tony Klassen at ARK New Era Guitars, and Todd Cambio at Fraulini Guitars And I really love those guitars and I love to showcase them. In Luke’s studio you get this wonderful, wonderful sound, and it’s really easy to work.

“From my repertoire maybe several months before I’m going to do a record I’ll list out fifty or a hundred songs that I love and I want to do. I’ve written some too, and I’ll spend two or three months before the studio date, just crafting and honing and practicing and working on songs. It’s all about kind of doing the homework, so when it’s time to record I’m ready to go. And that’s the way I’ve worked for years and years.

“Most of what I do is solo – that was always my vision for the music. The music I loved the most was the quirky, weird, beautiful treasure trove of songs where one person and an instrument could make all the sound, a complete and whole beautiful orchestra. Finger picking guitar and all the roots music, but heavily based in country blues. And of course, I also do songs from the Islands and I do some jazzy things, and songs that come from old time country and fiddle tunes, you know, kind of the whole full bag of American roots music. And that’s always really inspired me.”

Keith benefited from there being a lot of really gifted musicians and songwriters and old-time musicians in Iowa when he was growing up – people he could see performing live and learn from. Then, whenever he started playing professionally, he got the opportunity to tour all over the US, which gave him the chance to meet many of his heroes, first generation blues artists, like Johnny Shines, Homesick James and Honeyboy Edwards, who, although getting pretty old, were still alive. He got the opportunity to meet and play with the likes of Jessie Mae Hemphill, John Cephas and John Jackson and Henry Townsend.

“I’m 58 years old now but when I was young, in my early twenties, quite a few of those old guys were still around. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was very, very lucky to have that direct link and friendship. And get to know the culture of it, as well as just learning music from old records. So, that really brought it to life and made the music even more real and more important. Those musicians are like my musical grandparents. But then there are also those that are one generation older than me, whom I’ve known and learned from – like Dave Van Ronk, Paul Geremiah, John Hammond and Roy Bookbinder. These are all guys that I still know, and we’re still good friends. And they were huge influences as to how you get out there and actually take the music to the world.”

What, I wondered, drew him to the blues and the sort of traditional music that he plays?

“Well, you know, when I was a real little kid my mom had records in the house and I remember we had a Leadbelly record and we had Odetta and Joni Mitchell and Johnny Cash and Gordon Lightfoot, Joan Baez, stuff like that. My mom liked to collect records and she loved folk music and the blues. So that was when I first heard it when I was a little kid. And then when I was about 12 and started playing, there were quite a lot of people playing acoustic guitar especially at summer camp, and there were camp counsellors who would play guitars and sing all these songs by the campfire.

“And then I used to go to folk mass or hippy mass in my Catholic church back in the ’70s. And once they found out that I liked playing guitar they got me playing in the church band. I barely knew any chords, but they put me right on stage. And we’d play songs for all the parts of the mass, you know, the Amen and all that. So when I was coming of age, there were a lot of acoustic guitars around being played. And that made me start to teach myself guitar. And I just love the sound of acoustic guitar.”

Catfish Keith, Johnny Shines, Madcat Ruth 1987

Listen to any Catfish Keith albums and you’ll pretty quickly realize what a jaw-droppingly good guitar player he is, finger-picking complex patterns and sounding like there are about three guitars in play rather than just one. That was what attracted him to the acoustic guitar – hearing the complexity of players like Paul Simon, then Leo Kottle and John Fahey. Listening to this sort of stuff as a teenager was what drew him in, rather than the pop songs his class mates were listening to. He was much more attracted to the music of James Taylor, Jim Croce, Simon and Garfunkel. Anything, really that featured acoustic guitar.

“But when I started hearing these old blues, it really grabbed me and I was inspired to not only learn the guitar, but, sing as well and make the whole world of music and really that’s what’s fuelled me ever since.”

As he listened to all these great acoustic guitar players, Keith began to wonder where did they got their music.

“I always had that kind of bookish curiosity. I loved going to the library as a kid – I’d find books about country blues, like the Samuel Charters book, and I found pictures of Charlie Patton and Blind Blake. So I just sort of started studying. And the libraries had the old records too. They had Blind Blake records and Fred McDowell and Memphis Minnie, and all those wonderful country blues. So, I would check those out and study them.

“I would befriend blues record collectors and go to their houses and ask them to play the blues records so I could record them on my boombox on cassette tape. Then I’d study the recordings. I loved the music and I felt like I was finding a hidden treasure.”

Once he began to discover all this great music, Keith began to practice incessantly. Malcolm Gladwell says it takes at least 10,000 hours practise to get professionally good at something. Keith says he’s put in hundreds of thousands of hours, just playing all the time as a young man. And he still does:

“I still play guitar a lot. I can leave it by for a while, but then I’ll go and play for hours and just enjoy taking the journey with the guitar. I do what I called daydream guitar play. I’ll just lay in the bed with the guitar and I won’t even think of anything in particular. I’ll just pick the guitar up and start playing and see what happens. And sometimes I’ll make a whole new song and sometimes I’ll just play and enjoy whatever journey I’m on until I have to get up and walk around.”

Keith has a unique sound, honed over many years, which is a result of his superb guitar chops, his in-depth knowledge of the musical canon and by the way in which he approaches re-interpreting an old song – he doesn’t just copy the way a song has been performed but he first internalizes it, allows it to become part of him before he begins to arrange it in a way that keeps the vintage vibe, but makes it sound new and alive.

I went on to ask Keith about something I’d noticed in Catfish Crawl, that I thought was a bit unusual. Here and there, you hear him using harmonics, which is not something that you often hear in country blues playing. But it adds something pretty nice to some of the songs.

“Yeah, you don’t really hear it within country blues. I listened to a lot of kinds of guitar playing and when I was a young man I heard a jazz guitar soloist playing in a lounge, and he would do all these finger style sort of standards. And then all of a sudden, he’d do a whole chorus that was in just in harmonics. And when I saw him, it just made my hair stand up. It made me realize if I could get some of that sound that I would extend the range of the guitar and it could stretch the possibility of the sounds, you can add colours and textures.

“So I took some of his technique. And there are other jazz players like Lenny Breau who had his own harmonics sound. And then, you hear it in rock and roll guys like Eddie Van Halen. It’s different, it’s more frenetic and it’s all electric guitar, but it’s the same technique. And harmonics were also used in Hawaiian music for lap style playing. I studied hard on all those harmonics, just so I could add some different colours to what I was doing. So I could take a really simple melody, and then if I want to, I can play the entire thing in harmonics, or I can add little skanky harmonic notes that add a little texture in the middle of a song.”

Catfish’s Nationals

Keith has been a endorser of National Reso-phonic guitars since the 1990s and has recently had a signature guitar made by Santa Cruz. I was keen to hear about his guitars. First he told me about Nationals:

“Well, it’s a very distinctive sound, a beautiful voice that really occupies sort of a cultural place. Nationals really captured my imagination when I heard the Hawaiian guys, like Sol Hoopii, who plays lap style and tricones, and then Son House and Blind boy Fuller and Booker White. But I have to credit Son house. When I was a teenager and I was into finger picking, I was already finger-picking pretty good. But then I found a Son House record – the Father of Folk Blues record he did in 1965.

“I got it in the cutout section of the record store. I don’t know if you remember that record stores had this section where the records were cheaper and they had the corners of the cover snipped off. The records were half price or a third of the price. And there were always some real treasures in the cutout bin. The Son House record was one of those records where I put it on and I was like, wow, what is that? And then I had to listen to it again because it really sorta threw me. It was like this sort of drunken banjo and garbage can sound together, and it really went with his moaning voice and it was very deep.

“And the poetry of some of those songs…He did a song called Death Letter, and one of the lines was, “It looked like 10,000 was down in the burying ground, I didn’t know I loved her until they laid her down.” You’re only 15 and you’re hearing this stuff! It was so heavy and unforgettable. It would draw me in and the sound of the slide was like the sound of a human voice. So I guess all those things are what drew me to the sound of National guitar. And I use a whole bunch of them a bunch of different ways, but it’s really part of what I do.”

Then there’s the Catfish Special from the Santa Cruz Guitar Company, based in…yes, you’ve guessed it…Santa Cruz, California. Keith told me he’d meet the Santa Cruz people at the big annual guitar show, NAMM, in Los Angeles, when he was helping at the National booth. In due course they offered to do a signature model and asked him about the specification.

“I was hypnotized by these little, all-mahogany guitars that they made, so I said, let’s try a mahogany guitar. Richard Hoover, the head honcho and guru took me through his own wood pile at his factory and showed me this one kind of mahogany from Guatemala and it had this sort of shimmering figure to it. That was it. And I think the guitar fits a funny little niche. So they made this guitar for me as my signature model and got Catfish inlaid on the peghead, and little bubbles inlaid on the fingerboard, so it’s fun to look at as well as really fun to play. And it’s probably the finest instrument I’ve ever had.

“And you know, as you play an acoustic guitar the tone gets better and better. I feel so lucky that I was able to get with Santa Cruz and I’m so charmed by everything that they do. It’s just a wonderful company.” [Check out the Catfish Special here.]

We’d had a great conversation and could’ve chatted on much longer, but I wanted to know finally about how the pandemic is affecting things for Keith, Clearly live performances are out for the time being.

“Yeah. Unless your audience is standing out in the field! But all the venues where people sit right next to each other, which is almost all of them – that model might take a while to come back. And a lot of those venues are gonna probably fold. There’s a place here in Iowa city that I play in, it’s been there for 58 years and they finally had to throw in the towel two or three months ago.  It was really the nexus of folk music and alternative rock and all kinds of stuff in the heart of Iowa city. It’s hard to imagine the town without that place, it’s been such a part of the culture of the town. I think there’s a lot of places where the same thing is happening all over the world. I don’t know how we come back from that.

Keith went on to talk about his love for performing and the loss that has been.

“I really didn’t realize how much I love it, traveling all over the world. It didn’t have to be 300 gigs a year, but it was certainly a hundred plus, and we would always go to the UK and Ireland, Europe and all over the USA. But this March, everything died as far as that goes and I’ve had to cancel and reschedule things two or three times. So yeah, it’s been difficult. We would have done my 50^th and 51st overseas tours this year had we had played. It was going to be my best year ever. But like with everybody, things got postponed. We’ll see what happens next year, here’s hoping.”

For artists and venues alike, these are difficult times for sure. We can all just hope that we get to the point where people like Catfish Keith can get to safely perform and entertain us again before long.

Happily for Keith, he has his wife Penny beside him as his manager, sound engineer, and President of their label, Fish Tail Records. “She’s been right by my side through all of this, since day one. It’s not just me. It’s the both of us, that make the band. She knows how to make the music sound powerful and big, and she knows what is right. She is a lot smarter than me, and we do this journey together. I love her with all my heart, and none of this would be possible without her.”

Now – go buy Catfish Crawl!

The Spirit and the Blues

I’ve been listening to the latest album by Larkin Poe, Self-Made Man, and there’s a great track on it called Holy Ghost Fire. You tend to get a few references to the Bible in a Larkin Poe album, not doubt reflecting the sisters background in the Southern Bible Belt.

“Who’s gonna help me carry my load
Burn, burn baby burn with that Holy Ghost Fire
From your fingers to the frets…gonna testify.”

It’s raw, apocalyptic sounding stuff, conjuring up images of wild Pentecostal exuberance. Exuberant joy, is of course, the mark of the Spirit moving – it seeps through the Bible’s pages, even though you wouldn’t think it when you attend most churches today. Kenny Meeks’s song, When Jesus Takes You Dancing, catches the exhilaration of all this on his 2016 bluesy Americana album, New Jerusalem. “When Jesus takes you dancing…the Holy Ghost takes over you and sets you all on fire…”

You get the same holy dancing in Beth Hart’s Spirit of God from her 2012 album, Bang Bang Boom Boom which takes us on a rockin’ journey from Beth’s house to the house of God where she goes “hip shakin’ down the aisle”, then “breaking bread with my own special style”. Spirit of God worship is clearly not the sombre sit-in-your-pew, be quiet and sleep through the sermon version which is served up in too many churches. In Beth’s church, it’s a “soul celebration,” where the preacher’s “goin’ crazy…knocking devils down on the floor,” the choir is “giving it up to the Lord,” and Beth knows she’s sure “feeling something!”

The Holmes’ Brothers Speaking in Tongues from their eponymous 2001 album, gives us more Pentecostal action:

“You got me speaking in tongues, speaking your name,
Lord let me understand you
You got shaking my head, lifting my hands…”

Think it’s strange? Sister Rosetta Tharpe was singing in 1944 about the strange things that happened every day when God’s on the move. People might get healed:

“There are strange things happening everyday
He gave the blind man sight
When he praised Him with all his might
There are strange things happening everyday.”

Songs about the Holy Spirit in the blues go back to Blind Willie Johnson, with his Latter Rain. The lyrics of this are often misunderstood. You need to appreciate that for Willie Johnson’s Pentecostal church, the latter rain was the rain of the Spirit that the Old Testament prophet Joel had prophesied. Joel was quoted by Peter on the Day of Pentecost when the Spirit fell on the first group of Jesus followers – “I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh.” But Joel also talked about the early rain and the latter rain. The early Pentecostal believers like Willie Johnson believed that what they were experiencing was a fresh shower of the Spirit’s blessing – the latter rain, as opposed to the early rain that had fallen on the first believers. “It’s for you, it’s for you, it’s for you and your children too,” go the lyrics, reflecting the prophet Joel’s word.

Spin forward another 25 years and you have the Rev. Gary Davis singing I Heard the Angel Singing, where the “Holy Ghost on fire” fell on him, and he “got in the Spirit and began to shout.” The devil tries to stop him praying, but the singing of the angels spur him on. Eric Bibb has a great version of this song. [check out, too Eric’s Spirit and the Blues album]

Larry Norman, father of Jesus rock in 1972 wondered “why should the devil have all the good music?” He’d been filled with the Spirit, he sang, “I feel OK, because Jesus is the rock and he rolled my blues away.”

And bang up to date, we have the Mason Creek Project’s Holy Spirit Blues. “Everytime I feel the Spirit, I feel like dancin’ in my shoes.”

Giving a slightly different different angle is this great Kelly Joe Phelps song, The Holy Ghost Flood. There are no fireworks in Kelly Joe’s beautiful song, featuring his characteristic and wonderful guitar picking, just a recognition of his own need: “Oh Lord a sinner I am, Asking you to forgive me.” He needs a “flood” of the Holy Spirit, of God’s presence which means:

“Blessing us in kind,
Leaving not a soul behind.”

According to Pew Research, Pentecostalism and related “charismatic movements” represent one of the fastest-growing segments of global Christianity, with around a quarter of the world’s 2 billion Christians. They celebrate the gift of the Spirit in exuberant worship and a keen sense of God’s Spirit at work in their everyday lives.

Actually, this pretty much reflects the early Christian movement that we read about in the New Testament. These early communities were communities of the Spirit where the speaking in tongues, healing and prophesying we’ve seen in the songs above, were a regular feature of their worship. As were other Spirit inspired ways of life like love, patience and kindness.

Maybe it’s time to let the Spirit move and go with Beth Hart “hip shakin’ down the aisle.” Something to try next Sunday morning you’re at church!