“The finest rock songwriter after Dylan and the best electric guitarist since Hendrix.” Los Angeles Times.
Richard Thompson, looking fit and healthy, gave a rousing solo acoustic performance in the rather grand surroundings of Belfast’s Ulster Hall, getting a standing ovation from the delighted audience. He’s an iconic figure, featuring on Rolling Stone’s “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time,” winning a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Americana Music Association in Nashville, several Grammy nominations and an OBE.
He was part of the English folk-rock band, Fairport Convention in the late 60s and early 70s before launching a successful period with Linda Thompson and then his solo career, which has seen him release 18 studio albums and play with a who’s who list of major rock artists and his songs covered by artists like Emmylou Harris, David Gilmour and The Blind Boys from Alabama, Elvis Costello, Bonnie Raitt, and Don Henley. His 18th album, 13 Rivers was released in 2018 to great acclaim.
Here’s what we learned:
1. A Richard Thompson concert is far from old minor key English folk songs and sea shanties. Yes, there’s folk, but with a huge variety of styles and tempos, and some full-blooded rock’n roll too, all peppered with self-deprecating banter and humour. It makes for a fine evening’s entertainment.
2. Sometimes you need more than three chords and the truth. And with Richard Thompson, you get a kaleidoscope of chords, runs, fills, arpeggios, harmonics and more, in a virtuoso display of guitar playing that will have your jaw dropping and your foot a-tapping.
3. Who needs a band, when you play bass, chords and lead, all at the same time, with great attack and panache to accompany your impressive vocal performance?
4. Lowden acoustic guitars “are the best out there, if you ask me,” said Thompson, praising the highly acclaimed Northern Irish luthiers. On the evidence of this masterful display of guitar wizardry, there can’t be much argument.
5. It’s great to have a trademark – in Richard Thompson’s case, his black beret, which he hasn’t taken off since 1984 (just joking!). His other trademark, of course, is his terrific song-writing skills, aptly demonstrated in song after song from each decade of his long career. Musically rich and lyrically clever, with wit, sarcasm, and great story-telling, the songs’ music and lyrics interweave powerfully.
6. Forty and fifty-year-old songs can still be magical. Thompson’s Bright Lights which “brushed the lower regions of the Top 40” in 1974, along with Dimming of the Day and Sandy Denny’s Who Knows Where the Time Goes, all stirred great memories and were warmly received by the enthusiastic Belfast crowd. Songs that stand the test of time.
7. In your 8th decade, you can still look fit and robust and give nearly two hours of fabulous entertainment, singing and playing your heart out. It helps, clearly, if you play tennis and cricket regularly.
Oh, and the sweet, sweet voice and song writing talents of Katherine Priddy who was the evening’s support deserves a mention. One to keep an eye on.
“The blues is the truth,” said Willie Dixon, famously. “The blues are the true facts of life expressed in words and song, inspiration, feeling, and understanding.”
One the one hand, the blues have always been entertainment, music to dance to, but it’s essentially music that is rooted in hard times, trouble and suffering. Which Dixon understood well. Born in Vicksburg in 1915 in a household of 14 children, his family lived in what he described as a “raggedy” house. Even worse was where he ended up aged eleven after running away from home – “man, you’re talking about a shack… the house [I stayed] in had great big holes in the floor.” Trying to steal some fixtures from an old derelict house got him sent to a jail-farm when he was twelve where he said, “That’s when I really learned about the blues. I had heard ’em with the music and took ’em to be an enjoyable thing but after I heard these guys down there moaning and groaning these really down-to-earth blues…I really began to find out what the blues meant to black people.”
On another occasion, for a petty charge, Dixon served thirty days at the Harvey Allen County Farm, near the infamous Parchman Farm prison, where the treatment of prisoners was inhumane – “this was the first time I saw a man beat to death,” he said. Dixon himself was brutalized, receiving a blow to his head that made him deaf for about four years. Dixon, in short, knew all about the truth of the blues.
Early blues songs covered the whole gamut of real-life problems and hardships faced by black communities – ill-health, poverty, homelessness, discrimination, police brutality, as well as the vagaries of romantic love. Here’s Victoria Spivey with TB Blues, tuberculosis being a disease particularly associated with poverty:
There’s no hiding from the realities of life with the blues. As slide guitarist Bryn Haworth told me recently, “Blues music to me is honest music. It’s people expressing their sorrow, their pain, their loneliness, their disconnectedness, their questions or anger about things we all feel…It’s honest…honest to God music, really.”
The blues face life head on, honestly, and somehow, often seem to enable a way through, because of that honesty. Honesty, however, seems to be a quality in short supply these days.
Tell the Truth, written by Bobby Whitlock and Eric Clapton, was recorded by Derek and the Dominos in August 1970, and appeared on Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. Whitlock has described it as a kind of coming of age song, a reminiscence about getting older, but as you listen to the lyrics today, it sounds like a social commentary on the descent of today’s world into double-speak and deceit:
Tell the truth.
Tell me who’s been fooling you?
Tell the truth.
Who’s been fooling who?
It doesn’t matter just who you are,
Or where you’re going or been…
The whole world is shaking now. Can’t you feel it?
Back in 1949, George Orwell’s 1984 was published under the shadow of Hitler and Stalin, and portrays a nightmare vision of a future in which truth has been eclipsed. Orwell said he was worried that the “very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world.” Would he have been surprised at where we have reached in today’s world, where the bare-faced lie has become perfectly acceptable and truth in the public sphere scarcely seems to matter?
Robert Musil, the author of the classic The Man Without Qualities in the mid-1930s, wrote, “No culture can rest on a crooked relationship to truth.” And yet here we are. Donald Trump is in the White House, telling more lies each day than you wash your hands (according to CNN, June 2019) – as of June 7 2019, his 869th day in office, the president had made 10,796 false or misleading claims, according to Washington Post’s the Fact Checker’s database. And UK Tories have just installed Boris Johnson as the country’s Prime Minister, a man with a long and well-documented history of playing fast and loose with the truth (as reported by the Independent) – from his days as a journalist with the Times and the Daily Telegraph to backing the infamous claim on the side of the bus that the UK was sending £350m a week to the EU, followed by “let’s fund our NHS instead” during the Brexit referendum campaign.
As Roger Cohen put it recently, “The triumph of indecency is rampant. Choose your facts. The only blow Trump knows is the low one. As the gutter is to the stars, so is this president to dignity. Johnson does a grotesque Churchill number. Nobody cares. The wolves have it; the sheep, transfixed, shrug.”
Of all the disturbing aspects of the rise of petty nationalism and populism which has given rise to racism, xenophobia and increasing polarisation, it is the assault on truth which is perhaps the most undermining of life as we know it. I watched a clip on an US TV programme recently where a woman was asked about Trump’s recorded statement that he could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot someone without losing any voters, and she dismissed it out of hand as “fake news” from the dishonest media. Up is down; black is white; I only believe what fits my viewpoint.
But, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the Harvard professor and four-term United States senator, famously observed, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” That has become almost quaint, so far down the road have we come. Johnson and Trump do not exist in a vacuum; the dishonesty which pervades public life at the highest levels seeps out through elements of the media into the public square and into the lives of individuals. Truth has become devalued and our societies imperilled because of it. As the ancient prophets of Israel said, “Truth has stumbled in the street” (Isaiah 59.14) and “lies and not truth prevail in the land” (Jeremiah 9.3).
We’re grateful for courageous reporters, broadcasters, church leaders and others who speak truth to power, expose lying and call out dishonest leadership. And with a continuous stream of properly fake news, we need to take care what we are prepared to believe. As psychologist Jordan Peterson says, “The small sins of the individual culminate into the great sins of the state.”
Dishonesty is a temptation for us all. Fyodor Dostoevsky warns us in his novel, The Brothers Karamazov, that not to tell the truth risks us losing our sense of reality. To lose the truth is to lose your soul. “Above all,” says Dostoevsky’s Father Zossima, “don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others.”
Lies and deceit eat away at the fabric of our being. They are truly destructive, each lie causing a little more damage to our characters, until we can scarcely tell truth from untruth.
On the other hand, when you tell the truth, “Everything begins to come together…when you’re around someone who tells the truth everything comes together and that’s the potential destiny of the world…you can bring forth something again to paradise by speaking the truth and you can start in your own life, and in the lives of your own family…It’s the proper way of wending your way through the terrible world without making it worse than it already is and with the possibility perhaps of making it better.”
Someone famously said, “Let us begin by committing ourselves to the truth – to see it as it is, and tell it like it is – to find the truth, to speak the truth, and to live the truth.” Words to live by – despite the salutary fact that this came from Richard Nixon on the occasion of his acceptance of the Republican nomination for the presidency in 1968. The danger of ignoring the advice writ large.
More importantly, two thousand years ago, someone said, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” As we discover in the authenticity of the blues, there is something about truth telling that does indeed set us free. Something about facing the realities of the world and our troubles face-on that is the first step to freedom. There’s a deeper freedom than that, though – as a provincial governor found out a long time ago when he faced his prisoner and asked, “What is truth?” There was no answer because the living embodiment of that was standing in front of him.
And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. (Gospel of St. John)
Bryn Haworth is an outstanding slide guitarist and songwriter from the UK who has been making records and performing for the past 50 years. He’s appeared on the BBC’s Old Grey Whistle Test and the John Peel show, was a major figure in the explosion of Jesus Rock in the 1970s and ’80s, and been the guest guitarist on many albums by rock and folk artists.
During the 1970s I nearly wore out my turntable needle playing his Sunny Side of the Street and Grand Arrival albums, and to my delight, I recently discovered a 2006 album called Keep the Faith, which I’ve been playing almost non-stop.
So, it was a particular pleasure to chat to Bryn about the blues, his remarkable journey into faith when he was a successful musician in California in the ‘70s, the important work he’s been doing in prisons over many years and how we need to care for the environment.
I asked him first of all how he would describe the sort of music he makes.
Bryn Well the word I’d use is eclectic really. Because it’s because I was brought up in a house back in the ’50s where all kind of music was played and loved. My mum was the one who bought the records, these old 78 records, and she would buy Elvis, Elgar, Little Richard. She’d buy the Kingston Trio. And it was a big thing when we got a gramophone in the front room. It would be a big deal when you bought a new record, you’d sit down and play it and you’d have your fish and chips and stuff in the room, listening to these records and appreciating them and just enjoying them. So, for me all styles of music are good and to be enjoyed, and I just carried on like that in my writing and playing. So…eclectic, I like all kinds of music. It may not be commercial but I enjoy the freedom!
Gary But a lot of your music has always sounded a bit bluesy to me and you’ve got that lovely slide guitar work. So tell me how you feel about blues music.
Bryn Blues music to me is honest music. It’s people expressing their sorrow, their pain, their loneliness, their disconnectedness, their questions or anger about things we all feel. So you know for me it’s natural to express these things. It’s honest…honest to God music, really. I mean life is hard isn’t it? You know we’ve all been hurt, we’ve all been damaged, or we all hurt others knowingly or unknowingly. And there’s just this whole thing of, you know, unanswered questions – in our hearts this feeling – Where do I belong? Where’s home? And that’s all in the DNA of every one of us. And so, it’s great when music is expressed like that in a simple fashion. So that’s how I feel about blues.
And then look at how many musicians there are in the Bible, like Jeremiah and Habakkuk and David and Job, and you start to see the blues in what they’re saying. There’s so much blues in there. You know in Job 30. 31, it says “my harp is tuned to mourning, my flute to the sound of wailing.” The Message translation says “my fiddle plays nothing but the blues and my mouth harp is wailing.” Job was a musician. And then you got David – “Why is this happening? How long? Where are you God? You know, just real people interacting with a real God, real full on honest to God stuff. Psalm 69 – I love that one: “I’m up to my neck in trouble.” And then Psalm 88 – the last verse “darkness is my closest friend.” And that’s the end of the song.
Gary Although it’s quite interesting, Bryn, when you look at a lot of the Psalms, they’re quite like some of the blue songs, in that they start off really, really dark. You know “Why have you forsaken me” and then by the end of the song, the Psalmist has sort of worked himself through the blues and he’s in a better place. And actually a lot of the blues songs are a bit like that – I think of that old standard Trouble in Mind – I’m gonna lay down my head on some railroad iron and then by the end of the song, it’s you know, the sun’s gonna shine on my back yard some day. Things are gonna get better and there’s a kind of a parallel to the way some of the Psalms work.
Bryn Yeah, yeah, There’s one song of mine from the Rebel Man album called Why Don’t You Love Me Like You Used to Do, and it’s really just reading the Prophets where God says, why don’t you love me like you used to, and now you’ve gone off and stuff like that. So that’s a classic blues theme, isn’t it? The reality is that God feels the pain of rejection. God grieves and feels pain – Genesis 6 says the Lord was grieved that he’d made man and his heart was filled with pain, and then you see Jesus, he was rejected and despised. I mean, blues? Is that not blues?
Gary Absolutely right. It’s right there.
And looking back, who are the artists that have influenced you, that have meant something to you along the way, blues or otherwise?
Bryn Well in the blues I like the Johnsons – Robert Johnson and Blind Willie Johnson. I like Elmore James because of the slide. I’m always fascinated by how these guys play. It’s just stunning. And I like the finger-pickers, I like Mississippi John Hurt – I hear a lot of Mississippi John Hurt in Eric Bibb. I just love listening to John Hurt you know, because his spirit is really gentle. He’s not aggressive.
And I also like harmonica players. Little Walter. Because harmonica players like Little Walter are great to copy for slide players. You know, if you’re a slide player and you want to play blues, then you get a lot of your basic blues shapes and patterns from listening to, and trying to emulate and copy, good blues harmonica players. They work within a tight range of notes. So, I’ve always been attracted to them and my ear pricks up to play like that.
And it’s the same with sax players. There are some really good players like King Curtis, black R&B sax player, who played on a lot of the old Arista Records. Like Respect and a lot of the old Motown stuff. And then there’s Junior Walker and the Allstars. If you’re a slide player, they’re great players to just try and copy because they come at it from a different point of view than your Ry Cooders and your Duane Allmans and people like that. You’re really into a different thing and it’s really interesting to learn from them. And there’s a guy called Darrell Mansfield that I really like, a Californian harmonica player. We toured together in Europe quite a bit. I liked him and of course Paul Jones is a great harmonica player.
The main influence I think when I first started playing electric guitar was when I got Soul Dressing by Booker T and the MGs. And I just thought Steve Cropper was the bee’s knees! I thought he was incredible and I learned every solo of his on that album. I just wanted that sound you know. I didn’t really know what he was playing, but in the 60s I thought I’d like to be a psychedelic version of Steve Cropper! But then you see you had Eric Clapton and then you got Hendrix, and I love George Harrison. Willie Nelson, I love. I love his guitar playing, I love Lonnie Mack’s playing. I do like guitar players and I like the ones that are brave.
Gary So looking back over your career, Bryn, you have been described as a pioneer of Jesus music and you were part of the explosion of Christian music in the 70s and 80s. And your Christian faith has continued to be a major emphasis in your work over the years. How do you do you see your music: as Christian music, or do you see it as having a wider appeal?
Bryn Well, you know, I’ve never really gone for a label because first of all I’m a musician. I see myself as a musician who has discovered that there is a God and that he loves me. And I found that great news. And it’s that because I’ve found this for myself, I found a new way of living and a new way of loving and being loved. And Jesus has made all this possible. So yes, I want to communicate this – by the way that I live, and also my work and in writing and communicating. I mean, the thing is, that everybody wants to communicate. And everybody is communicating something. And when you find life like this you just get energized by it and you get captivated by it, and you want to let other people know that He’s real and that His love for them is tangible.
And some of the music and the songs I play like this resonate with a wider audience and that’s just fantastic. But not all my songs are about Jesus, about my faith – I write generally about the whole of life. So, I wouldn’t consider myself just as a Christian musician doing one thing, because I do like to try to write about, and play about, many other things. And hopefully in the future I’ll be get better at it in expressing where people are at, and identifying with them on that basis.
Gary So would you tell us about how you came to faith and why has it continued to be important to you.
Bryn For me it was quite dramatic. There’s a great verse in Isaiah 65 verse one where God says, “I reveal myself to those who did not ask for me and I was found by those who did not seek me” – and this was really me, because I was not interested in, not looking for God. I didn’t know anybody who knew anything about God. It just wasn’t on my radar. I was in a really good band in California and I was making good money and we had a good life. Smoking dope, you know, no crisis, no interest in anything!
And then one night I go to bed and have this really long dream, a very powerful dream where a lot of my old painful memories surfaced. And a lot of hurt and fear and anger came, and all I knew is when I woke up was that I had to come back to England and get right with my dad. I didn’t like him, he didn’t like me and we didn’t talk. I hadn’t thought about him for years. Anyway, that week I got a ticket and went home and ended up living in North Wales. It was the early seventies and if you were kind of a hippie, that’s where you went – North Wales. You got a cottage and chilled. So I came out of that life in California and I had a time out. I had time to look at my life and asking questions like, why do I drink so much, why do I do so many drugs, why am I so angry and fearful, and why am I so driven and insecure? I would never have thought about myself or looked at my own life when I was in California, but when you’re on your own, you’ve got time to think – about your direction and what’s happening to you.
And that’s when I started asking questions about who am I, what am I doing here, and is there a God? I’d never thought about that before and I just started going out for long walks and asking, “God are you there? If you are, then you got to let me know.” That’s how the whole thing started. It wasn’t something that I had been seeking or searching.
So I was kind of woken up by that dream, and I started to examine my life. And then about three years later, we went out for a drive one day. And in the corner of this field was a circus tent. Now for the first time I had started painting, and during that week I had painted a circus tent with red and white stripes. So, in the corner of this field that week was this circus tent, so I said “Hey let’s go to see the circus.” We drove in and it was a gospel meeting. I’d never been to anything like that in my life, and so we stood at the back so we had a quick escape if we didn’t like it. But I was kind of riveted by the whole thing. I didn’t understand what the preacher was talking about – the language he was using was alien to me, but there was this banner over the front of the stage with some of Jesus’s words on it: “I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me.” And I thought, “Well, I’ve lived my way for 26 years and it ain’t working.” All my questions hadn’t been answered, but I was thinking, if God is ever going to be real to me I’m going to have to take a step of faith tonight and so, that’s what I did.
I just said, “Jesus if you’re are the way to life I choose to believe you.” And I went forward and I was prayed for. I came out of that tent and I felt like I was home, that I belonged and that God was real. And that was really the beginning of the whole journey of finding out who God really is, rather than how I imagined him. And so that’s how it all happened.
Gary That’s a remarkable story.
Bryn It really it is. There have been lots of other kinds of interventions along the way, things you can’t really explain but you just get the sense that God is drawing us to him through the circumstances of our lives, that through the pain and the difficulties, the damage and the suffering that we struggle with every day, that he’s drawing us to himself and he wants us to call out to him. And that’s all I did. I just called out to him. And that’s how it all started.
And I just found that he wants this friendship. He wants a relationship; he wants to restore and heal and make us new. And I didn’t know anything about that until I made that step of faith in that tent.
Gary Well that’s fantastic. And Bryn, when you’re talking there about people being broken and hard times and so on, that’s something that you have come face to face with in the work that you’ve done over the years in prisons. Would you like to tell us a little bit about that?
Bryn Along with my wife I’ve been involved in prison work for 30 years now. And again, it wasn’t something that I sought to do. I would say that I was called to do it – I was just reading through the gospels and God really spoke to me, and I was eventually given an opportunity to go into prison and I took it. I was kind of cornered, because for about three years I’d be going, Oh I’d love to do that, to go into prison, but I thought, well what would I do? I’m just a musician and I don’t know anybody in prison, and how do you get into prison and so I talked myself out of it. And then suddenly someone said to me, can you do this? So we went in to Wandsworth Prison and the chaplain there – out of all the prisons, he was the only chaplain who said, “Yeah you can come in” – David Cairns was his name – and he let us see what happened in prisons. They have Chaplain’s Hour meetings and then as we were coming out again, he turned round to me and said, “Right, you do it next week!” So that’s how it started.
I was in a church called the Vineyard at that time, a Californian church – the first church plant they did was in Putney where we were in South London. I was on staff at that time. And so I took in a few members of that team and we did an hour long meeting and we’ve been going on like that, and it’s been wonderful. My wife and I love going into prisons. We’ve seen some wonderful things happen. God’s done some wonderful things – we’ve seen people’s lives turned around, changed from the inside out. We’ve seen dramatic physical healings, we’ve seen people emotionally healed. It’s a prisoner’s right to have an hour a week of a religious service. And so, we go in on that basis in the morning, say, and do an hour’s service. I’ll do some worship songs, some of my own songs, I do a short talk from part of the Bible and some prayers, and pray for them at the end. Or in some prisons we do a concert. I’ll go in and do an afternoon concert for the whole prison. And that’s really good.
But generally, when I go in. I always feel out of my depth – even now. I always think this could have been me, because I’ve done things in my life, but the only difference is I just didn’t get caught. It could have been me!
But it is a very creative environment for songwriting as well, because you’ll be standing there in front of these guys and you go, “I need a song that says this,” and I haven’t got one. And so, you go away and write something. And it’s also very creative because different styles of music are really helpful – if you can play reggae, rock, pop, blues, country. Because you’re reaching all different tastes in music. And so it stretches you to see if you can write something that will appeal to them and draw them. But I know from my own experience that people can be transformed and learn to live differently and be a blessing to the earth.
Gary Well that’s fantastic. And is that something that you’re still doing Bryn?
Bryn Yes. I would say the majority of the year I do it. I still do concert work as well. But we do it because we love doing it. Funny enough, we just feel quite at home in prison! It’s not everybody’s cup of tea. But for us, we love it.
Gary Now, you released a song earlier this year called Enough is Enough. Can you tell us about that?
Bryn Well where we live, developers want to cut this 200, 300 year old wood behind the houses where we live. They want to come into the wood and knock all these trees down and build eleven new city style houses. It’s pretty brutal what it will do to the street and to the neighbourhood. So my wife and I found ourselves default leaders of a campaign to stop it, because people can be quite apathetic and they don’t know how to fight. But you got to fight these things, you can’t let people roll over you. And you know this kind of thing is happening all over the country, the indiscriminate felling of trees to build roads and houses and railway lines and stuff like that. But we’re losing so much, so many of the mature trees in this country and we’re the least forested place in Europe. And the trees are our lungs. We need them. And so, I got up one morning and I was just so upset about this whole thing I sat down and wrote this song. Enough is Enough came in about 20 or 30 minutes. I just got the whole thing. And I thought, Fantastic, we can use this as part of our campaign. So I recorded it really quickly. And then I had a friend who works for the BBC and does National Geographic magazine, he said “Oh I love this song, can I will make a make a video of it?” He did it for free and we got a really good video out of it. So, it all came together very quickly and so we’re trying to get that used and played on the radio and on TV. But that’s the story behind it. It’s a protest song!
Gary So is getting involved in that sort of thing, Bryn, integral to your Christian faith?
Bryn Well, you obviously don’t have to be a Christian to feel upset about your planet going down. But, as a Christian, as a believer, I look in Genesis 2 and our original job description when we were put here was to look after this place. To let it grow, let it develop – we were put here as caretakers, or gardeners. So I think that we still have that remit, just to be looking after what God has made and make sure that the next generation when we’re dead and gone has got something to look at, you know.
I like Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi. “They took all the trees and put them in a tree museum and charged all the people a dollar and a half just to see ’em.”
Gary Yeah, that just about sums it up, doesn’t it?
Bryn Yeah it does. But you know, we have been given responsibility for the care of this planet and particularly your own locality. And you can do it. You can actually do something about this. We were put here to look after it the planet look after and help it to flourish.
Gary Very good. Well let me ask you this, Bryn. Recently I’ve spoken to a few musicians who are in and around the 70 years of age mark. Chris Smither and Rory Block were a couple of them. They’re both going strong, performing, recording. Chris Smither seemed to be definitely thinking about the aging process. But when I talked to Rory Block, she said she felt like she was just getting started! She was fantastic, really refreshing actually. What about you? Do you still feel inspired to keep going? What’s the motivation at this stage of your life?
Bryn The big one – you’ve only got so much time left. You better get on with it. [laughs]. I guess that’s the one you think about. But I can still stand up to play! The one good thing about playing blues is you can sit down to play and still look cool! When your legs don’t work anymore you can do a B.B. King! So, you’ve got a long career if you can play blues! But yeah, I think it’s the wear and tear. I think if you travel like we’ve done – that’s the hard thing now, the actual travel to gigs and being tired because the roads are so much worse. It seems to take a longer time to get here. There’s also the physical side – your finger joints – I’m 70 – and they suffer from wear and tear. Repetitive strain, basically on your fingers and the joints. There’s one finger that doesn’t work properly anymore, it doesn’t close so you’ve got to figure out different ways of playing chords. But then you see Django Reinhardt with two fingers, so you think, well it must be possible! There are physical things that happen to a lot of guitar players’ hands from just playing so much, especially if you’re an acoustic guitar player.
But I think for me it’s that everybody wants to communicate. You still want to communicate when you have something that’s this good, and you want to communicate life to people and blessing. You want them to know that they’re loved and they’re not alone, that they belong and that they’re connected. You have incredible amounts of energy to keep going out and doing that and seeing these things. And it’s interesting, as you get older, you’re more relaxed, there’s nothing to prove. You just have to keep working hard at what you do and trying to make it sound good, and just keep your standards up.
Gary So from what you were saying earlier, you’re still you’re still performing and you’ve got a performance schedule for the rest of the year.
Bryn I haven’t really gone after gigs really for a long time. I’ve more tended to let them come in and so I don’t do that many. Because the prison work is quite absorbing and interesting. But I still like doing concerts because of the variety of music as compared to a prison. And it’s great if you can get a whole evening – having a first half and a second half to play to people. It’s quite a luxury now to be able to do that. And it’s a good test of whether your chops are still up to it and you can still play and communicate.
Gary So have you plans for a new album at some stage do you think?
Bryn Well I got a title which is good! So, I’m trying to gather ideas around that. I think that’s about as much as I got really. I’m a writer, and you have put your hat on as a writer – roadwork takes a lot of time, so I need to take time off to do it.
Gary Well, we’ll look out for that. Bryn. We’d look forward to doing a review at Down at the Crossroads when that project is completed. Thanks for taking the time to talk to us. It’s been great.
You expect a new Keb’ Mo’ album to deliver the goods. For the last 25 years, he’s been releasing high quality blues and roots albums. Oklahoma, even by Mo’s standards is top notch – and surely puts him in line for another Grammy award. Produced by Mo’ and Colin Linden, who plays electric guitar alongside Mo’s resonator on several tracks, the album not only delivers the characteristic laid-back Mo’ sound, but engages with a number of current issues including environmentalism, mental health and immigration.
Mo’ is joined by some formidable musical collaborators, including his wife, Robbie Brooks Moore, Robert Randolph, Taj Mahal, Jaci Velasquez, Rosanne Cash, and Andy Leftwich. All-in-all it’s a wonderfully enjoyable album, seasoned with accomplished musicianship and thought-provoking lyrics.
In 2018, Mo’ produced and performed on Ana Popovic’s I Like It On Top, perhaps her best album, [catch our interview with Ana here] which appealed for equality for women, and now on Oklahoma, he continues to be a spokesperson for the cause with Put A Woman In Charge. It’s a catchy number, enhanced by Rosanne Cash’s vocals, where the efforts of men have left us “standing on the brink of disaster.” That being the case, Mo’ says,
“We’ve got to turn this world around
Call the mothers
Call the daughters
We need the sisters of mercy now.”
It’s time, he says, “to put a woman in charge.”
Now, in case you think this is all some sort of feminist plot, research shows that when more women work, economies grow. Women’s economic empowerment boosts productivity, increases economic diversification and income equality in addition to other positive development outcomes. Increasing the female employment rates in OECD countries to match that of Sweden, could boost their GDP by over $6 trillion.
A report last year from McKinsey and Company said that women’s economic equality is good for business. Companies greatly benefit from increasing employment and leadership opportunities for women, which is shown to increase organizational effectiveness and growth. It is estimated that companies with three or more women in senior management positions score higher in all dimensions of organizational performance.
Interestingly, a study by global consulting firm Hay Group found that women outperform men in 11 of 12 key emotional intelligence competencies and said that “If more men acted like women in employing their emotional and social competencies, they would be substantially and distinctly more effective in their work.” And then there’s some research by the Pew Research Center saying that 34% of American workers say that women have an edge over men when it comes to being honest and ethical, while just 3% believe men are better.
The positive effects of favouring women become very pronounced when we consider developing countries, where traditionally girls are not well educated, are forced to marry young and are restricted from reaching their potential. Investing in the education of girls has been shown to bring high returns in terms of breaking cycles of poverty and aiding economic growth. Importantly, it also improves children’s and women’s survival rates and health, delays child marriage and early pregnancies, empowers women both in the home and the workplace, and helps tackle climate change. Girls’ education also has a transformative effect on health, which can be passed on through generations. Every additional year of school a girl completes cuts rates of infant mortality – the death of children under one year – dramatically.
These benefits to individuals and communities by educating girls and promoting the equality of women are well documented. Yet still:
Around the world 130m girls who ought to be in school are prevented from attending
15m girls will never get to attend school
Globally, over 2.7 billion women are legally restricted from having the same choice of jobs as men.
Of 189 economies assessed in 2018, 104 economies still have laws preventing women from working in specific jobs,
59 economies have no laws on sexual harassment in the workplace
In 18 economies, husbands can legally prevent their wives from working.
And at present, fewer than 20% of the world’s heads of state, prime ministers and government ministers are women. Despite recent improvements in women’s political representation, they still occupy fewer than 25% of national parliamentary seats worldwide.
Here’s what’s happening in a world run by men:
There are more than 40 wars going on, causing untold misery to millions. (New Humanitarian)
Some 820m people in the world do not have enough food to lead a healthy active life. (about one in nine people), with millions of children not getting the nutrition they need. Most of these are in developing countries, where 12.9% of the population is undernourished.
An inadequate response to climate change has led to rising seas and coastal flooding, disasters due to extreme weather, destruction of marine ecosystems, severe drought, affecting poor people disproportionately and much more.
Excluding women from education, the workplace and government hasn’t done us any favours. So yeah, as Keb’ Mo’ says, maybe it’s time we “put the women in charge.”
[For details of one great organization which is working to empower girls and women in impoverished communities, check out Saphara’s Girls Champions Programme.]
We’ve had a tasty batch of blues albums during the first half of 2019. Here’s the ones that have risen to the top for us:
Elles Bailey, Road I Call Home
Superb sophomore album from English singer-songwriter. Blues-infused Americana, with eleven strong songs featuring Bailey’s impressive, soulful vocals.
Tulle Brae, Revelation
Ten original, well-crafted and hugely enjoyable songs, full of energy and emotion. Blues rock, delivered with a huge amount of soul and underpinned by Tullie’s gospel roots. Here’s our review.
Savoy Brown, City Night
Savoy Brown’s Taste and Try Before You Buy was one of the first blues songs I ever heard on Decca’s 1969 World of Blues Power. With many line-up changes along the way, the band has been powering through the blues for over five decades – this is their 40th album. Now a 3-piece, headed by original band member Kim Simmonds, they’ve given us a thoroughly unreconstructed, but hugely enjoyable album of powerful blues rock
Gary Clark Jr., This Land
Texas bluesman’s 3rd studio album and his best. Seventeen tracks where he cleverly and successfully fuses a number of styles from rock, R&B, hip-hop and soul, with a dash of reggae. Check out our piece on this album.
Rory Gallagher, Blues
New collection of blues recordings from the Irish artist released in what would have been his 50th year of recording. Gallagher was one of the great white blues guitarists of the rock’n’roll era. 36 tracks over 3 CDs – electric and acoustic and live – exude a raw energy, and include special guest sessions with legendary blues artists Muddy Waters and Albert King. An wonderful overview of Gallagher’s career.
Christone Ingram, Kingfish
Quite simple a terrifically enjoyable album, with twelve original songs that feature Ingram’s mellifluous vocals and stunning guitar work. The album is very definitely the blues, with familiar themes of lost and unrequited love but there’s a positivity throughout that is very tangible. Full review.
Keb’ Mo’, Oklahoma
Rich, typically Keb’ Mo’ style rootsy blues, featuring collaborations with Rosanne Cash, Taj Mahal, Jaci Velasquez, and his wife, Robby Brooks Moore. Producer Colin Linden and Robert Randolph pitch in to, to great effect in a potent and hugely enjoyable set of songs which will surely compete for a Grammy.
Kenny Wayne Shepherd, The Traveler
Eight originals and two covers from the ever-consistent Shepherd, accompanied by a group of talented musicians. Shepherd has become not only a not class blues rock guitarist, but a fine song-writer. Mind you, it’s the acoustic Tailwind, with its positive vibe, that stands out for me.
Joanne Shaw Taylor, Reckless Heart
Blues rock, full of energy from Detroit-based British artist. It’s an upbeat album with some fiery, up-tempo tracks, driven by Taylor’s top notch guitar work (with no guitar pedals) and her superb, raspy vocals.
Mavis Staples, We Get By
Remarkable vocal performance by the 80 year old Staples, aided and abetted by producer Ben Harper. In songs of hope and determination, she sings, “things gotta change around here” and we’re “not too far down the wrong road to turn around.”
Walter Trout, Survivor Blues
Walter Trout’s 28th album covers songs that have inspired him along his long musical journey, including numbers by Elmore James, John Mayall, Hound Dog Taylor, Fred McDowell and J.B. Lenoir, putting his own inimitable stamp upon them. Walter Trout is an exquisite guitarist, an accomplished singer and he’s given us another gem.
Tedeschi Trucks, Signs
4th studio album from the impressive Tedeschi Trucks outfit, with its typical meld of classic rock, old soul and blues, into a full-bodied Americana. It’s a calmer than previous outings, however, with Tedeschi’s incredible vocals to the fore, supported, as always by Trucks’ exquisite slide guitar.
Jontavious Willis, Spectacular Class
Wonderful album of acoustic blues, produced by Keb’ Mo’. Described as a “wonderboy” by Taj Mahal, no less, Willis matches his skilful country blues guitar with rich, soulful vocals.
“Every night I do a show and I meet people afterwards and they tell me their own stories. When I get off-stage, they thank me for songs I’ve written. They tell me that this song saved their life; that song saved her dad’s life…”
Rory Block is a multiple Blues Award winner, an exceptional acoustic guitarist and has been playing the blues for the past 50 odd years. In this terrific interview, she told us she feels inspired, motivated and like she’s just getting started. In Part 1 of the interview, she talked about getting her Acoustic Blues Artist of the Year award, her celebrated “mentor series” of tributes to the country blues legends, and the making of her new album of Bessie Smith songs, A Woman’s Soul. In Part 2, below, she talks about Robert Johnson, overcoming stage fright, and reminisces about meeting Son House and Rev. Gary Davis.
Gary When you’ve been taking on an old blues song, whether it’s a Robert Johnson song or Mississippi John Hurt song, I guess you’re always trying to make it fresh for a modern audience. You’re capturing this style, something of the essence. But how do you go about that, you know taking a one of those guy’s songs and making it fresh?
Rory Well I don’t think it’s something that you that you consciously do. I don’t consciously say, I better do this a little different. With the Robert Johnson tribute, that was an example of where I didn’t want to do it differently. For me Robert Johnson is the top of the mountain. He is the master of that style. It doesn’t get any better than that. So it’s not like somebody is waiting for me to do it my way.
And that doesn’t diminish me as an artist. It just means that I’m not going to come up with a better way. So, I wanted to get right down to something that I felt I really understood. I heard him first in 1964 when I was 14 years old and I immediately knew that he was the top of the mountain. I mean it was so great. So, I said, I’m going to crack this code – from I first heard his music, I had some kind of a connection to it and I was very focused on it. I want to talk about that again in a second, where I had an interesting background that I think gave me a certain edge when it came to being able to play something very close to what he was playing.
And so I just said, I’m going for the way he did it, both vocals and guitar. I wanted it to be accurate and measure by measure. I think there’s not a better way than his way – I started with that. I’m not going to create a better way than his way. I’m going to do it his way. What does that evoke? Remember with the classic painters of yore. They started their careers by copying the paintings of Masters stroke for stroke because that taught them. You need to know to the best of your ability how to do what they did. So that’s how I approached Robert Johnson. I said, he’s the top and I’m the student. So, I approached it that way.
So that leads to, why do I think that I could do that? Well, the first type of American roots music that I was exposed to was Appalachian. This early mountain, country music later evolved to bluegrass and later evolved to today’s country music. The earliest mountain music had a style of banjo playing called claw hammer. And my dad played that. My father was also a country fiddle player – that was Irish music, music from the British Isles from Ireland, Scotland and England. All the people who came over here brought their music and their music evolved and changed and grew. But much of it was as written in the old style.
So there was my dad playing this really wonderful old mountain style of banjo playing called frailing, and there’s a lot of old timey music players who know exactly that style. Plucking up and slamming down was part of it. Chicka-boom, chicka-boom, chicka-boom, and it was a very unusual hand movement. Well, that translated totally into Robert Johnson, because my dad had shown me how to do that when I was a kid. So, there I was going chicka-boom, snapping up and thumping down. My dad had a thumping style on guitar and on banjo, but he played fiddle very beautifully. But his banjo playing as he showed it to me was a huge help for me when I started playing this percussive style, like when I watch Son House hitting the strings, hitting the guitar with his whole hand. Wham! You know, like a drum. And that style was completely comfortable for me because of what I had learned from my dad. And so, I feel like that gave me an edge. Because I was able to play the percussive style that a lot of those blues players were playing, in a very comfortable way. It was right there for me because I had been working on that already since 1964.
Then after Robert Johnson came Son House, and on those two recordings I felt very much like I wanted to capture the original formats of the songs. But then after that I began to do it a little different. Oh you know I was really having a lot of fun! It was starting to feel like, if I wanted to put an overdub on that wasn’t part of the original arrangement, that was okay, and you know, it got a little looser with Skip James, with Fred McDowell, Mississippi John Hurt. I started putting slide solos on top of songs and then that really opened up the idea that the arrangements could be what whatever I felt I wanted to do. With Robert Johnson I had to do it like him. With Son House. I wanted to do it like him too, but maybe with a little more variation. But after that, I thought, well this could really open up and just not be in the expected direction all the time.
Gary That’s very interesting. Now the music that you play, Rory, is mostly nearly a century old and is from a different time, a different social context. What would you say is the enduring power of the blues? What makes it still relevant?
Rory Well, first of all if you took away all of our electrical stuff and all of our technology, we’d all just still be like the people we’ve been over the thousands and millions of years – you know, essentially still all human. We all cry, we all laugh, we all hurt. We all are excited and happy. We all are essentially the same. We’re all from the same seed – everybody. So, if you take away the trappings of what makes this century and what makes it that century, then nothing has changed. It’s essentially the same message, the cry from the soul, you could say. It’s all the same deep emotions. Look at the Irish and English, and the ballads from that part of the world from years and years ago passed down through the centuries and the ages, and they’re all about the same things that we feel and care about now and today and same thing – blues. Same thing with all forms of music that have a storyline. We’re still talking about the same stuff that we all understand.
Gary So along the way and all the ups and downs of your career as a travelling musician, did you ever think about giving up, just thinking this is too hard, especially in the early days. I can’t do this anymore.
Rory All the time! [laughs] Except now. Yeah, it’s like every time I went into the studio – and I’m thinking it happened very much with Mama’s Blues which is before the mentor series – where I just thought, I’ll never sing again. You know that feeling has come over me so much. Not really now, I just have to say, I’m on my stride! I don’t question myself that much now, but there was that day where I went into the studio to do a vocal on the next record and I thought, well all that stuff I did in the past was just by accident. Yeah, but I’m never gonna be able to do it again. And I had that feeling every time, and every time things wouldn’t go well. Look, I’ve been in a field of music that has been so marginalized for so long and all I ever heard was, you’re never going gonna make it singing blues. It’s a curiosity but it’s a thing of the past. Wake up! The message is, become a commercial artist, that’s where the career is, that’s where the money is, that’s where the success is. What you want to do, you’re never going to make it. A lot of people told me that and I felt very discouraged. But I kept on – music is all I know how to do; I couldn’t have gone off and chosen another career because music is what I know how to do. And why did you choose blues? Because blues is what I love.
But that was kind of why I kept on and kept on. But I always felt discouraged. I felt like I’m nowhere, nobody. I’m never going to be a thing, you know. And then there would be these surprises that would happen that would just make me feel like this could this could work. And these little joyous moments, moments where I said this is working, this is great. When Stevie Wonder came and played in the studio on my record a million years ago now, I said, this is the finest moment of my musical existence, if nothing else good ever happens! I’m content with this one. It was so sweet, it was so great.
And it’s still great to this day. Bonnie Raitt played on my record…Mark Knopfler – there are some wonderful people who’ve been generous and just were willing to appear on one of my recordings and that meant the world. So good things would suddenly happen out of the blue. And then I would get nominated. All of a sudden, I start getting nominated. You never know! But there was much discouragement, but always a tremendous amount of love for the music just sort of kept me on the straight line. I did band and songwriting stuff for a while – no problem there. I love that too. And then there was the Lovin’ Whisky song that became a hit record in Holland – I have a gold record for that – and then it kind of spread around different parts of Europe, and then it became much more well-known in the United States as a kind of ricochet across the ocean. [Check out the story behind the song below]
Gary And presumably what you get from your audiences when you’re performing is a big thing as well.
Rory It’s huge. I had to overcome fear and stage fright that was really debilitating. I was the worst, fearful. I have a book about my life called When a Woman Gets the Blues which is now completely totally politically incorrect from start to finish and I’m sure I’ll have to hear about it sooner or later, but when I wrote it, it was what was on my mind at the time. But I have a chapter on stage fright where I say that having been raised feeling that I was like the Little Match Girl, I just didn’t feel like I was anybody that anybody would care about. I was very insecure and that’s part of my story. I was told that I was not worthy. I went out into the world knowing that I was attached to this music and that I had capabilities and that people went, wow, when I was just a teenager, how did you learn that? Where’d that come from? I knew I had this talent, but I also had this terribly unworthy feeling as a person. So, I went on stage in the beginning totally terrified. I felt like I was just going to completely mess up and I just was so afraid and for about five years I never opened my eyes. I just shook with fear on stage and it was always humiliating and embarrassing, and I’d get off stage and I would think, Man that was horrible.
Then I had like a series of revelations about it. One of them was, wait a minute, what are you putting yourself through? The people in the audience didn’t come there because they hate you! They came there to hear your music, so that sort of means they like you! And I had this whole realization that I was like a little kid kind of hiding behind my mother’s aprons with fear and I was bringing this fear onto the stage and it was misplaced. So, I thought, well,l this is just my office. This is where I go to work every day or every night or every weekend. What reason do I have to be any more afraid of going to my office than all the other people who go to work every day in their office and they’re not, you know, cowering in fear. So, I had this revelation that these people in the audience were my friends, and I was able to come out of that debilitating stage fright and come to a point where I felt I’m in a roomful of friends, a really wonderful safe place and I can talk to them. And that’s how I relate to my audiences and they’re wonderful people.
By the way, every night I do a show and I meet people afterwards and I go, wow, people are so much more wonderful and real than you think looking at the news. When you’re face to face, person to person with the real people that are out there, you realize people are still good at heart, they’re wonderful, and people tell me their own stories. When I get off-stage, they thank me for songs I’ve written. They tell me that this song saved their life; that song saved her dad’s life. It could be anything. When people come up to me, they get real, they go, “thank you for writing Lovin’ Whisky – I stopped drinking two weeks ago.” And I go, thank you for telling me.
And somebody would write me about such and such a song, and say, I was going to kill myself…but I changed my mind. Oh man, if I’ve done one thing like that! So, I got to the point where before going on stage I had no routine – I didn’t do any deep breathing, I didn’t do anything – but I thought, if I could just do one good thing for one person, I’m good with that. I just wanted to be used to do something good for someone. And every night someone or multiple people in the house would verify that feeling that they didn’t feel alone because I wrote an embarrassing song about my own life and decided that it didn’t matter if I was embarrassed by it in case it helps someone else. And it always does, because our stories are universal.
Gary Fabulous. I really wish we could go off on a number of different tangents here it’s been very, very interesting. But I guess we’ll probably have to come to a close or else we could be here all day! It’s been absolutely fascinating. But I can’t let you go and not ask about the Reverend Gary Davis who is a particular favourite of mine. He’s just a wonderful guitarist and yet Rolling Stone magazine had no room for him in its list of 100 greatest guitarist, which is absolutely amazing.
I read Ian Zack’s Say No to the Devil. I don’t know if you’ve read that biography of Davis – it’s very, very good. Actually it’s a heart rending story, seeing Davis’s struggle and poverty, and yet seeing the level of his expertise and musicality. So, tell us a little bit about going to see Gary Davis for guitar lessons and what your impressions of him were.
Rory I was absolutely blinded with admiration with every one of the original blues players whom I met. Every one of them – it was like the light shining, reflecting from them, beautiful light that was beyond blinding and amazing. And Reverend Gary Davis was no different. I mean I just was in awe.
I was 15 and I was not a student by the way. Stephan Grossman was my first boyfriend and he would take me all these places because he knew everybody – all the record collectors, all the musicians. In Europe they were starting to play some really cool songs. There was Eric Clapton who was playing Robert Johnson stuff and including country blues influences. The Beatles were doing it, and so we knew that on the other side of the ocean people were aware of the blues, but you could count us on two hands – the record collectors, the people looking for the early blues players, and the people playing, you could count on maybe a hand or two. So anyway, Stefan knew all these people and he would take me everywhere, we’d go backstage to meet them every time someone was rediscovered because he would know about it. We would end up doing things like going to Mississippi John Hurt’s home and that sort of thing, and Son House would come and visit Stefan at his parents’ house and I was there too.
So we went to Reverend Gary Davis’s apartment in the Bronx and sometimes David Bromberg would be there too. Only a handful of people were there. Roy Bookbinder, Woody Mann, a few others. Jorma [Kaukonen], told me and he didn’t actually meet Reverend Gary Davis but he just immersed himself in his music which is also a deep and real way to get to know the music. Like me and Robert Johnson. So anyway, Reverend Gary Davis was awesome and beautiful. He was witty, he was funny, sharp, quick. He was a phenomenal player, as you know. But he didn’t stop and say, you put the second finger of your index finger on the third fret and so on. He didn’t teach you anything like that, he just played. And he and Stephan would just sort of roast each other. I mean when Gary Davis would start, you had to keep up with him if you wanted to be his student, and he would just play and he would be, I think correctly, saying, I’m showing you my hand. You see what I’m doing? Now do it. So that was like the hard knock school of great guitar lessons and then he would sort of really tease Stefan, if Stefan didn’t pick it up immediately. He was so funny and he’d rib Stefan, but Stefan kept up with him, and they would go back and forth. Stefan learned it that way, and so did David Bromberg and Roy Bookbinder. That’s how they learned. That was really being an apprentice, I think.
Gary Fantastic. Thank you Rory. Thank you for being so generous with your time.
“I feel like I’m on a roll. I know what I’m doing here. I’m focused. I’m excited about it, I’m on the road and I know what my destination is. I don’t think I’ve ever felt that as clearly as I feel it now.” Rory Block
Rory Block is one of the world’s greatest living acoustic blues artists. She’s been honing her guitar skills since she was a teenager in 1964 in New York City, and has devoted her life and career to performing the blues. Her talent has been recognized many times by WC Handy and Blues Music Awards in the US, as well as gaining accolades and awards in Europe. She has just won Acoustic Artist of the Year in the 2019 Blues Music Awards.
Over the years Rory has performed with a host of other top artists like Keb’ Mo’, Bonnie Raitt, Stevie Wonder, Taj Mahal, Mark Knopfler, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Jorma Kaukonen…the list goes on. As the New York Times put it, “Her playing is perfect, her singing otherworldly as she wrestles with ghosts, shadows and legends.”
Rory Block grew up in the New York of the 50s and 60s, in the world of Bob Dylan, Maria Muldaur, and the folk revival which saw country blues artists like Skip James, Mississippi John Hurt, Rev. Gary Davis, Fred McDowell and Son House rediscovered. Her personal encounters with these influential blues masters of the 20th century left an indelible mark on her and has inspired her music and performances ever since. Not least in her highly acclaimed set of tribute albums to Robert Johnson, Bukka White, Skip James, Mississippi John Hurt, Rev. Gary Davis, Fred McDowell and Son House. In these she has masterfully recreated the music of these seminal artists, reinterpreting the songs for a new generation.
Down at the Crossroads was delighted to get talking to Rory, and found her undaunted by the prospect of getting older, as inspired and excited about her music as ever, embarking on a new multi-album project which pays tribute to the woman blues artists of yesteryear, and generally loving life.
We talked to her about her life in the blues and her new album A Woman’s Soul: A Tribute to Bessie Smith. So interesting and wide-reaching was the discussion, we’ve split in into two parts. Here’s Part 1 –
Gary Rory, Congratulations for having won that Blues Music Award. But I know of course that you’ve won many blues music and W.C. Handy awards and others over the years. How satisfying is that sort of recognition for you?
Rory It really does mean a lot. I think it’s fabulous to be nominated. Actually, it’s a shock! When I was first nominated, I couldn’t believe it. It was just so you know – so justifying – it makes me feel like my work, it means something. People are noticing, people care. Sometimes we can get in a bit of a low spot where we think nothing that you’re doing adds up to anything. Anybody can have that feeling. And so, a nomination in itself tells you that you shouldn’t be discouraged, that something is going right.
But I used to tell myself, don’t worry, because I had been nominated a number of times before winning the first time, and I was pretty much satisfied with that and I wasn’t expecting to win. But I secretly wished that someday I would! But I kept telling myself not to think about it. And when I did win, it was a sweet thing and it did really make me feel joyous and happy. And then most recently I thought, well, I’ll never win again, I’ve got my five awards. That’s more than enough. So, I was going to the awards fully expecting not to win because I’m not that much of a social media person and these days you just really need wide reach, lots of attention given to social media and I’m not so great at that at all. I mean, I don’t post anything myself. Without my husband nobody would see anything! But I just thought well, I’ll just be so happy with the nomination. And so, when I heard my name in the distance, I didn’t even know my category had been called. And I thought, Oh my God, I think I might have just – could it be? And I thought I better go and see! So, I kind of went up the back steps to the stage and then they were all looking towards me coming up and I thought, this could be that I just won – it was so far from my mind at that point! It was as if I just thought that’s part of the past.
So it’s really meant a great deal to me because I felt like somehow it was really a validation of my work – that it is being appreciated. I think that’s the beauty of it, honestly, it is a good feeling.
Gary Yeah. All these years in your long career and it is still being appreciated.
Rory Nice. I feel energized and so does my husband Rob. In fact, I feel like I’m just getting started! Even without the award I feel like I’m on a roll. I know what I’m doing here. I’m focused. I’m excited about it, I’m on the road and I know what my destination is. I don’t think I’ve ever felt that as clearly as I feel it now.
Gary Well that’s absolutely fabulous, because as people get older, sometimes they just kind of drift a little bit. They think it’s all behind them. But you know I think what you’re saying is fantastic, that you feel you’re on a roll, that you’ve a lot more to do. That’s brilliant.
Rory Yeah. I mean, honestly, that’s the whole thing about “older or younger” whatever it may be – when it really comes down to it – 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? For me, it’s just like I feel more secure. I’m more clear that this is what I was put here to do. You know, really, I see it that way. I was put here to do it. 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.
Gary Well that is fantastic. That was very refreshing to hear you say that. And congratulations on the Bessie Smith album which has been very well acclaimed and very well received. Tell us a bit about why you wanted to make this album.
Rory Well, you know that my previous project is the mentor series. I have to back up and just talk about that if I may, for a second, because it makes the other thing make more sense. I was raised in an environment and in a family where you didn’t talk about your accomplishments. It was not OK. Whatever that moral system is where some of us were raised to go, “Don’t boast, don’t tell anyone.” And I never spoke about the people that I knew in person and I never spoke about, “well you know I actually spent time with Son House” – I never spoke about anything from the past. And then one day it just hit me, like, I really want to talk about this! I thought I ought to tell my story a little bit and that’s when I started writing my book. And I ought to record records that celebrate the people that I knew in person. So, after the Robert Johnson tribute, which was however many years ago and won Acoustic Album of the Year, I thought it really should be followed by Son House. Whom I knew and had spent a fair amount of time with. And then I thought, you know, I really should try and explain that this is someone who inspired me in person, because in retrospect, how rare is it to have spent time with him? I just thought well, everybody spends time with someone else, and everyone spends time with Reverend Gary Davis and Mississippi John Hurt! But it really turned out that good fortune had put me into the right place at the right time and I was able to briefly meet these absolutely phenomenal, influential founding masters of blues.
So that led to the mentor series – six CDs to blues masters whom I met in person. And it was nothing to do with whether they were women or men. These were the blues people who were rediscovered and brought in to Greenwich Village where I lived. If they had brought Bessie Smith back (she was deceased at that point) – I would have been overjoyed to meet her too. But with no choice on my part, these were the blues masters who I was introduced to as a young teenager. So those six CDs concluded the mentor series.
And everyone was saying, What are you gonna do to follow up? And then I thought, this really needs to be about my favourite women of blues, and so “the power women of the blues” is my new theme. And it was a no-brainer to start with Bessie Smith. No, I didn’t meet Bessie Smith but that’s not the criterion of this new series. It is those who I dearly loved who were a huge part of inspiring me. And I don’t even know who I’ll pick from here because there’s such a broad range of names and great artists. You could do tributes just about for the rest of one’s life and never run out of inspiration. But to choose Bessie Smith was easy for me because I grew up listening to her music.
Gary Actually it was the women blues artists in the first instance that were the really big stars even before the men wasn’t it?
Rory You know that’s a good point and I’ve heard nobody say that, but I think you’re right. Yes, there was Bessie Smith, Ida Cox, Ma Rainey, Memphis Minnie, all who actually attained real name recognition. They toured the world with bands – Bessie Smith was playing with Louis Armstrong and she played for luminaries around the world and she was a big star. So yeah, I think that’s that is a good point.
Gary Then you get through to somebody like Sister Rosetta Tharpe who maybe isn’t exactly blues but I mean she was a big star.
Rory Yeah. That’s totally correct. And one of my challenges is how modern do I get? Bessie Smith was still recording, maybe overlapping in some of the years of the early country blues acoustic artists. But then there were the ones who are even beyond Bessie’s decade and I’m going to I have to limit this to 1940, 1950, 1960. So that’s a challenge that I haven’t yet sorted out. I suppose it really shouldn’t matter that much and I should just pick my favorites!
Gary Yeah, it’s very interesting. All those wonderful tribute albums you’ve done to the country blues guys – they were all fine guitarists and I guess this is an understandable thing for you to do to pay tribute to them by picking up something of their style and at the same time making it your own. But I guess the process is really rather different with somebody like Bessie Smith who sang with a big band. How much of a challenge was it and how did you go about reinterpreting the songs?
Rory I’m glad you asked because that was a huge challenge and I was thinking I really wouldn’t manage it very well. But I figured it out! But in the beginning, I thought, How will I play all these jazz chords because I’m not a jazz player? And I started listening to it and I thought, this isn’t going to come out right. This is never going to work, it’s not going to have any credibility. And I started trying to do the basic tracks which come first on the album. As I started working on them, I thought, I can’t get these chords, they’re over my head. But then, somehow or other it began to fall into place.
I start with a simple rhythm track that I do myself, by the way, with little boxes and Bongo things – mostly boxes and tubs, an oatmeal box, literally, and serving spoons and wooden spoons. And I create a basic track which gives it a much more alive feel than a generated click track. I wanted a more organic sound. So, if I make my own click track that translates into a much more natural feel in the end. I’ve discovered this and it’s really my thing. It’s a way to make it sound more organic, because there’s gonna be the human variation on the beats and they’re not just computer generated. So then I play the acoustic layer of the chords to the best of my ability. And then I put on overdubs, once I get that.
So, the challenge was to get the chords right. And I was scratching my head, wishing I’d had jazz training, but I managed, and all of a sudden, it got easier! And then I would move on and put the bass part on. I was listening to the parts of the band members on her great tracks and the bass player is astounding! So I tried to do that and I followed along, translating what I could, and I think I did a pretty much a note for note type of translation in the beginning. And then after a while I stopped doing that. It was perfect for the first few tunes to use as much as possible the actual notes played by the bass player. Then after a while I just started getting the bass groove to my guitar down and I just started playing and it felt like this is working. So after that, it just opened up and I thought, I can do this! And then I would layer on my slide parts. And then once it gets rolling, then it’s like, this is fun!
Gary So you basically did everything on the album yourself by the sounds of things?
Rory Completely, yes! There’s nobody else but me! That’s the way it’s been for a while and I’ll tell you why I started doing it. And there is no other good reason other than that in the beginning we couldn’t afford anything. Back in the days when they were making big L.A., New York records, if you look back at the budgets for a star from the 70s, we’re talking like, a half a million dollars to make an album. And then times changed and those little acoustic artists came along and we’d make albums at studios that weren’t charging three and four hundred dollars an hour, but maybe 40 dollars an hour. We’re like, oh this is so great! But I had one day in the studio with luminary players where a band came in – the soul people from Philadelphia and so on – and it was a ten thousand dollar day! You know, I mean, my goodness people don’t have that kind of budget money anymore now.
At one point I used Stevie Wonder’s backup singers on a certain record but that was back when people were giving me budget money to pay for that stuff. But then it just kept getting less, and it wasn’t because you were becoming less known or because people didn’t care about your music or your career wasn’t growing, it was because everything was restructuring. Record companies’ budgets went down, down, down. Everybody I know has had the same experience. So, in the end I said, I’m going to sing these myself, I’m going to play this myself. It was literally you had to do it if you wanted to have a band sound in this little niche that I’m talking about. So, I just came up with it and it right away felt like it could work. And so, I’ve stayed with that and now it’s like it’s what I do.
Gary Now you just mentioned singing. People will always remark that on your fantastic guitar work and your slide playing, but in listening to this album, I must say, I was very taken with your singing. Obviously, you couldn’t try to imitate Bessie Smith – but the singing on this is terrific. What had you to think about in your approach to the singing?
Rory Getting the right amount of soul. You know, it’s really about the soul and putting yourself into it the whole way. I had to add power. But listen, I’ve been singing Mississippi John Hurt, I’ve been singing Reverend Gary Davis, I’ve been singing Robert Johnson, so I understand that you can’t do a weak vocal. I have to give my all because these artists are just so amazing that I really don’t want to miss the mark. I know I have to give everything that I’m capable of and so that’s how I that’s how I approach it – I go, you better get this right! This is not about getting by. This is about giving everything you can give. And as you said earlier, you also have to put something of yourself in there, otherwise you’re trying to be someone else.
Gary Yeah. And every occasion, whether it’s a Robert Johnson song or Mississippi John Hurt song, I guess you’re always trying to make it fresh for a modern audience. You’re capturing this style, something of the essence. But how do you go about that, you know, taking one of those guy’s songs and making it fresh?
Rory Well I don’t think it’s something that you consciously do. I don’t consciously say, I better do this a little different. With the Robert Johnson tribute, that was an example of where I didn’t want to do it differently. For me Robert Johnson is the top of the mountain. He is the master of that style. It doesn’t get any better than that. So, it’s not like somebody is waiting for me to do it my way.
And that doesn’t diminish me as an artist. It just means that I’m not going to come up with a better way. So, I wanted to get right down to something that I felt I really understood. I heard him first in 1964 when I was 14 years old and I immediately knew that he was the top of the mountain. I mean it was so great. So I said, I’m going to crack this code – because I knew about the guitar playing, I feel like I’ve known from the time that I first started listening to him and tried to play the music, I had some kind of a connection to it and I was very focused on it. I want to talk about that again in a second, where I had an interesting background that I think gave me a certain edge when it came to being able to play something very close to what he was playing.
Check out Part 2 of our interview with Rory Block here, where she talks about meeting the seminal country blues artists, dealing with stage-fright, and sitting in guitar lessons with Rev. Gary Davis.
Rory Block is one of the world’s greatest living acoustic blues artists. She’s been honing her guitar skills since… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…1 day ago
Richard Thompson, looking fit and healthy, gave a rousing solo acoustic performance in the rather grand surroundings of Belfast’s Ulster Hall, getting a standing ovation from the delighted audience. He’s an iconic figure, featuring on Rolling Stone’s “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time,” winning a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Americana Music Association in Nashville, several Grammy nominations and an OBE.
4. Lowden acoustic guitars “are the best out there, if you ask me,” said Thompson, praising the highly acclaimed Northern Irish luthiers. On the evidence of this masterful display of guitar wizardry, there can’t be much argument.
