Joanna Connor: “The blues is honest music. There’s no pretense involved and that’s appealing.”

It’s time for everyone to sit up and take notice of Joanna Connor. And with her new album, 4801 South Indiana Avenue, produced by none other than Joe Bonamassa, it feels like an already successful career is opening up in new ways.

Those in the know have seen the YouTube videos that have gone viral, with her incredible slide guitar playing – check out Walkin’ Blues, 8m views and counting – and have listened with pleasure to some of the thirteen albums she’s released over the past 30 years. But 4801 South Indiana Avenue ought to bring her much wider attention.

Joanna Connor has been paying her dues for many years, plying her trade in the blues clubs of her adopted home town, Chicago. She moved there in 1984, and has played with, and learned from, the likes of James Cotton, Buddy Guy and Junior Wells. Shortly after arriving in Chicago, she began playing at the premiere blues club, Kingston Mines, where she has continued to perform three nights a week until the advent of the pandemic. She’s been a regular at major blues and music festivals worldwide, and those who know her music will hail her as one of the world’s best blues rock guitarists, with her innovative, jazzy, funky approach.

Of her early days in Chicago, she has said, “It was my university. I went out every night of the week. Within a month I had my first gig with the legendary Johnny Littlejohn. A few weeks later I became a part of Dion Payton and the 43rd St Bluesband. We were the house band at the Checkerboard Lounge, on the south side of Chicago, then owned by Buddy Guy. That’s when my schooling kicked into overdrive. I played with Buddy, Junior Wells, Otis Rush, Sammy Lawhorn, Pinetop Perkins, Hubert Sumlin, Magic Slim, Son Seals, Lonnie Brooks, Koko Taylor, just to name a few. I was blessed.”

Her new album on Joe Bonamassa’s new independent blues record label Keeping The Blues Alive, follows 2019’s excellent Rise, and was produced by Joe Bonamassa and Josh Smith at Ocean Way Recording Studios in Nashville, Tennessee. It’s an absolutely top-notch set of blues rock that clearly has a Chicago blues heritage, yet sounds completely fresh and modern. Connor’s killer slide guitar and vocals are augmented by some characteristically fine guitar work by Bonamassa and a tight-knit top-class band, consisting of Josh Smith (guitar), Reese Wynans (keyboards), Cavin Turner (bass), and drummer Lemar Carter (drums).

It’s superbly produced, but at the same time, it’s packed with raw, high-energy musicianship.

Down at the Crossroads got chatting to Ms. Connor about the album. I congratulated her on such a fine piece of work, and asked, first of all about the record’s title.

She told me she had been very pleased about the way it had turned out: “I mean, the whole time we were doing it, it felt special and it felt wonderful. So, in the whole process, I thought, Oh, this is going to be good! And now I’m very pleased that people love it.

“As for the title, 4801 South Indiana Avenue was the address of Teresa’s lounge, which went away in about 1986. I did actually play there a few times, but, you know, Teresa’s had Howling Wolf and Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, Junior Wells, and it’s really a historic place.”

Theresa’s Lounge was one of the best of the bars that had opened on Chicago’s South Side to showcase the emerging sound of Chicago blues after the Second World War. African Americans from rural Mississippi had begun to migrate north, in the hope of a better life, and the musicians amongst them adapted the Delta blues they had played to a new form of blues reflecting their new urban environment.

Theresa Needham

Owner Theresa Needham regularly booked people like Junior Wells and Buddy Guy, and quickly established the venue as one of the best places to see and hear the blues played. Over time its faithful local clientele was joined by people from all over the world attracted by the calibre of music being played.

Choosing to reference this iconic Chicago venue in the album’s title nails its colours firmly to the mast. Connor said it was the most bluesy record she’s ever recorded. I asked about the songs chosen – they are mostly covers of obscure blue songs.

“Well, Josh Smith, Joe Bonamassa and I sat there, and just went through maybe fifteen or sixteen songs and then kind of narrowed it down to the ones we chose. We all know a lot about the blues in terms of the history and the artists, but Joe is like a walking encyclopedia! So he really knows how to dig into some of the deeper catalogues.”

You do get the impression with Bonamassa, a self-confessed guitar and technology nerd, that he’s likely to dive deep into the history and background of any music he’s involved in. Just watch his recent movie, Guitar Man, where, at one point he claims not to really be a blues musician, but then later on he’s travelling around Mississippi looking for the roots of the blues. You can well imagine the man getting deep into the detail.

I wondered if there was any song that Joanna particularly likes on the album?

“It’s hard to choose because they all bring something different to the table. Some have got that Hound Dog Taylor boogie-type thing, some have great energy and some have got that slinky horn thing. But I do like the single a lot, I Feel So Good, I just feel like it’s got a lot of fire to it and I’m pleased with my playing on that too.”

I Feel So Good features some incendiary slide playing by Connor, taken at a tremendous pace with deadly accuracy. And as she says, her singing is fiery. It’s a song you can’t help moving to, or smiling as you listen. And it’ll be sensational when played live.

I also love the Albert King one, For the Love of a Man, where the horns give it huge sound. With horns and guitars blasting you might wonder about how the vocals fare – no problem for Connor, whose singing on this album is stellar. We expect a Joanna Connor album to blow us away with the guitar work, but her vocal performance here is maybe the best we’ve heard of her. On songs like I Feel So Good and Please Help, she sounds like she is really cutting loose. That, apparently, came with Bonamassa’s encouragement.

“Joe told me, people know you can really play the guitar, but the vocals are gonna surprise everyone. And that was Joe just pushing me, you know, pushing me to the limit of what I could do with my voice. So, he knew what he was doing, I think.”

Photo: Marty Moffatt

Bonamassa’s stamp is clearly on the album. So, how did it come about that Joanne and Joe started working together?

“He saw some of my videos – people post videos of me online, and Joe put one of my videos on his sites, on social media and he said something about my talent and that I deserve to be recognized – something like that. So I reached out to him through direct message. I’m like, Hi, this is Joanna Connor! And thank you. And this is my contact information, if you ever want to get in touch with me. And he did immediately. Like within few hours. Then it just started rolling. That was in May of 2019. And then, Joe said, we gotta get into the studio, I’d like to record a record with you. And so that’s how we started the conversation.”

The way the album has turned out, with such an evident definition, I asked Joanna if she and Joe had a clear vision for the record at the outset.

“I had no clue. He asked me, but then he said, listen, I have a vision for this record. I want to make a record – I’m being selfish – that I want to listen to. And he said, I want to bring out all your best qualities throughout the whole record. Then he asked me, could I trust him in the project? I’m like, sure, you have a great reputation and done so much. So I let him take control and I just tried to do the best that I could.

“Joe brought a lot of humor, a lot of very dry humor, which I like; a little sarcasm, which I can totally relate to. And so that helped. And he was just a straight shooter, you know?

“With the guitar stuff, basically we’d just try to get a sound. He would give me an idea like, Hey, why don’t you try to do a Hound Dog Taylor type thing, be real raw. And the other times he’d just let me play and wouldn’t say anything. But with the vocals, he was much more hands-on.”

In the liner notes, Joanna says that Joe painted pictures for her with each cut, and then she “fleshed those stories out.” I wondered what that really means?

“It was kind of like Joe was a movie director. Most of the songs are about men and women: so Joe painted a scenario to try to get me in the moment of the song – ‘it’s like you walk in the club and your man is there with another woman.’ Every song he’d make up a scenario for me.”

In working with such a top-class band and Joe Bonamassa playing guitar, I asked Joanna if – despite being a very seasoned professional, and successful, performer – she was at all nervous in that environment to start with?

“Oh, extremely! Beforehand, as the whole months would go by, I was like, is this really going to happen? I was thinking, Whoa, I’m walking into a huge platform here with these legendary players and top-notch studio people. Of course, I’ve done it, I’ve played with some legendary people along the way, but still, this was something brand new for me. And I kinda had to coach myself down the aisle when I was on the plane, you know! But you got to give it your best and let go of these nerves and just let it happen. But I’m kind of nervous about new situations anyways. People always say, Oh, I can’t tell that you’re nervous. Well, if you were inside my brain, it’s a zoo in there!

“But once I started laying down those grooves and playing, they were all such nice guys, they were very down to earth. You never know, because people like that might be condescending, but they were totally cool. And we just had a blast and we were all in one room so it was kinda like being on stage.”

I wanted to know a bit about Joanna’s blues background. As she told me, she’s played with some legendary blues artists and spent her career playing in Chicago blues clubs. What, I asked her, is the continual drawing power of the blues? Why is this music so powerful, and why does it still attract people?

“Blues is the music of the soul. It’s the music that came from pain, sorrow and suffering. But also joy, from a group of people that had to deal with the harshest of harsh things. And I think all great music, unfortunately, usually comes from that kind of suffering. I think it really just speaks to the human emotion. And then, you know, there are the rhythmic qualities. But I think what draws you in is, when it’s played right, it’s honest music. There’s no pretense involved and I think that’s appealing.”

We’d all agree with that. And that’s why I suppose, the blues have transcended its original context, and people all over the world and in different situations can respond to it. What drew Joanna Conner to the blues when she was younger?

“My mother was a huge music lover. She wasn’t a mainstream person – she loved jazz and blues and rock. My mother had me when she was 32 – in those days, kind of old. I was her first kid. She was born in 1930, and by the time I was around she could have been listening to show music or something really corny, but she was really up on everything. And she brought that to me and I heard it my whole life. So it was part of what I grew up listening to.”

The young Joanna Connor starting to play guitar, was also down to her mother. “I woke up one day and she’s like, there is something for you in the living room, you’re going to play guitar. Really? I never had asked her for one!

“I had a strange journey with the guitar because I started off playing classical. Then I played acoustic. I had a teacher that taught me ragtime, Piedmont blues, Delta blues, and then the slide. After that I switched to electric and started singing in a band. But I really could never solo, that escaped me, although I was always a very good rhythm guitar player. So eventually when I was 22 and moved to Chicago, I said, listen, I gotta really focus on how to solo. It all came in stages, but I think I always had a good feel for music. I was always playing an instrument and singing. It’s just in my DNA in some way. But I worked hard at it too.”

When you listen to Connor’s previous album, Rise, it’s much more varied musically than this latest one, quite jazzy and funky in places – you’ve got all those musical influences that she imbibed from she was a child coming through there. So although 4801 South Indiana Avenue is an out and out blues album, Joanna Connor is not simply a blues artist, she’s a musician capable of adapting her playing to a range of genres, when the need arises.

She’s had a long career and a successful one. I wondered how it has been for here as a woman operating in what is often a genre dominated by men?

“My younger brother and I were talking and he said, well, you know, you have a strong personality! I guess I do! So that was one thing that carried me through. I wasn’t timid about things – not that I don’t get nervous, but I feel like I will stand up for myself, no question about it. But it was kind of lonely, because it’s mostly men and you’re never quite in the boys’ club. So, you’re definitely walking a path by yourself. And especially when I started, there was really just less than a handful of women playing an instrument like that.”

Joanna Conner is an incredibly hardworking professional musician, playing around 200 shows a year. Before, of course, the pandemic stopped everything in its tracks. And she’s been doing that for an awfully long time. She clearly loves what she does. What is it about performing at this high level that excites her?

“You know, the first time I ever really played with a band when I was seventeen. I was freaking out for a few days before the gig, but as soon as the lights on the stage went on and the people were there and the band started playing, I swear, I said, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life! I absolutely fell in love with it.

“First and foremost, it’s playing with a great band that brings me the most joy. And then if the audience is there with us, then it could be really transcendent and special. But it’s first the band, that interaction of musicians that really brought me into playing music.”

Not having that over this past year, though, has clearly been a frustration. Although she and her band played a few outdoors, private-hire shows last year, it’s basically been over a year without performing.

“It’s been strange. I haven’t not played music for more than three weeks at a time in forty years. I’ve been through a multitude of emotions. Sometimes I play my guitar now and I want to cry. And then other times I’m like, well, it’s good to take a break. The thing that’s kind of disconcerting is there’s a lot of famous clubs that are not going to reopen all around the States. I mean, when you become a musician, there’s no guarantee of anything, you’re always living on the edge. And so that part I’m sort of used to, but I’ve never been in any situation like this. There have been economic downturns, there was nine-eleven and so on, but for all of us this is an unprecedented time.”

And it’s a great pity that Joanna doesn’t have the opportunity to take this record out on the road for the time being. These are songs that, with Joanna’s energy and commitment, will fire up audiences for sure, creating an electric atmosphere. But hopefully, with vaccines and good sense prevailing, we’ll get through this, and we’ll get to experience the exhilarating energy of a Joanna Connor performance. Until then, just get the album, turn up the volume and let these classic-but new songs bring the blues to life for you in new ways.

Great Blues Albums #1 – B.B. King, Live at the Regal

---

B.B. King’s Live at the Regal is on every blues fan’s list as one of the greatest blues albums ever. It’s a live album of ten songs recorded from a concert by B.B. in the Regal Theatre in Chicago on 21^st November 1964, and it captures King, aged 39, at the height of his powers. His singing and guitar work is immaculate and his engagement with the audience hugely entertaining.

I saw B.B. King just a couple of years before he passed away, playing the Grand Rex Theatre in Paris. It was the first time I’d seen him, and it was a great thrill – we really did feel like we were connected to the history of the blues that night, even though B.B. didn’t play his guitar as much or as well as he might have as a younger man. Fair enough! When you’ve reached his legendary status, I’ll take what I can get. His singing was still very good, at times sweet, at times powerful, and his good-humoured interaction with the audience was good to see. I’d have liked one of those guitar picks he tossed into the crowd, but I was too far away!

My daughter bought me a vinyl copy of Live at the Regal for Christmas, and it was a delight to slip it on to the turntable and hear the songs in lovely warm, crystal-clear stereophonic sound. On this album you get B.B. as I didn’t get him that night in Paris, that characteristic, crisply-picked guitar answering his vocals, which range versatilely from tender to gritty to falsetto. B.B. King is one of those rare guitarists you can recognize from hearing just one or two notes.

Was he playing Lucille that night? Well, not one of the black signature models that Gibson brought out – they only appeared in 1980 – but from the photographs on the album sleeve, he appears to have been playing a Gibson 335 sunburst and with a Bigsby vibrato device. Not that King ever seemed to need the latter – he got great vibrato from just his fingers on the fretboard.

Doubtless you’re familiar with the Lucille story – but just in case: when B.B. was playing a dance hall in Arkansas in the winter of 1949, a fight broke out and a barrel half-filled with burning kerosene set in the middle of the dance floor to keep things warm was overturned, setting the place on fire. Everyone, including King raced outside, but in his panic, B.B. had left his guitar behind, so he dashed inside to rescue it. He later found out that the fight had been over a woman named Lucille, so he named his guitar, and all subsequent ones, Lucille as a reminder never again to do something as stupid as run into a burning building or fight over a woman!

King, in his biography, Blues All Around Me, said that before this particular concert, he had played the Regal “hundreds of times before,” and felt that he had played “hundreds of better concerts than the one taped at the Regal.” He was surprised at the critical response to the record, but said he was happy to receive the praise. However this particular night rates in the thousands of concerts King has played, the fact is it captures the man in top gear, playing with an outstanding band – Duke Jethro on the piano, Leo Lauchie on the bass, Kenneth Sands on the trumpet, Johnny Board and Bobby Forte on tenor sax, and Sonny Freeman on drums.

Apparently, Jethro’s organ, which he was originally schedule to play, broke down, so King said he should just play the piano. Jethro told B.B. that he didn’t know how to play the piano, only to be told, “Well, just sit there and pretend; that’s what you do most of the time anyway!”

The band that night was in sterling form – B.B., when introducing them, says admiringly, “I think they’re wailin’ out there!”

Recognition of the stature of Live at the Regal has come from Rolling Stone Magazine, which put it at number 141 on its list of the “500 Greatest Albums Of All Time,” and in its addition in 2005 to the Library of Congress’s list of recordings chosen for permanent preservation with the National Recording Registry.

The album kicks off with Every Day I Have the Blues, after broadcaster and music promoter Pervis Spann introduces B.B. King as the “king of the blues.” It’s exciting stuff from the get-go, the brass in tip-top form duelling with King’s timeless guitar licks before the man kicks in with that beautiful tenor voice.

By the time the full guitar solo kicks in the crowd are already whooping and whistling. The crowd cheering throughout the album, actually, adds to the excitement and atmosphere and never seems distracting from the music. It’s just the way a good live album should be.

The album works its way through a veritable collection of B.B. King hits, including the slow blues of Sweet Little Angel (included in the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame’s “500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll) and How Blue Can You Get, King’s guitar reaching right inside you and wringing every ounce of emotion out.

The album captures a couple of great moments where B.B. interacts warmly with the audience – at the start of It’s My Own Fault and How Blue Can You Get – doubtless only a fraction of his chat during the evening, but showing that he was a consummate entertainer with a natural rapport with his audience. But for the most part, King let the sincerity of his singing and the piercing quality of his guitar do the talking.

Photo Credit: Solarpix / PR Photos

Obviously you can’t see it with this record, but King used to contort his face when he played his guitar – his wife Martha used to call him Ol’ Lemon Face because of that. King said of himself, “I squeeze my eyes and open my mouth, raise my eyebrows, cock my head and God knows what else. I look like I’m in torture, when in truth, I’m in ecstasy. I don’t do it for show. Every fibre of my being is tingling.” And that commitment to the music is what you’re hearing on Live at the Regal. “I wanted my guitar to connect to human emotion,” he said once. And you can feel that as you listen to this album.

If you’ve not listened to this album – do so without hesitation! If you’ve not listened to it in a while, get it out of your record collection and play it again. And don’t just play a couple of songs – play the whole thing and let B.B. and the band caress your soul. Rock along to You Upset Me Baby and Woke Up This Morning, and soak in the blues feeling of Worry Worry and You Done Lost Your Good Thing Now.

You’ll see what is the very best of modern blues.

M.C. Records’ Mark Carpentieri is optimistic about the future of blues and roots music.

Mark Carpentieri is the man behind M.C. Records, which he started in 1991. Previously a radio presenter on a weekly blues program in New York, Mark started the label to record his own band, Somethin’ Blue, in which he was a drummer. After signing Mississippi bluesman Big Jack Johnson in 1996, M.C. Records has gone from strength to strength, distributing all over the world and being recognized for the quality of its recordings. Punching far above its weight, the label has made a big contribution to the blues scene, and has been nominated for six Grammy Awards, and has won or been nominated for over 30 Blues Music Awards. In 2006, M.C. Records received The Blues Foundation Blues Label of the Year Award.

I got talking to Mark recently to find out more about the work M.C. Records has done over the years. I started by asking Mark first of all what the focus of the label is, what his philosophy or approach to music was, and he told me that for him it has always been about trying to discover what the artist is really passionate about in what they’re doing, and trying to help them articulate that.

“So, you might have two different types of blues releases, from, say, a Joanna Connor, which is blues rock, and then a Kim Wilson, that’s really retro Chicago blues, and they’re quite different, but they both represent those genres in the best possible light.” Mark tries to facilitate his artists doing what they do in the best possible way. And he’s pleased about the reputation that M.C. Records has gained.

“We don’t release a lot of records. I like to say they are all killer, no filler! That’s really important to me – that whatever I put out, people would really respond to it. And people do tell me that. And I’m really happy when I hear that.”

And he’s been doing this for a very long time – over 30 years, quite a feat for an independent label in today’s music industry. This industry has changed beyond all recognition since M.C. Records started up, so I put it to Mark that there must have been times when he thought that the rate of change was just was too much, that it was all getting too hard.

“It certainly has been challenging, especially over the last ten years. Things have really changed a lot. It’s been helpful to have the right kind of artists that people love and the artists themselves are proud of the work that they do. And they tour a lot so they can sell their CDs on the gigs and that always helps.

“But I think, especially around, 2009, 2010, things became very difficult. Odetta passed away in 2008, and then another artist that I had worked with very closely, Marie Knight, passed away in 2009. We were about to go in the studio with her again, and I was going to be in her touring band, and I was really looking forward to it. We had had so much nice love for the Marie Knight record. That was a challenging time, I must admit. I think it was really around that time, I had to think whether I wanted to continue the label or not.”

Marie Knight was a gospel singer, born in 1920, who toured with Sister Rosetta Tharpe in the 1940s, before going solo as a gospel singer and then recording some R&B songs in the 50s and 60s. She returned to gospel music in the 1970s. Her album Let Us Get Together is an album of Rev. Gary Davis songs and features Larry Campbell doing wondrous things on guitar accompaniment, outplaying Gary Davis, if that’s possible. Campbell is an extremely talented multi-instrumentalist, who was part of Bob Dylan’s band for many years, and the combination of Knight and Campbell on this album brings out the very best in these songs.

“I was working with Marie. I had been her manager for years and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to record her because I was her manager.  So, I was trying to figure out what we were going to do, and she only wanted to do gospel. She didn’t want to do blues, she didn’t want to do any of that. And so, as I was looking around, the idea of Rev. Gary Davis came to my mind, and ironically, he’s buried in my hometown of Lynbrook New York.

“So I listened to these gospel songs and I sent them to her, and she loved them. And then it was about trying to figure out who could work with her. At the time she was booked by Concerted Efforts. And the owner, Paul Kahn, suggested I contact Larry Campbell. I didn’t know if that would be possible – Larry had worked with Bob Dylan, you know, he was a big guy! But he really wanted to do it. So, we ended up recording, and then Kim Wilson guested on two tracks. It’s a record that really stands up. I mean, I listen to it not just because I made it but because it’s really enjoyable. It’s really well played. Larry plays the guitar, and also plays the violin. Catherine Russell’s on that record too [Russell is a wonderful American jazz singer]. She sings two tracks with her, which is great.”

When Marie Knight made Let Us Get Together, she was getting on, maybe around 87 years old – Mark said she never would admit to her age! – but her voice sounds great, strong and confident, and she really imbues these songs with a great deal of life and joy. I asked him about working with Marie and how he’d met her.

“Well, what happened was we were doing the tribute to Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Shout, Sister Shout, [a set of various top artists covering Rosetta Tharpe songs] and that was back in 2002. We were recording it and I forget who suggested it, maybe Maria Muldaur, and she said, you should contact Marie Knight. And of course, I said what everyone else would have said, is she still alive? Because she was a contemporary of Sister Rosetta. So I ended up getting a phone number and got speaking to her. But I was thinking, how do I know she’s going to be able to sing?

“Anyway, I talked to her and she didn’t sound weak or frail. She was cautious, but interested. She was very vibrant, so I just said, okay, let’s do it! Let’s see if this works. And I just took a leap of faith and she came down to the studio and she brought her piano player in, her piano player from the church. She was great, and a lot of people think that’s the highlight of the record; her version of Didn’t It Rain is so authentic.

“And then I was managing her, and she would do shows and she would take the bus and was determined to travel by herself! She was something else! So, it was really kind of amazing. I used to visit her in the hospital after she had her stroke. But the last time I saw her was in January of 2009, when we went to the BBC in New York City and she did an interview. Afterwards we had lunch and I said, I’ll see you later. And that was it.

“She was supposed to sing at Odetta’s Memorial service, and the day before we were trying to contact Marie. It ended up her sister called me up, saying that she had had a stroke, she’s in the hospital, and she never recovered after that. She passed away in August.”

I asked Mark if he had the sense that Marie had a strong faith?

“Oh, absolutely. She had a very strong faith. She really dedicated her life to God and she really felt that power. And I think that’s why she only wanted to sing gospel songs. She had some minor R&B hits in the fifties and early sixties but she just didn’t want to do that. She just didn’t feel comfortable singing those songs. I was glad I was able to find an outlet for her through Rev. Gary Davis.”

I was keen to hear about Mark’s experience with Odetta. Ian Zack has just written a terrific biography of Odetta (Odetta: A Life in Music and Protest), which brings out the absolutely massive contribution that Odetta made to American music, which is very often overlooked. Mark Carpentieri comes into the story and the book towards the end, with him working with Odetta when she was in her late sixties, long after her time in the limelight as an icon of the folk world had passed. Working with Odetta, Mark told me was “a joy and a privilege.”

“At a certain point around 1998, my wife and I had the idea of reaching out to Odetta. We were both big fans and I knew she had done a blues record before. That was back in the sixties. So I reached out and contacted her manager, Doug Yeager, and he was interested because I don’t think she’d formally recorded in the studio for years. We all ended up meeting – my wife and I went to see her and it worked out really well. We got along very nicely and then we put this idea together of an album of blues songs.

“We started to look for piano players, someone who would be an arranger and all that. And just like Ian Zack says in the book, I would get blues piano players, and Odetta didn’t like any of them! It wasn’t that she didn’t like their playing, she said, it was just ‘I know what they’re going to play before they play it.’ She wanted something else.

“Doug, I think, ended up suggesting Seth Farber, who is on all three records that we did together, and really did most of the touring with her during that time, and it worked out great. He came from a background of singer-songwriter, Broadway, things like that. And it was just fantastic. I would feed them songs and ideas, and then they would work out the arrangements and it just worked out really well. And, getting her her first Grammy nomination in decades was really great…I was so proud of that.”

With M.C. Records, Odetta recorded three albums, Blues Everywhere I Go, her first full-length studio recording for fourteen years and it featured Dr. John on a couple of tracks; an album of Lead Belly covers, Lookin’ For A Home and a live gospel album, Gonna Let It Shine, with the Holmes Brothers. These are excellent recordings, some of the best work that Odetta has done. The material really suits her, she’s in fine voice and two of them were recognized by Grammy nominations. Listen to the first blues album, Blues Everywhere I Go and you’ll realize you’re listening to what is a classic blues record.

Mark told me he had more material from the first blues album recordings that is as yet unreleased, some of it with Dr. John playing, but at the time unreleaseable because of contractual issues. Dr. John, who was a long-time friend of Odetta, had flown in from Australia the night before the recording and, said Mark, “he comes in and he just sits, and he would have played all day. But they actually just started making music. It was so wonderful working with Dr. John, you know, that was very special.”

Odetta clearly enjoyed the whole experience of making these albums at M.C. Records, but given her age and her health, it wasn’t easy, Mark told me. “It was tough for her. She would sometimes be very weak. But when she sang it didn’t matter. As long as she was there, once she started singing, that was it. There were no bad takes. So, it wasn’t like, Oh my gosh, she’s too tired. If she was going to sing, she was singing!”

Blues Everywhere I Go was nominated for a Traditional Blues Album Grammy, but, unfortunately for her and Mark, B.B. King won it that year for Blues on the Bayou.

Mark said, “It always seems rough when you’re up against B.B. King and you’re never going to beat him! But it was really exciting. We all went out together to the ceremony. And it was so nice to see so many people who hadn’t seen Odetta in years. It was just really wonderful, people congratulating her, and I think she was really proud of that.”

Mark was clearly proud of his work with Odetta and spoke very warmly of their relationship. “It was nice that we developed a friendship. I mean, my wife and I would always take her out to lunch around Christmas time. And she came to my house several times for dinner parties, her and her sister. They were hysterical – complete opposites. It was just great. It was like it was a show! Jimmy, her sister, and Odetta would just be poking at each other. Like they were little kids, it was a lot of fun. I wish I could have videotaped it. But it was just so wonderful to have that kind of relationship, not just the music, but on a personal level, and really, it was such a wonderful time of my life.”

I wondered who Mark was working with at the moment that he thinks is particularly noteworthy or exciting?

“Well, working with Joanna Connor has been wonderful. It was nice that she came back and we ended up releasing those two records [Six String Stories, 2016 and Rise, 2019]. I love working with Joanna and of course, Kim Wilson. He was my musical hero when I was 16. I bought that first Thunderbirds record in the seventies. So we just released Kim’s new album, Take Me Back, in October and it’s really doing well, and we have plans to do more work, which I’m really excited about. We have several projects that we’re working on different than what people would expect from Kim Wilson. And that’s what I’m excited about. And I’m hoping to work again with Guy Davis. I’m really honored to be working with these artists because they’re just great musicians.”

For a small label, M.C. Records has done exceptionally well in garnering multiple Grammy and Blues Music Award nominations, which is testament to both the fine artists Mark works with and the quality of the work they do.

“Back in 2000, after we’d recorded that Memphis Barbecue Session, with Kim Wilson and Big Jack Johnson, Kim said he thought he was being ignored by the Blues Foundation. And I said to him, listen, Kim, if you work with me, I guarantee you, I’m going to get you wins from the WC Handys, you got to trust me. And he did. And you know, the first two records we did, were both nominated for Grammys, and multiple Blues Music Awards. Now, ever since that, he’s always there every year, nominated or winning. So, I think people respect the work that I do. Because it’s about the music, it’s not really me per se. I think over the years people understand that when I release something, it’s thoughtful, it’s not just about, ‘I have to put out six records this year’ or anything like that.”

As Mark looks around the roots music and blues scene, he thinks there is reason to be optimistic, although he says it’s not always going to be necessarily straight blues. In terms of the blues, he says, “Yes, there’ll be people who will look want to play this music and play it at a high level. But you know, straight ahead blues is harder because it’s hard to beat the people who came before. So what we’re seeing more and more of is this roots sound coming along, people taking the blues and gospel and making it their own.”

But, he thinks, “there’s a limited pool of those kinds of things that can really transcend the blues genre. I think Kim Wilson is one of those. I guess Joanna again, combining the rock, putting that edge to it, but not forcing it – you know, just to try to sell records. And I think if you can do that, you’re going to be OK. If you try to force something, or chase after the next thing, it’s going to be really difficult.”

Finally, I asked Mark what he is looking forward to this year at M.C. records? He told me, beyond the record label, he’s looking forward to playing gigs again. Mark is a talented drummer who has been performing for many years. His band, Back On Bourbon Street, plays cool New Orleans’ inflected jazzy blues and he can’t wait to get back on stage with them.

“Emotionally, you know, music is about being with people. I think that’s what people miss most. But maybe we’ll have like a good end of the summer, if people just do the right thing and there’s a vaccine.”

Here’s hoping Mark.

 

Leyla McCalla – Making Music that Matters

Former member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, and now forging a successful solo career, Leyla McCalla is a hugely talented singer and musician who has recently released Vari-Colored Songs, an outstanding album of bluesy, rootsy folk songs. A New Yorker who has migrated to New Orleans, drawn by the music and a more expansive lifestyle, she is a classically trained celloist, who is equally at home on the banjo, and has a singing voice you could listen to all day.

Vari-Colored Songs is a remarkable piece of work, combining as it does the poetry of Langston Hughes and folk songs from Haiti, where McCalla’s family hails from. She showcases her song-writing skills in the delightful melodies composed for Hughes’s poems, her arrangements of the folk song material is masterful, and her work on the banjo, fiddle and cello, the latter revealed as a remarkable rhythmic accompaniment, shows great versatility and skill. It’s a very fine album indeed, and one which you grow to appreciate more with each listen.

It’s also an important album lyrically, especially right now, when issues of race and justice are increasingly to the fore, in the United States and elsewhere. Down at the Crossroads had the opportunity to speak to Ms. McCalla about her music and the album.

I asked her, first of all, about her career as a musician. She studied cello performance and chamber music at New York University, before moving to New Orleans, where she began busking on the streets of the French Quarter. I wondered just what made her move from that more classical, formal side of music to the sort of roots music that she now plays.

She told me that at college she had begun to meet interesting musicians from outside of the worlds of both classical music and pop music, who were exploring different textures, improvisation and music from different parts of the world, which she found very attractive. And when she encountered a group called the Voodoo Drums of Haiti, she encountered the cello for the first time in the context of Haitian music.

That she found “just mind blowing. I felt really drawn to exploring that further. And that’s kind of how it began. But I also worked as a cocktail waitress in Brooklyn and it really spoke to all types of different music and different ways of being a musician. I felt like in college, they sort of indoctrinate you, where you think that there’s one way you can be successful. And there’s a sort of reverence for a Western European conceptualization of what music actually is. And when I didn’t identify with it, all of these things kind of amalgamated, to turn me away from the classical world.”

At college, when she got serious about classical music Leyla realized she wanted to be a professional musician, but her “idea of what that would look like changed over time, because I realized that the models that I was aspiring to didn’t really apply to me or to the world I lived in.”

So she moved to New Orleans, which became formative thing in her musical journey. “I think I left New York because I kind of felt energetically detached from the hustle of just living to pay your rent. And I felt I wasn’t really inspired at all by being there. And I kind of thought, I don’t know if this is what my life is about, you know, just struggling to survive.”

She became a member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, which sought to revive the sound of the African American string band, and whose 2010 album, Genuine Negro Jig, won a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album. After leaving the band in 2013, she released her first solo album, Vari-Colored Songs – last year’s album of the same name is a reissue, albeit with one extra song added. I asked Leyla why she had decided to reissue.

“Well, you know, the Smithsonian were in touch with me for a quite a while, very interested in re-releasing the album. They were very excited about acquiring the album as part of their African-American legacy collection. I kind of went back and forth deciding, is this really the right thing? And ultimately, I kind of felt like a lot of the songs don’t really belong to me, because there’s some poetry and it’s a tribute to Langston Hughes. And he’s one of the most venerated poets in the United States. So, I decided it was indeed the right thing.

“And it’s interesting how those creative decisions kind of coincide with what’s happening in the world, you know? And so as I was getting ready to release this record, there was momentum building in the black lives matter movement, and there were protests throughout the United States – people seeing the iniquity in our society laid bare by this pandemic. And I think that the moment was just really right for this record to kind of have its second day in the sun.”

I, probably like many others, hadn’t heard the album first time around, and hearing it now, with all that is going on, it feels like an important contribution to the conversation that ought to be going on about racial justice. Part of this is down to the songs on the album which put music to the words of Langston Hughes. Not being an American, I was really unfamiliar with Hughes’s work until recently when I read Adam Gussow’s book Whose Blues? Facing Up to Race and The Future of Music. In dealing sensitively with the issue of race in the blues, Gussow discusses not only the lyrics of blues songs, but the literature of the blues, the work of Zora Neale Hurston, W C Handy, and, of course, Langston Hughes. [catch our interview with Adam Gussow here]

Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist who was influential in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, which sought to highlight the real lives of black people in the lower social-economic strata. His work, which portrays the rich variety of their lives – consisting not just of struggle, but also joy, laughter, and music – is permeated with pride in African-American identity and its diverse culture. I asked Leyla why she thought Hughes’ work was still important.

Langston Hughes

“Well, I think that for me, it all comes down to narrative. Langston Hughes was someone who was really committed to telling stories as a way to increase people’s empathy, and to try to elevate black culture to its rightful place in our society, the culture being disparaged and seen as less than white American culture. And from what I read about him, in the thirties, once he starts to travel outside of the United States and starts to see that his blackness means different things in different places, and that when he was outside the US, he had certain levels of access in society, he started to be able to see more properly the situation in the States. And beyond his poetry, he also wrote articles, children’s books, he was an absolutely prolific artist and he was deeply committed to using simple language, to get people to relate to these issues that he illuminated in his work.”

McCalla’s setting for one of Hughes’ poems, Too Blue, is terrific. It’s got an old-timey blues vibe, helped along by Luke Winslow King’s fine slide guitar, and it really captures some of the humour in the song. The speaker in the poem is considering ending it all with a gun, but wonders if it’ll take one or two bullets, given his head is so hard.

Leyla said, “It’s kind of a dark sense of humour, but it’s just that propensity for survival under extremely stressful or sad conditions. I guess that’s what music is also about. And I like that kind of humour myself, you know, it’s something that I can relate to. I definitely laugh singing that song these days cause I’m kinda like, ‘Oh, this is pretty dark!’”

There’s a new song on this reissue, As I Grew Older / Dreamer, that combines a couple of Hughes’s poems. It features the poems being recited, rather than sung, against the background of an ominous sounding cello, which is then joined by a violin.

That recording, Leyla told me, “came from the original demo that I did before I left New York. I had a friend who said, they songs are really great and I have a little studio set up and I could help you record them, I’m forever grateful for that, And you know, it was at the time that I really didn’t know that I was a singer. I had all these musical inclinations that I wanted to explore. For the voice on Too Blue, I ended up asking a friend of mine, Yah Supreme, and I think he did just such a beautiful job. He’s a hip-hop artist based out of Brooklyn and I also just really appreciated the presence of a black male voice on the record. Having that presence on the album just made it more powerful.”

The album not only has the Langston Hughes songs, but a number of Haitian folk songs, some of them sung in Creole, all of them quite beautiful. I wondered what is the link on the album between these two sets of songs?

“Well, I think the real link is me! But also, I feel like there’s so much wisdom in Hughes’s poetry and then there’s all this wisdom in old Haitian folk songs. So, to pair them next to each other, to me, it’s like they come from the same well. But also, Hughes’s book, I Wonder As I Wander begins in Haiti and he was very impacted by his trip to Haiti.” The book is a humorous and insightful reflection on the people and places Hughes encountered during his world travels through dictatorships, wars, and revolutions during the 1930’s.

McCalla’s family background, of course is in Haiti. I asked her how important that is for her music?

“It’s become increasingly important. I feel the deeper I delve into understanding Haiti and Haiti’s history and culture, especially as an American born of Haitian descent, the more I start to understand the political situation that we find ourselves in in our country. And the more I understand the anti-blackness that I have been grappling with, the anti-blackness in our society that I have been grappling with my whole life in the United States and elsewhere. I mean, all over the world – I have lived in Africa, and there are women there bleaching their skin. So for me, I start to see all those connections.”

McCalla suggested we need to understand Haiti and what it says about the promise of a liberated black state. Haiti’s late eighteenth-century revolution, led by freed slaves, set it from French dominion and it became the world’s first country to abolish slavery and be led by former slaves. A liberated black state, said McCalla, is “something that we still haven’t been able to accept in our world. And that’s at the crux of a lot of my work.”

Photo: Rush Jagoe

McCalla says that her knowledge of Haitian history and culture has deepened her perspective on “blackness, politics and social dynamics.” All of this plays directly into her art, not least the Native Daughters project. Our Native Daughters, consisting of Rhiannon Giddens, Allison Russell, Amythyst Kiah and Leyla, released an outstanding album on the Smithsonian Folkways label in early 2019, which address issues which affect black women, including slavery, racism and sexism. [Our interview with Allison Russell is here]

“Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it’s in a lot of the work that I’ve done – the Carolina Chocolate Drops, and certainly with the Native Daughters, we speak pretty explicitly about the role of black women in shaping the United States. But I feel that that conversation is always kind of present, you know, and I think Haiti is very much a part of that conversation.”

Leyla McCalla clearly feels it’s important for her as an artist not just to entertain, but to participate in the conversation, the protest, that’s going on in America about race. She said, “I don’t know if I’d be doing the work, making the music that I’m making without seeing it all through this historical lens. That is so much a part of why I am drawn to the stories that I’m interested in telling, and weaving into a song.

“I hope I can offer a perspective that some people may not have been considered, but I’m also just really interested in a conversation about why things are the way they are in the world. I don’t feel that music is this sterile environment. I don’t believe that we can be apolitical. There’s a lot of people who say you need to leave politics out of their music. But to me, that’s a political statement in and of itself.”

One song on Vari-Colored Songs in particularly arresting. Song for a Dark Girl is very stark, and utterly compelling. It’s about a lynching “way down in Dixie,” and you can’t help but hear echoes of Strange Fruit. The whole feel of the song with its insistent finger-picked riff and the way that McCalla captures the tragedy of the scene with her voice is at times almost harrowing. It’s a song that needs to be widely heard. I asked her what it feels like to perform the song.

“I mean, it’s always intense, because the song is extremely intense, but it feels important because not only is lynching still happening, but we need to continue to talk about this history. We’re doing ourselves a disservice, we’re doing our children a disservice, if we don’t talk about it, and try to pretend that that is the past. But feels very present.” McCalla went on to talk about the “police brutality in our country” which, “even if it’s not explicit lynching… is essentially the same thing. It’s still present.”

Song for a Dark Girl doesn’t just highlight the brutality of being lynched, but, with the young woman in the song seeing her lover hanging from the tree, it also puts the spotlight on the pain it causes to others. “One of the main things I see is that our society is attuned to thinking about black pain, but not black love. So I feel like this song speaks to that as well. Black people are not generally seen as capable of feeling the same gut emotion as white people.”

Finally, I asked Leyla what projects she might have in mind for this coming year, even though it’s very hard to look forward with the pandemic raging.

“Well, I feel very lucky. I’ve recorded my fourth album and I’m waiting for the right label partner to come along. The album is inspired by the history of Radio Haiti. Its history culminates in the assassination of the radio station director – there’s a film called The Agronomist made by Jonathan Demme about it. [The Agronomist is a 2003 American documentary about Jean Dominique. It follows the life of Dominique, who ran Haiti’s first independent radio station, Radio Haiti-Inter, during multiple repressive regimes.] I’ve been commissioned to make a multimedia performance piece about this. And the album is all the songs that came from that commitment and a few other songs. It’s very exciting. I’m hoping it will be out later this year, but we’ll see.”

That sounds like something to look forward to. In the meantime, get yourself a copy of Vari-Colored Songs and enjoy the immense talent that is the remarkable Leyla McCalla.

Best Americana Albums 2020

2020 gave us a fine new collection of Americana/roots music. Bob Dylan at 79 showed his genius once more and Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band came through with a classic-sounding album. Other notable releases came from Jason Isbell, Lucinda Williams and Welch & Rawlings. Here are our picks in two batches, 22 in all, each shown in alphabetical order rather than ranking.

Our Top 10

American Aquarium, Lamentations

This is simply a terrific album. Serious themes, sophisticated songwriting, good tunes, with a dollop of hope and optimism creeping through. The title track is inspired by the Old Testament’s Book of Lamentations, where PJ Barham he relates Jeremiah’s sufferings to someone who has “woke up from the American dream.” “He’s watching his entire country fall apart before his eyes, calling up to ask God for help, and nobody’s answering,” says Barham. “I thought that was a really great parallel [to] 2020 America.”

The Avett Brothers, The Third Gleam

In the third of their Gleam series, Scott and Seth Avett with long-time bass player Bob Crawford give us eight pared-back songs focusing on family, romantic love and spirituality. The harmonies are lovely, the songs are strong and the sparse acoustic arrangements work wonderfully well.,

Bob Dylan, Rough and Rowdy Ways

Songs like I Contain Multitudes and I’ve Made up My Mind to Give Myself to You are, like the rest of the album, quite brilliant, With its apocalyptic overtones and searching questions like, “Is there light at the end of the tunnel?” Rough and Rowdy Ways is a majestic piece of work from the 79 year-old, something of a masterpiece.

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, Reunions

Another really fine album from Jason Isbell, the seventh album from the former Drive By Truckers artist, Backed by the excellent 400 Unit, this is a great set of intelligent songs, which, though personal, sound universal. The band play effortlessly together with terrific energy throughout, beautifully accompanying Isbell’s and Amanda Shires’s spine-tingling harmonizing. Outstanding.

The Jayhawks, Xoxo

Hard to believe the Jayhawks have been on the go for 35 years. This, their 11th studio album, is classic Jayhawks, and features songwriting and vocals from all four members of the band. There’s a nice bit of musical diversity in this album which will appeal to long-time fans and newcomers alike.

Diana Jones, Song to a Refugee

Song to a Refugee is a quite remarkable piece of work by singer-songwriter, Diana Jones – an album entirely given to highlighting the global refugee problem. It’s a serious listen – you’ll enjoy Jones’ acoustic, guitar-driven, folky Americana, but feel downright uncomfortable as she tells story after story about desperate people escaping war and violence and seeking refuge and safety.

Marcus King, El Dorado

First rate set of bluesy, soulful Americana from a man whose guitar chops and richly textured vocals are making a lot of people sit up and take notice. The band graced Eric Clapton’s Crossroads festival last year and this album is sure to enhance its reputation even more. Produced and co-written with the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, there’s a fine balance of approaches here, from powerful blues rock here in The Well to the late-night blues of Wildflowers and Wine to the 70s Southern rock of Sweet Mariona.

Bruce Springsteen, Letter to You

Classic E-Street rock from the Boss, who seems to have more energy than ever. With more road behind him than ahead, Springsteen waxes philosophical on the subjects of loss and frailty of the human condition. But Springsteen, in the way only he can, gives us hope and celebration as well, and the album is surely his best of recent years.

Gillian Welch, David Rawlings, All the Good Times

Wonderful album of covers from the talented duo, sparse and beautiful renditions of traditional and songs from other artists. Rawlings’ take on Bob Dylan’s Seǹor is masterful while Welch’s Hello In There is a lovely tribute to John Prine whom we sadly lost this past year. Together they breathe new life into this beautifully chosen set of songs, and somehow hit the right note for the year that is past.

Lucinda Williams, Good Souls, Better Angels

Williams’ raspy, edgy growl adorns a bluesy, gnarly set of apocalyptic songs which explore a world coming apart. Full of punk-rock energy, as Jesse Malin said of it, “It’s like Muddy Waters meets the Stooges. It’s a badass record.” It’s real and it’s raw and Williams takes no prisoners – certainly not Trump who is firmly in her sights in Man Without A Soul. “Help me stay fearless,” she sings towards the end of the album, “Help me stay strong.” Her prayer’s been answered in this album.

 

And the next 12

Dave Alvin, From An Old Guitar: Rare and Unreleased Recordings

“There are two types of folk music: quiet folk music and loud folk music. I play both,” says Alvin, and that’s what you get here. It’s mostly covers in this generous 16 song set, and Alvin’s crusty, attention-grabbing vocals take centre stage. Alvin said the album was recorded for “the sheer kicks of going into a recording studio to make some joyous noise with musicians and singers that I love and admire.” Sums it up nicely.

Mary Chapin Carpenter, The Dirt and the Stars

Mary Chapin Carpenter is in the sharpest form of her 30 year career with incisive songwriting in a beautiful, intimate album. But watch out for the stinging American Stooge, which takes aim at hypocritical politicians.

The Chicks, Gaslighter

Having dropped the “Dixie” from their name, the three Chicks have released their first album in 14 years. Punchy country pop and defiant take on relationship-gone-bad and politics.

Brandy Clark, Your Life is a Record

Heart-break album, which never descends into melancholy. That’s a feat in itself. Clark proves herself to be, once again, a top-notch song-writer and singer.

Sarah Jarosz, World on the Ground

In this, her 5th album, Jarosz’s songs draw inspiration from her home in Texas, after her world tours and sojourn in New York City. Fine album of folk-pop, featuring Jarosz’s finger-picked guitars and banjo and her meditative vocals.

Brian Fallon, Local Honey

Short, at just over 30 minutes, but it’s fine stuff on this 3rd solo release from Brian Fallon. Local Honey sees the former Gaslight Anthem man move into country folk territory in these fine acoustic-led ballads.

Lori McKenna, The Balladeer

Peerless songwriter McKenna draws inspiration from her family to create an upbeat album of the hugely enjoyable songs we’ve come to expect from her.

Larkin Poe, Kindred Spirits (Read our review here.)

Two voices, two guitars, gorgeous harmonies and eleven classic songs reimagined in a rootsy, fresh manner.

Chris Smither, More From the Levee

From a master song-writer come 10 more songs from his 2014 New Orleans Still On the Levee sessions. His wry wit, rhythmic finger picking an authentic, world-weary singing make any Chris Smither album worth listening to.

 

Chris Stapleton, Starting Over

It’s more of the same from the current king of country, despite the album’s title. Solid country rock with some nice bluesy moment. And two Guy Clark covers can’t be bad, right?

Watkins Family Hour, Brother Sister

Siblings Sean and Sara are excellent songwriters, singers and musicians, all on display in this lovely album, bluegrass based, but with tinges of Americana, jazz and ragtime.

Waxahatchee, Saint Cloud

Apparently inspired by Lucinda Williams’s Car Wheels On A Gravel Road, Katie Crutchfield veers away from melancholy indie-rock back to her country roots – very successfully. Excellent stuff.

And check out our Best Blues Albums 2020.

Gráinne Duffy – rock’n’roll drenched with the blues and southern soul.

Gráinne Duffy is “a powerhouse of soul and inspiration mixed with desire and passion.”

Photo: Rob Blackham

She’s played Glastonbury, and concerts and major festivals in Europe, Africa, North America and Australia, and performed on stages graced by Keb’ Mo’ and Van Morrison. She’s a fine songwriter, a top-notch guitar-slinger and has a rock’n’roll voice drenched with the blues and Southern soul. She’s Gráinne Duffy, now with five excellent albums in her discography, and with Voodoo Blues, is winning new fans all over the world.

Ireland has given the world some top-notch blues and rock artists to enjoy over the years – think Rory Gallagher, Gary Moore and Van the Man – and in Gráinne Duffy from County Monaghan, we have another one. Her four previous releases are all worth your while checking out, but with Voodoo Blues, her talent bursts out big time in ten original songs that showcase the versatility and power of her vocals, her guitar chops, and the strength of her song-writing.

Down at the Crossroads got talking to Gráinne about Voodoo Blues. It’s had a lot of very positive reviews – Rock and Blues Muse, for example, hailed her as “an emerging blues star,” and said that the album “presents her to the world as a roots music creator with a fully-articulated vision that’s ready for the big time.” Rocking Magpie waxed lyrical about the “indelible impression” Duffy makes with this “powerful new release.”

Gráinne said that she was delighted with the positive attention the album has been getting, because she’d worked hard on this set of songs. The songs are co-written by Gráinne and her husband Paul Sherry, who is a sensational guitarist in his own right.

She said that the album was a return to her rock’n’roll roots. “I had done the blues album and the Americana album. And the third album was like a live album and the fourth album was a little bit of transition. We’d gone over to America to record it and it was a bit of a change of direction for us, so I feel like I was being pulled back all the time to my rock and roll roots. And it was very simple production this time, which suits me. We just went into the studio and played everything live, and it was just four of us – bass, drums, two guitars and vocals – just kinda the way rock’n’roll should be. You know, simple and straight up. And I think the fruit of the labour is that the tracks are not overly complicated, but they’ve got the essence of what I think really is me deep down inside.”

The album was recorded more or less live, produced by Troy Miller in his Spark Studios in London toward the end of 2019.

Said Gráinne, “We just had a really simple set-up. I’d been in touch some years ago with Troy Miller, who’s a brilliant producer, and also a really great drummer. He’d been Amy Winehouse’s drummer. And just recently, I thought I’d like to work with Troy again, so I got in touch with him to ask if he’d be interested in working on this album. He said, sure. So my husband, Paul – we write together, play together – and I, we boarded a plane and went over and went down to Troy’s small studio and we got it all done. Troy got Dale Davis the bass player who had played with him for years in Amy’s band on board.

“So we recorded for two days and then I came home and did another two days and it was all done. Yeah, it was great. We had to do some overdubs in Ireland because COVID came and we had been due to go over for a final session and with the whole madness, we weren’t able to travel for it. So the last track we recorded here in Ireland.”

I mentioned to Gráinne that I keep seeing reviewers who pick up on the Ireland connection and they refer to Celtic influences on her music. That’s something I never really hear and I said I wasn’t quite sure what they mean by that.

“Yeah, I’m in the same boat as I read that! I’d love to know what they’re hearing! I think it’s nice and it’s lovely that they’re hearing something Irish, but I’m wondering if nobody told them I was Irish, would they know it was Irish? But that has been mentioned quite a few times. Some people have even said, Oh, I get a sense of the Rory Gallagher here. But you know, that’s not intended. But it’s lovely that comes out – it must be just something in the sound, I don’t know.”

Gráinne Duffy’s music for me is very much American music – it’s grounded in the blues, and it’s got hints of soul and gospel, and that’s what you’ll hear if you check out (and you should!) any of her albums.

“Oh, definitely,” she said. “Because that is really the music I listened to growing up. Particularly the blues – I would have been listening originally to Fleetwood Mac and then from Fleetwood Mac I got into Peter Green, B.B. King, Albert King, and then on into Aretha and all of that sort of stuff. So, I mean, you keep backtracking. If you get into that style of music, you keep trying to delve further back, back until you find the roots. But I would definitely agree with you, it’s definitely coming from America, the style of music that has mostly influenced me.”

Some of the songs on Voodoo Blues, like the title track, Mercy, Tick Tock and Wreck It, are solid rock and blues rock, but there’s a nice variety to the album as well. Listen to the hints of soul, and bits of gospel in Don’t You Cry for Me and Shine It On Me.

Gráinne liked that I’d heard that. “Sometimes you when you do that, some people go, Oh, it’s too eclectic, there’s too much going on. But for me, I felt like it was still held together by the overall rock’n’roll sense of the album, even though there are other influences there. I do listen to a very wide range of music, but I think the rock’n’roll sound kind of underpinned the whole thing and that kept it together.”

Gráinne Duffy, over many years, has been a talented songwriter. But the evidence here in Voodoo Blues is that she is getting even better. These are well-structured songs, with strong lyrics, far beyond some of the simplistic song forms you get in a lot of blues rock. I asked her about her development as a song-writer.

“Well, it is a craft and I suppose craftsmen and women are supposed to get better the longer they’re at it, but sometimes it doesn’t work like that. You can start off on a high and you can just be like, the Mojo’s gone. But with this record, I was listening to a lot of old blues and I really tried to pare it back and make it really simple. And sometimes I think simple is best, but it can be hard to be simple! How often do you hear a big song and you go, that’s just three chords and it’s so simple, but it’s great. But sometimes it takes a long time to arrive there. Maybe with this record, I’ve finally been able to declutter and just try to go straight to the point. That’s what I tried to do. And, what helped the song-writing on this album was I had a good sense of where I wanted to go.”

The songs are all written by Gráinne and her husband and fellow band member, Paul. Gráinne is responsible for the lyrical content and they both collaborated on the music, as they have done for some considerable time. As usual on the album there is great guitar work from Paul, who is a very accomplished player. If you go to one of their live shows, you’ll see him really cut loose, with long solos and fast runs up and down the fretboard, but here on this album, he’s very supportive of each song. It’s restrained, tasteful, and works really well.

“Yeah. I have some friends who love guitar and, they were like, come on, give us more guitar! We want to hear more guitar! We did that in some of our previous records. But this album was maybe a little bit pared back. Maybe in some places we could’ve thrown in an extra guitar solo, but I think the guitar parts which are put down are just perfect.”

I asked if Gráinne had any particular favourites in the mix of the songs.

She mentioned Mercy. “It was one of the first ones that kind of kicked off the album and let me know where I wanted to go.” This is a great showcase for Duffy’s vocal power and control, with the lyrics articulated against an insistent guitar riff and some tasty organ work. “But,” she said, “You know, another one that I particularly like is Hard Rain,” referring to the track that finishes the album, a terrific rocker, which features some mouth-watering backing vocals supporting Duffy’s soulful singing. The song obviously gives a nod to Bob Dylan, a particular hero of Gráinne’s, who told me that Bob could do no wrong in her eyes and that she’d even named her son in honour of the man. She told me she loves Dylan’s current sound and style, which for her is a bit TexMex. “I love the sound that he’s gone for recently. I think it’s brilliant.”

I mentioned another song on the album which I really enjoyed, Roll It, and suggested that it recalled for me Sheryl Crow.

“You know what, I am a big Sheryl Crow fan. I think she’s a great.” But although Roll It might possibly recall Crow’s All I Want to Do, Gráinne suggested she probably had more Gerry Rafferty in her mind with it. Others have heard John Fogerty here. Mention of these other artists and songs simply gives you an idea of the sort of influences swirling around in the background, but Roll It stands on its own two feet. Said Gráinne, “Roll It was supposed to be kind of a fun chillout.”

I said to Gráinne how much I’d loved the organ work on the album, particularly in songs like Mercy, Shine It On Me, and Don’t You Cry For Me. It’s classic-sounding rock Hammond and works really well.

“It’s fabulous. That again, is that mega-talented man Troy Miller. He plays drums on the record, produces it and plays the organ and piano as well! I don’t know how that man fits all that talent into one body, but he’s brilliant. But I love that organ work too. It’s not over or under played, it’s just, to me, spot on. But it’s lovely to hear it being appreciated by somebody else, because sometimes that can just go a little bit unappreciated.”

The great thing about this album is how very upbeat and positive it is. It puts a smile on your face. I wondered if this reflects the sort of person that Gráinne is?

“I think so. My first album, Out of the Dark, was a lot slower and sedate and reflective, and people thought I was the most depressed person in the world! And I used to think, how do people think I’m a really sad person? And Ronnie Greer, a great guitar player from Northern Ireland, lovely man, whom I collaborate with, he would always say to me, Gráinne, this record is nothing like your personality! So, I think, yes, this record is more reflective of what I am actually like as a person. I want to get up and at it, I love playing rock’n’roll and have that positive outlook in life. But it’s funny you say that it’s upbeat because I read one review where it said, this gives us hope that the blues isn’t all sad!”

That the blues is depressing is a misconception that many people not familiar with the blues often have. But the blues singer is usually singing him or herself out of the blues. A song might bemoan the state of the world or the singer’s life, but actually singing the song is a way of getting beyond the bad state of affairs.

“Exactly,” said Gráinne. “And so often if you listen to the early singers, like Ma Rainey or Mama Thornton, any of those people, they usually have an awful lot of humour in their lyrics as well.”

I asked Gráinne about not being able to tour the album at the moment, which has got to be disappointing for her.

“Yes, it is. When the album came out, we were like, all right, what can we do to celebrate the release of the album? Normally you do press that day or that week. And you’d be going up to do a gig, a launch night, and then a few more shows. But this time it was just “Right, will we light the fire?” This is so strange. And, because we feel like we’ve arrived at a nice place with this album and it is quite up tempo, we felt it would have been exciting, fun to go out and play. So it really felt like a bit of a disappointment. But we’re hoping there has to be some sort of a silver lining to the cloud. We’re hoping that maybe people take time to actually listen to the record and get to know it, and when we go to play they’ll really appreciate us.”

I wondered if the band has any major events planned, at least tentatively, given the ongoing pandemic situation.

“Yes. Well, bookings have come in for festivals for this year, but they’re all saying with that they are still unsure. So we think it’s going to be the summer or September by the time we get back to play. We’re a wee bit nervous about booking things because we’ve had to cancel so many travel plans. So we’ll just take it one step at a time.”

One final thing I wanted to ask Gráinne about was that I noticed on the album sleeve they were supporting a charity called We C Hope. What is that about?

“I lost my sister-in-law to cancer,” she said. “So we decided to put We C Hope on there if people wanted to donate towards cancer. It’s a foundation we support.” We C Hope aims to help children who suffer from retinoblastoma, a highly curable form of eye cancer – unfortunately every 85 minutes, a child dies from curable eye cancer, mostly in economically less developed countries, where awareness and access to timely, appropriate medical care is very limited. We C Hope seeks to “create a bright future for all affected by childhood eye cancer.” Check out We C Hope at https://wechope.org/

Voodoo Blues is one of the stand-out rock and blues albums of 2020 and ought to bring Gráinne Duffy to the attention of music fans all over the world. She is a quite special talent, and you ought to hope she has the opportunity before long to demonstrate that on a stage near you.

 

 

Best Blues Albums 2020

Blues is music that gives expression to deep human emotion, both anguish about what’s happening and hope that things will get better. Appropriate music for 2020. In the midst of all the heartache and upheaval that the pandemic has brought, artists have been releasing great music. Every one of these albums is worthy of your attention. Aside from the broad groupings, they are just in alphabetical order, because, how do you compare electric with acoustic blues or blues-rock with blues-Americana? Enjoy.

Here’s Our Top 10

Rory Block, Prove it on Me
Acoustic blues master, Rory Block gives us another terrific album celebrating the blues artists of yesteryear. This time she’s focused on women blues artists, and exploring some of the more obscure material. This 10-song set that features Block’s intricate guitar work, and her singing, nicely phrased and bluesy vocals.

 

Shemekia Copeland, Uncivil War
Again collaborating with Will Kimbrough, Copeland uses her powerful voice to great effect as she rails against the forces of disunity in the United States, the legacy of slavery and gun violence. With the help of Duane Eddy, Jason Isbell, Steve Cropper, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, and Jerry Douglas, she delivers a punchy appeal for love and unity in a nicely varied musical feast.

 

Dion, Blues with Friends
With liner notes by Bob Dylan and a stellar cast of blues musicians – Van Morrison, Paul Simon Patti Scialfa and Bruce Springsteen, Joe Bonamassa and Jeff Beck…the list goes on – Dion’s new album is pretty special. His energy and passion for the blues has clearly not diminished even in his 81^st year. Every track is a highlight and it’s an album you’ll want to return to again and again. As Dion says, “The blues is a beautiful form of music that God gave to us.”

Grainne Duffy, Voodoo Blues
Ireland’s Grainne Duffy packs a mighty blues punch with her passionate and powerful vocals, well-crafted song-writing and top-notch guitar chops. She’s the real deal and this album, surely her best yet, is sheer class from start to finish. If you don’t know Grainne Duffy, remedy that as soon as you can.

 

Catfish Keith, Blues at Midnight
In this, his 19^th album, multiple Grammy nominee Catfish Keith focuses entirely on his own original songs. It’s a “best of” essentially, with songs culled from his forty year career, and if you’re any sort of blues fan at all, it’s a treasure trove of complex finger-picking, slide playing, good tunes and good fun, all done in the spirit of the first generation of blues and roots music. Catch our interview with Catfish here.

 

Larkin Poe, Self Made Man
The Lovell sisters’ latest album takes over from 2018’s terrific Venom and Faith. If anything, the rockin’ blues on offer is even more raw and arresting. This is modern blues at its best and you gotta love the fabulous vocals of Rebecca, the glorious harmonies of the two of them and Megan’s sensational lap steel work. We loved God Moves on the Water, which you’d swear was a cover of an old blues song, but this original testifies to Larkin Poe’s authentic feeling for the blues. Exhilarating, invigorating stuff. Full review here.

Marcus King, El Dorado
First rate set of bluesy, soulful Americana from a man whose guitar chops and richly textured vocals are making a lot of people sit up and take notice. The band graced Eric Clapton’s Crossroads festival last year and this album is sure to enhance its reputation even more. Produced and co-written with the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, there’s a fine balance of approaches here, from powerful blues rock here in The Well to the late-night blues of Wildflowers and Wine to the 70s Southern rock of Sweet Mariona.

Robert Cray Band, That’s What I Heard
Another excellent offering of blues, R&D and soul from the ever-consistent Robert Cray and his band. 12 song of both originals and covers of songs you may not know, all delivered with Cray’s sweet vocals and his clean as a whistle guitar tone. There’s a nice dash of gospel as well with Burying Ground.

 

Walter Trout, Ordinary Madness
After 27 albums and a career spanning five decades, what has the 69-year old Walter Trout left to say? Plenty, it seems, going by this terrific album, one of his best. Eleven songs, recorded at Doors’ guitarist Robbie Krieger’s studio in California, Ordinary Madness sees Trout in stellar form, wielding his Stratocaster as only he can and imposing his big personality on every track. Full review here.

 

Rev. John Wilkins, Trouble
John Wilkins’ second solo album of gospel blues is, quite simply, terrific. Eleven inspirational songs, including some classics like Wade in the Water and Grandma’s Hands are pulled off with considerable aplomb by Wilkins, his three daughters on backing vocals, and a fine quartet comprising Kevin Cubbins on guitar, Jimmy Kinnard on bass, Steve Potts on drums and Rev. Charles Hodges on organ. Sadly John Wilkins passed away on October 6, four days before his 77^th birthday. Full review here.

And here’s the next 10

Elvin Bishop & Charlie Musselwhite, 100 Years of Blues
Two blues veterans collaborate to great effect with twelve classic sounding blues numbers, although just three of them are covers – of songs by Leroy Carr, Sonny Boy Williamson, and Roosevelt Sykes. Raw, authentic, loose and hugely enjoyable.

 

 

Albert Cummings, Believe
An album to savour from blues rock guitarist and singer, Albert Cummings. Recorded in Muscle Shoals, with the legendary Jim Gaines producing, we get six originals and five covers, including the delightful cover of Van Morrison’s Crazy Love, delivered with a laid-back bluesy vocal performance backed up with some lovely gospel vocals. There’s also a terrific version of Wolf’s Red Rooster with some muscular guitar work and vocals to match.

Sonny Landreth, Blacktop
It only takes you to hear a few notes before you recognize that it’s Sonny Landreth. His sixteenth album is exhilarating stuff, with slide playing that is jaw-droppingly good, deadly accurate, sometimes amazingly quick and always with that characteristic Landreth tone. This is a richly textured album from the hugely talented Landreth and his band, which is impressive the first time you hear but repays repeated listens in spades. Full review here.

Eliza Neals, Black Crow Moan
Honest-to-goodness blues rock from the talented Ms Neals, choc full of attitude, sass, top-notch musicianship, and downright good fun. One of the best blues rock albums you’ll hear all year, with Eliza Neals and her group of musicians playing straight out of their hearts and souls. Read our review here.

 

 

Fabrizio Poggio, For You
Italian blues harp player, Fabrizio Poggi’s 23^rd album. For You is a remarkably sensitive and inspirational work of gospel blues which draws you in magnetically and keeps you in wonder throughout the ten tracks of mostly traditional songs. Fabrizio says that “together we can make it,” and that the music is “for those who feel lost when the wind of life blows too strong…for all those who are worried, who feel lonely and lost.” The songs, with their spiritual nature, are indeed songs of succour, of hope, of encouragement. Full review here.

Bobby Rush, Rawer Than Raw
Now well into his 80s, Grammy Award winning bluesman Rush moves away from soul-blues territory to give us a pared-back acoustic set of blues classics and original songs. It’s a raw and hugely enjoyable tribute to the blues history of Mississippi, featuring simply Rush’s guitar, harmonica, stomping feet and authentic blues vocals.

 

Chris Smither, More from the Levee
At 76 years young, Smither can still be relied upon to create great music. Featuring that rhythmic, insistent finger-picking and foot stomp, and Smither’s laid-back vocals, along with his trade-mark intelligent lyrics and quick wit, More from the Levee gives us 10 more songs from Smither’s 2013 New Orleans Still on the Levee recordings. They’re all good ‘uns, as good as any in the Smither canon, all ready for you to pull up a chair on the porch and relax into his good-natured musical charm.

Sunnysiders, The Bridges

The Sunnysiders, hailing from Croatia, are Boris Hrepić Hrepa and Antonija Vrgoč Rola, who have been performing together for the last ten years and have three previous albums. Their latest release, The Bridges, mixed at Ardent Studios in Memphis and featuring guests artists Manu Lanvin, Norman Beaker, Lorenzo Piconne, and Yogi Lonich, offers ten excellent tracks of blues and bluesy Americana. Full review here.

Watermelon Slim, Traveling Man
Bill Homans’ rugged, gritty blues in a generous 18 song package of live performances from 2016 in Oklahoma. It’s just Homan and his twangy resonator on a set of originals and old blues covers, including Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf. It’s raw, sittin’-on-the-porch blues, all slide guitar and rasping vocals – old school blues.

 

Lucinda Williams, Good Souls Better Souls
Williams’ raspy, edgy growl adorns a bluesy, gnarly set of apocalyptic songs which explore a world coming apart. Full of punk-rock energy, as Jesse Malin said of it, “It’s like Muddy Waters meets the Stooges. It’s a badass record.” It’s real and it’s raw and no Williams takes no prisoners – certainly not Trump who is firmly in her sights in Man Without A Soul.

“Help me stay fearless,” she sings towards the end of the album, “Help me stay strong.” Her prayer’s been answered in this album.

And our final 5

Joe Bonamassa, Royal Tea
Joe Bonamassa is absolutely at the top of his game in this tribute to the British rock that has always inspired him. Ten songs, written by Bonamassa and a group of top-class writers like Jools Holland, Dave Stewart, Bernie Marsden, and Pete Brown, and featuring Bonamassa’s hugely talented band, it’s a feast of blues and rock best played with the volume turned up as loud as you can take it. Full review here.

 

Robert Jon & the Wreck, Last Light on the Highway
Southern rock with a blues twist. Eleven toe-tapping numbers with some tasty guitar work and the fine vocals of Robert Jon. First rate set of songs from a band clearly enjoying itself.

 

 

Betty Lavette, Blackbirds
Soulful collection of songs from Lavette, now in her 8^th decade, ably backed by Steve Jordan and a fine band. Her voice is raspy and world-weary, but more than able to wrest emotion, blues feeling and joy from the songs as needed. She includes a fine version of that ultimate protest song, Strange Fruit.

 

Cary Morin, Dockside Saints
Cary Morin is a fine fingerstyle guitarist and songwriter, whose music is characterized as acoustic Native Americana with hints of blues, bluegrass, and jazz. These 12 songs in his 7^th album add Creole, Zydeco and Cajun touches to their bluesy feel. Very cool.

 

Victor Wainwright & The Train, Memphis Loud
Raucous boogie-woogie and horns-driven soulish blues from blues award winner and Grammy nominated Wainwright and his band. It’s toe-tapping stuff, never a dull moment, as Wainwright and the Train barrels down through the tracks. Wainwright is a terrific pianist and singer and the band are quite masterful.

 

And three live albums worth mentioning, two from Irishmen, both sadly no longer with us. which capture the dazzling talent of each man.

Gary Moore, London
The guitar legend at the top of his game in a small club performance at London’s Islington Academy on December 2nd, 2009, with beloved Moore favourites like Still Got the Blues and Parisienne Walkways.

 

 

Rory Gallagher, Check Shirt Wizard
Previously unreleased, this blistering 20-song set is from four shows in England during an early 1977 tour across the UK in support of Rory’s then latest album Calling Card.

 

 

Straight to You Live, Kenny Wayne Shepherd
We’ve all been starved of live music this year, so this release from The Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band is especially welcome. Available on both DVD and CD, this 2019 show from the famous Leverkusen Jazzstage captures the seven-piece KWS band as a finely honed unit delivering a performance full of energy and verve. Not to be missed.

 

A Special Mention to:

Bob Dylan, Rough and Rowdy Ways
I thought long and hard whether to include this in the main list. It’s not a blues album per se – songs like I Contain Multitudes and I’ve Made up My Mind to Give Myself to You are, like the rest of the album, quite brilliant, but definitely not blues songs. On the other hand Black Rider and GoodBye Jimmy Reed are for sure. And then there’s the gothic 17 minute Murder Most Foul which may not be blues in form but in lyrical content pretty much is. As is the rest of the album, really, with its apocalyptic overtones and searching questions like, “Is there light at the end of the tunnel?” In any case, it’s a majestic piece of work from the 79 year-old, something of a masterpiece.

 

Ella’s Secret of Christmas

Document Records, an independent record label that specializes in reissuing vintage blues and jazz, has a great set of five Christmas Blues albums, which feature a host of well-known artists from yesteryear, like Victoria Spivey, Leadbelly, B.B. King, John Lee Hooker and Freddy King, and many more you’ll likely have never heard of. Volume 1 alone has a massive 52 tracks, so it’s great value.

In this disk, we get fun songs like the delightful Bring That Cadillac Back by Harry Crafton with the Doc Bagby Orchestra, where Harry’s Christmas is ruined by his girl eating his turkey and running off with his Cadillac.

There’s some terrific blues, like Chuck Berry’s Merry Christmas Baby on Disk 2 and Victoria Spivey’s naughty I Ain’t Gonna Let You See My Santa Claus (Volume 3), and of course, we get Robert Johnson’s Hellhound on My Trail, with its mention of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

There’s a fair sprinkling of Christmas gospel along the way, including some interesting preaching. Like the 1918 sermon of Rev A.W. Nix, which he preached during the Spanish ‘flu pandemic, addressing the fact that many in his congregation were broke. He cautioned his flock not to spend money they didn’t have. Pretty good advice, don’t you think? Reminds me of Mr Micawber in Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield, who famously observed, “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen, nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.”

Rev. Nix goes on to tell his flock that rather than go broke splashing out at Christmas, they needed to “spend your Christmas praising God and giving him thanks for what he’s already done for you this year.”

Being thankful maybe seems a tall order after 2020. So many lives lost all over the world to the pandemic, with the resultant economic fallout, domestic violence on the rise and isolation and restrictions causing no end of misery. And, in the developing world, hunger and poverty on the increase, along with sex trafficking and early marriage of girls.

But Nix was preaching to people in as bad a situation or worse in 1918. The influenza pandemic affected a third the population of the world, killed up to 50 million, and came in four waves, lasting until 1920. He’s on to something when he talks about thankfulness.

Modern psychology tells us that if we can find something to be grateful for, it improves our self-esteem, increases our energy, helps our immune system, increases our sleep quality, and enables us to cope better with stress. So being thankful, even in the midst of trouble, can be incredibly powerful.

Christmas, of course, gives us something particularly to be thankful for, in the gift of the child in the manager. The Christmas message is one of hope in the midst of fear and distress, because of this incredible event of “God with us.” God come to share in our humanity, our distress, our joys, our sorrows.

The traditional song Go Tell It On the Mountain captures the celebration and thanksgiving for what happened on that first Christmas. The Document Record collection includes the Famous Jubilee Singers’ version, but I rather like the Blind Boys of Alabama’s take on this.

Volume 3 of Document Record’s collection fittingly closes with Ella Fitzgerald’s The Secret of Christmas. Forget the warm glow you feel, the sleigh bells, the children singing and the presents. For Ella, the secret of Christmas

Is not the things you do
At Christmas time, but the Christmas things you do
All year through.

Preach it, sister.

Catch our interview with Document Record’s Gary Atkinson here.

Document Records Blues, Blues Christmas, Volumes 1-5

Music Books for Your Christmas List

Christmas is coming, and if you’re a music fan, you’ll want to drop a few hints to Santa. Here are seven books you’ll definitely want in your stocking:

Michael Corcoran, Ghost Notes: Pioneering Spirits of Texas Music

What a sumptuous feast of a book this is. Coffee table sized, lavishly illustrated, and utterly engaging, it oozes quality from the standard of the writing to the beautiful quality of paper. With Corcoran’s engaging stories highlighting the careers and contributions of a wide variety of pioneering Texas musicians, you begin to realize how important and formative Texas is for American music. Top of your Christmas list. Read our review. Buy it here.

 

Annye C. Anderson, Brother Robert: Growing Up with Robert Johnson

Memories of Robert Johnson from Annye Anderson, Johnson’s almost sister, which introduce us to the Robert Johnson we never knew. A wonderful evocation of a time and place. For any music fan, and particularly if you’re a blues fan, this book is a must-read.

Read our review here.

Buy it here.

 

Adam Gussow, Whose Blues? Facing Up to Race and the Future of Music

Blues harp master and professor of the blues, Gussow, asks an important question of every blues fan – who do the blues belong to? Expertly and sensitively written by a man who has spent his musical career learning from and playing with black musicians.

Read our interview with Adam Gussow here.

Buy it here.

 

Ian Zack, Odetta: A Life in Music and Protest.

Ian Zack’s biography of Odetta is masterful, as he charts the life of this seminal cultural figure who helped spark the folk revival and became a vital part of the protest movements of the 1950s and 60s. She was on the front line of the struggle for equality in America, combatting racism through her music and actions. An important book and a great read. Full review to come.

Check out also Ian Zack’s excellent biography of Rev. Gary Davis, Say No to the Devil. Here’s our review.

 

Freeman Vines, Hanging Tree Guitars

Freeman Vines, born in 1942 in Greene County in North Carolina is the focus of a quite remarkable book, written by Zoe Van Buren and featuring a stunning set of photographs of Vines, his guitars and his environment by Timothy Duffy. 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. Don’t miss the companion music album. Read our interview with Freeman Vines. Buy it here.

Gary Golio & E.B. Lewis, Dark Was the Night: Blind Willie Johnson’s Journey to the Stars

Another beautifully illustrated book (by E.B. Lewis), and cleverly written by Golio, guaranteed to engage the interest of small children. That’s no small feat, given the harshness of Willie Johnson’s life, a man blinded as a child, who lived in poverty and died penniless in the ruins of his burnt-down home. For parents who’d like their children to encounter something of America’s musical heritage, this, really is a must-buy. Highly recommended. Read our review. Buy it here.

Gary W Burnett, The Gospel According to the Blues

It’s been out for a while, but no matter – it’s mine and I’m gonna recommend it! “The Gospel According to the Blues is at once a primer in American music, culture, and race and religious history. Gary Burnett moves deftly from lyrics to theory and back again, from Blind Lemon Jefferson to the insights of contemporary scholarship. Highly readable, thoroughly researched, and with deep respect for the art form on every page. For best results, read with scratchy vinyl recordings of the masters as accompaniment.” An interview with the author and more details here.

Buy it here.

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.