The protest song has a long history in popular music. One thinks of Meeropol’s Strange Fruit sung by Billie Holiday, that chilling song about lynching; Sam Cooke’s A Change is Gonna Come; Dylan’s Blowing in the Wind or A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall; or Nina Simone’s Mississippi Goddam. There are a great number of songs, composed or performed by artists who effectively use their position to raise awareness of an issue of justice – racism, war, domestic violence, discrimination, or environmental destruction. And we’re grateful to them for being prepared to put their heads above the parapet and risk losing some of their fans for the greater good.
But my goodness – Van Morrison is releasing three tracks to protest the anti-virus safety measures in the UK. He refers to “fascist bullies,” wants “no more lockdown” and claims “crooked scientists [are] making up crooked facts.” In this he joins that other UK grumpy anti-science musician, Noel Gallagher, who is refusing to wear a face mask, despite the legal requirement to do so. Morrison’s line about government measures enslaving people is actually downright offensive.
Van Morrison’s so-called protest songs are unlike real protest songs which rail against genuine injustices. He’s tilting at windmills when he goes against the scientific community’s growing body of evidence regarding mask wearing, social distancing and large gatherings of people.
The Northern Ireland Health Minister has rightly called Van Morrison’s songs “dangerous.” With the ‘R’ number for the virus over 1 in Britain and Northern Ireland, and the UK Prime Minister (whose own performance during the pandemic has been less than impressive) saying that the UK is now seeing a second wave of the virus, it’s no time for conspiracy theory touting by well known artists. We’re all frustrated by the restrictions the virus is enforcing on us, but wealthy artists venting their frustration? Pul-ease.
If Van Morrison wants to write a protest song, there is plenty of material to do with the virus. There’s the abysmal record of the UK government in dealing with the virus by being slow to lockdown, failing on PPE for medical staff, failing on testing and tracing, failure to close borders on time, and failing to protect its elderly population in nursing homes. All resulting in terrible loss of life. And then there’s the government’s failure to plan properly for the economic impact of the virus, which has resulted in Britain’s economy being hardest hit of any advanced economy – which in turn has hit its poorest and most vulnerable citizens the hardest.
That’s before we even get to the problems worldwide for the poor and disadvantaged whose lives have been devastated by the pandemic.
There’s so much here to genuinely rail against, that Van Morrison’s impatient moaning looks utterly self centred.
Here’s Nina Simone’s real protest song:
All I want is equality
For my sister my brother my people and me
Yes, you lied to me all these years…
You don’t have to live next to me
Just give me my equality
Everybody knows about Mississippi
Everybody knows about Alabama
Everybody knows about Mississippi goddam, that’s it
The railroad has a special place in the blues. Lovers leave on the train, singers go searching for them by the train, the gospel train is on its way, and the ramblin’ bluesman needs to board that train and ride.
Railroads were one of the major infrastructural and economic achievements of the nineteenth century and loomed large in the lives of people as the blues began to develop. You recall that the story of the very beginnings of the blues was at a railway station – in 1903, whilst waiting for a train in Tutweiler, Mississippi, bandleader W.C. Handy heard a man running a knife over the guitar strings and singing. He said,
“A lean, loose-jointed Negro had commenced plunking a guitar beside me while I slept. His clothes were rags; his feet peeped out of his shoes. His face had on it some of the sadness of the ages. As he played, he pressed a knife on the strings of a guitar in a manner popularized by Hawaiian guitarists who used steel bars. The effect was unforgettable. His song, too, struck me instantly. ‘Goin’ where the Southern cross’ the Dog.’ The singer repeated the line three times, accompanying himself on the guitar with the weirdest music I ever heard.”
Handy later published an adaptation of this song as “Yellow Dog Blues,” and became known as the “Father of the Blues.”
Freed slaves had built the railroad with their blood, sweat and tears, and in the early years of the twentieth century, it was the primary means of transport for people for longer distances. For itinerant blues musicians like Robert Johnson, trains allowed them to move from place to place and ply their trade. Johnson’s sister, Annye Anderson, in her book, Brother Robert, remembers Robert “hoboing” around on the train, going back and forth from Memphis to the Delta for his music. His famous train song, of course, is Love in Vain.
The train was the means of escape, too, for black people wanting to leave behind the injustice of the Jim Crow South and seek a better life in the North and West. From 1916 onwards, around 6m people moved away from the racist ideology, the lynching and the lack of economic opportunity to cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit and New York. Famously, McKinley Morganfield – Muddy Waters – boarded a train for Chicago in 1943 to become the “father of Chicago blues” and pioneer electric blues.
Trains in the South were, of course, segregated. In the “colored” section, there were no luggage racks, requiring travellers to cram their suitcases around their feet; and the bathroom there was smaller and lacked the amenities of the “whites” bathroom. All these were subtle and not-so-subtle reminders that you were not as good as the people in the other section.
So James Carr’s Freedom Train of 1969 was significant. Attorney General Tom C. Clark had organized a Freedom Train as “a campaign to sell America to Americans” to try and bolster the sense of shared ideology within the country. The train was integrated, but several Southern cities refused to allow blacks and whites to see the exhibits at the same time, and the Freedom Train skipped the planned visits. Carr’s song celebrates a new Freedom Train, free from segregation and discrimination. where “every man is gonna walk right proud with his head up high.”
So, here’s to trains, and may the Freedom Train keep on rollin’ down the track!
Here are 20 blues train songs for you to enjoy.
Trouble in Mind (1924)
In this old blues standard, things are so bad, the singer wants to end it all – he’s going to lay down his head on that old railroad iron, and let that 2.19 special pacify his mind. It never really gets to that point, happily, because, “sun’s gonna shine in my back yard some day.” First recorded in 1924, it’s been done by Nina Simone, Janis Joplin, Snooks Eglin, Lightnin’ Hopkins and many more. I like this jaunty version by Brooks Williams from his Brooks Blues album of 2017.
Railroad Blues , Trixie Smith with Louis Armstrong (1925)
Trixie Smith, not related to Bessie Smith, paid her dues in vaudeville and minstrel shows, as well as performing as a dancer, a comedian, an actress, and a singer. Here she is backed by Louis Armstrong’s muted horn, as she is “Alabama bound” on the railroad.
The Mail Train Blues, Sippie Wallace (1926)
The Texas Nightingale recorded 40 songs for Okeh during the 1920s before going on to be a a church organist, singer, and choir director, and then eventually reviving her performing career in the 1960s. In Wallace’s 1926 Mail Train Blues she bemoans her sweet man leaving her and wants to go looking for him aboard the mail train.
Spike Driver Blues. Mississippi John Hurt (1928)
This and other songs recorded by Hurt in 1928 were not commercially success and he reverted to the farming life until being found in 1963 by Dick Spottswood and Tom Hoskins, and persuaded to perform and record again. John Hurt had a wonderful guitar picking style which is credited by many guitarists as their inspiration. Spike Driver Blues is a John Henry song where the “steel-driving man” dies as a result of his hammering a steel drill into rock to make holes for explosives to blast the rock in constructing a railroad tunnel.
Long Train Blues, Robert Wilkins, (1930)
Wilkins was a versatile blues performer from Mississipi who gave up playing the blues to become a gospel minister in 1936. An excellent guitarist, he came to light again in the 1960s and recorded some of his gospel blues. Long Train Blues, which he recorded in 1930 tells the tale of a lover who has run off on the train.
Too Too Train Blues, Big Bill Broonzy (1932)
There’s some nifty acoustic guitar work here by the hugely talented Bill Broonzy, with another “my baby done left me aboard the train” blues. Broonzy sustained his career successfully from the 1920s to the 1950s, performing both traditional numbers and his own compositions, recording more than 300 songs.
The Midnight Special, Leadbelly (1934)
Recorded in 1934 by Huddie William “Lead Belly” Ledbetter at Angola Prison for John and Alan Lomax, the song has been covered by a host of artists, notably John Fogerty’s Creedance Clearwater Revival. The Midnight Special is said to be the name of a train that left Houston at midnight, heading west, running past Sugarland prison farm, the train’s light becoming a symbol for freedom for the inmates. The song also references the injustice of black men being incarcerated for minor infractions.
Love in Vain, Robert Johnson (1937)
Famously covered by the Rolling Stones for their 1969 Let It Bleed album which featured some tasty electric slide guitar, Love in Vain is a Robert Johnson song recorded in his last studio session in 1937. Johnson’s guitar work is outstanding, as is his singing. The sense of loss is palpable, and you hear Johnson crying out his lover Willie Mae’s name near the end of the song.
This Train, Rosetta Tharpe (1939)
This old gospel song has been around since the 1920s and has been extensively recorded. Bruce Springsteen’s Land of Hope and Dreams takes This Train as its starting point but reworks the ideas of the original so that everybody can get aboard. Tharpe’s more original version has “everybody riding in Jesus’ name”; it’s a “clean train, which won’t take “jokers, tobacco chewers and no cigar smokers.” The song was a hit for Tharpe in the late ‘30s and again in the ‘50s. This live performance gives some sense of what an expressive and incredible performer Tharpe was, not to mention her impressive guitar chops. The 1939 version was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame
Lonesome Train, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee (1952)
Just a great train song, with Sonny Terry’s harp driving the train down the track in this instrumental track. There are a few “whoooos” hollered along the way by the duo, who had a 35-year partnership. A masterclass in harp playing. The song was recorded by Sonny Terry in 1952 along with the Night Owls.
Mystery Train, Junior Parker (1953)
Mississippi bluesman Parker’s 1953 hit inspired a number of later versions, notably Paul Butterfield Blues Band’s take in 1965. In Parker’s version the drums mimic the rattle of the train on the track and the tenor sax the wail of the whistle. Butterfield adds a nice bit of harmonica.
Southbound Train, Muddy Waters (1957)
This is another Big Bill Broonzy song from 1957, which Muddy Waters recorded on his tribute to Broonzy in 1960, Muddy Waters Sings “Big Bill.” Broonzy had mentored Waters when he came to Chicago. Waters version isn’t too far removed from Broonzy’s, both piano driven blues, but Water’s version features some nice harp from James Cotton. The song has the singer heading South to the lowlands to escape his faithless lover.
Freight Train, Elizabeth Cotton (1957)
The song actually is about dying and being laid to rest at the end of Chesnut Street, so “I can hear “old number 9 as she comes rolling by.” Remarkable really, when Cotton said she composed the song as a teenager (sometime 1906-1912). She recorded it in 1957 and it’s been covered by many artists, including Peter, Paul & Mary, Joan Baez and Odetta. Cotton was a great guitar picker and this song has been a favourite for aspiring acoustic guitar players to learn. (Guitarist – check out Tommy Emmanuel’s lesson here (easy!!)
Freight Train Blues, Bob Dylan, 1962
Bob Dylan here echoes Elizabeth Cotton’s song in this 1962 recording from his debut album. Dylan tells a tongue-in-cheek but atmospheric story of poverty, rambling and the freight train. It’s typical early Dylan, all strummed acoustic guitar and harmonica.
Freedom Train, James Carr (1969)
A 1969 R&D hit for James Carr, Freedom Train reflects the Civil Rights movement of the sixties: “It’s time for all the people to take this freedom ride, Got to together and work for freedom side by side.” Born in Mississippi, Carr grew up singing in the church, but his R&D success led to his being called “the world’s greatest R&D singer.”
Hear My Train A-Coming, Jimi Hendrix (1971)
Hendix’s train song is typical Hendrix – overdriven, psychedelic guitar pulsing. It’s on his 1971 Rainbow Bridge album, but Hendrix performed the song in a BBC performance in 1967. He has also been recorded doing an acoustic version of the song on a 12-string guitar, giving it a Delta blues sound, Hendrix clearly familiar with the style of the acoustic blues masters of the past. Here’s some rare footage of Jimi Hendrix playing acoustic guitar.
Get Onboard, Eric Bibb (2008)
The title track of blues troubadour Eric Bibb’s 2008 album. Bibb, in his customary positive fashion, wants us to get on board the “love train.” There’s “room for everybody,” he sings as the band, including some nice harmonica, rattles us down the track.
Slow Train, Hans Theessink, 2012
Good times, bad times, tired and weary – Dutch guitarist and songwriter Hans Theessink has been singing the blues for a very long time and knows how to craft a blues song. This one is from his excellent 2012 Slow Train album, and features Theessink’s superb acoustic finger-picking and his rich bass-baritone voice.
When My Train Pulls In, Gary Clark Jr. (2013)
“Everywhere I go I keep seeing the same old thing & I, I can’t take it no more,” sings Clark, surely against the backdrop of racism in America. Hailing from Texas, the Grammy winning Clark is an outstanding guitarist and prolific live performer. This performance of the song which appears on his 2013 Blak and Blu album, showcases Clark’s guitar chops and his classy vocals.
Train to Nowhere, J J Cale (2014)
Eric Clapton recorded this previously unreleased J J Cale song on his tribute to Cale, The Breeze in 2014. The song features Mark Knopfler singing and playing guitar and is both unmistakably a J J Cale song and a train song. The lyrics look to be about that last train ride we all have to take and are a little bleak.
This Train, Joe Bonamassa (2016)
It’s full steam ahead for Joe’s train, in this case his baby who “comes down like a hammer” and “hurts him bad.” It’s all good stuff, with the usual Bonamassa guitar pyrotechnics. But Bonamassa has become a fine singer as well, which This Train amply demonstrates. The song is on his 2016 Blues of Desperation album, but there are some great live versions available too.
Catfish Keith is a wonderful guitarist and a fine exponent of acoustic blues. With his resonator and vintage-sounding guitars, and a fine ear for wheedling out old blues and folk tunes that he can re-work for a modern audience, he’s been entertaining people all round the world for nearly forty years. He’s been nominated for Grammys and Blues Music Awards on a number of occasions, has headlined major music festivals, and appeared with legendary artists like John Lee Hooker, Ray Charles, Robert Cray, Koko Taylor, Taj Mahal, Jessie Mae Hemphill, and Johnny Shines.
His latest album, Catfish Crawl, is a wonderful eclectic mix of material from Big Bill Broonzy, Blind Blake, Furry Lewis, Johnny Shines, Jessie Mae Hemphill, the Carter Family, the Nassau String Band and others, as well as some original material. It’s great fun, the guitar work is outstanding and Keith’s arrangements of the songs are masterful. Check it out, you’ll enjoy it!
We were delighted to get the chance to chat to Keith and ask him about the album and his life in music. First of all, I had to ask – where did the name Catfish Keith come from?
“Well,” he told me, “I got called that when I was a young fella. For a brief period of time, I lived on a sailboat in the Virgin Islands. I’d just left home and I’d never really seen the ocean before, but I had a friend who had a sailboat and he let me crew on it. So I was down there, living on the boat and we used to go fishing with this guy and he would say, “Hey man, you are nothing but a catfish swimming around.” I had no idea what he was talking about, but every time I’d see him, he’d say that.
“So, a handful of years goes by, and the time came for me, when I was maybe 22, to do my very first album. Using my given name, (Keith Daniel Kozacik) proved to be very cumbersome and people didn’t know how to spell it. So, I thought, well, if I’m going to change my name now is the time to do it. So I decided to go with Catfish Keith, because, you know, it kinda made me part of the blues animal kingdom! Now some people call me Cat and some just call me Fish!
What’s more, Keith told me, the song Catfish Blues, had been very formative for him. The song has been recorded by many artists over the years, including Honeyboy Edwards and Muddy Waters but it was Robert Petway’s original version, recorded in 1941, that had really turned him on to the sound of the National guitar, making him want to play a resonator.
I asked Keith about Catfish Crawl, his 18th album, which I’ve been listening to and enjoying enormously.
“I recorded it at a place called Flat Black Studios, which is not far away from where I live, run by a guy named Luke Tweedy and it’s just a nice place to record. It’s an old converted barn and I’ve gone there for about five or six of my albums. I think I took nine guitars – I have a lot of guitars! – and set them all up in the studio. And over the course of four or five days, I would go in for about three or four hours and record a handful of songs and I just kept at it until all the tracking was done and then we mastered it. The way I work, I’m well prepared when I go in the studio.
“I have 20 or 30 songs I could try. And then I go ahead and go through them. And if they don’t work after two or three or four cuts, I just move on to the next one. And so pretty quickly it reveals if a song’s truly ready or not. I guess I used 13 songs on that album and I like to use a number of different guitars just to vary the sound. Some songs I’ll play slide guitar, usually on my baritone Nationals. And I play a lot of the little handmade guitars, including the Santa Cruz Catfish Special and guitars by Ralph Bown, who’s a British guitar builder.
“There’s a whole bunch of great luthiers that have made guitars for me kind of in a vintage style. People like Dale Fairbanks at Fairbanks Guitars, Tony Klassen at ARK New Era Guitars, and Todd Cambio at Fraulini Guitars And I really love those guitars and I love to showcase them. In Luke’s studio you get this wonderful, wonderful sound, and it’s really easy to work.
“From my repertoire maybe several months before I’m going to do a record I’ll list out fifty or a hundred songs that I love and I want to do. I’ve written some too, and I’ll spend two or three months before the studio date, just crafting and honing and practicing and working on songs. It’s all about kind of doing the homework, so when it’s time to record I’m ready to go. And that’s the way I’ve worked for years and years.
“Most of what I do is solo – that was always my vision for the music. The music I loved the most was the quirky, weird, beautiful treasure trove of songs where one person and an instrument could make all the sound, a complete and whole beautiful orchestra. Finger picking guitar and all the roots music, but heavily based in country blues. And of course, I also do songs from the Islands and I do some jazzy things, and songs that come from old time country and fiddle tunes, you know, kind of the whole full bag of American roots music. And that’s always really inspired me.”
Keith benefited from there being a lot of really gifted musicians and songwriters and old-time musicians in Iowa when he was growing up – people he could see performing live and learn from. Then, whenever he started playing professionally, he got the opportunity to tour all over the US, which gave him the chance to meet many of his heroes, first generation blues artists, like Johnny Shines, Homesick James and Honeyboy Edwards, who, although getting pretty old, were still alive. He got the opportunity to meet and play with the likes of Jessie Mae Hemphill, John Cephas and John Jackson and Henry Townsend.
“I’m 58 years old now but when I was young, in my early twenties, quite a few of those old guys were still around. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was very, very lucky to have that direct link and friendship. And get to know the culture of it, as well as just learning music from old records. So, that really brought it to life and made the music even more real and more important. Those musicians are like my musical grandparents. But then there are also those that are one generation older than me, whom I’ve known and learned from – like Dave Van Ronk, Paul Geremiah, John Hammond and Roy Bookbinder. These are all guys that I still know, and we’re still good friends. And they were huge influences as to how you get out there and actually take the music to the world.”
What, I wondered, drew him to the blues and the sort of traditional music that he plays?
“Well, you know, when I was a real little kid my mom had records in the house and I remember we had a Leadbelly record and we had Odetta and Joni Mitchell and Johnny Cash and Gordon Lightfoot, Joan Baez, stuff like that. My mom liked to collect records and she loved folk music and the blues. So that was when I first heard it when I was a little kid. And then when I was about 12 and started playing, there were quite a lot of people playing acoustic guitar especially at summer camp, and there were camp counsellors who would play guitars and sing all these songs by the campfire.
“And then I used to go to folk mass or hippy mass in my Catholic church back in the ’70s. And once they found out that I liked playing guitar they got me playing in the church band. I barely knew any chords, but they put me right on stage. And we’d play songs for all the parts of the mass, you know, the Amen and all that. So when I was coming of age, there were a lot of acoustic guitars around being played. And that made me start to teach myself guitar. And I just love the sound of acoustic guitar.”
Catfish Keith, Johnny Shines, Madcat Ruth 1987
Listen to any Catfish Keith albums and you’ll pretty quickly realize what a jaw-droppingly good guitar player he is, finger-picking complex patterns and sounding like there are about three guitars in play rather than just one. That was what attracted him to the acoustic guitar – hearing the complexity of players like Paul Simon, then Leo Kottle and John Fahey. Listening to this sort of stuff as a teenager was what drew him in, rather than the pop songs his class mates were listening to. He was much more attracted to the music of James Taylor, Jim Croce, Simon and Garfunkel. Anything, really that featured acoustic guitar.
“But when I started hearing these old blues, it really grabbed me and I was inspired to not only learn the guitar, but, sing as well and make the whole world of music and really that’s what’s fuelled me ever since.”
As he listened to all these great acoustic guitar players, Keith began to wonder where did they got their music.
“I always had that kind of bookish curiosity. I loved going to the library as a kid – I’d find books about country blues, like the Samuel Charters book, and I found pictures of Charlie Patton and Blind Blake. So I just sort of started studying. And the libraries had the old records too. They had Blind Blake records and Fred McDowell and Memphis Minnie, and all those wonderful country blues. So, I would check those out and study them.
“I would befriend blues record collectors and go to their houses and ask them to play the blues records so I could record them on my boombox on cassette tape. Then I’d study the recordings. I loved the music and I felt like I was finding a hidden treasure.”
Once he began to discover all this great music, Keith began to practice incessantly. Malcolm Gladwell says it takes at least 10,000 hours practise to get professionally good at something. Keith says he’s put in hundreds of thousands of hours, just playing all the time as a young man. And he still does:
“I still play guitar a lot. I can leave it by for a while, but then I’ll go and play for hours and just enjoy taking the journey with the guitar. I do what I called daydream guitar play. I’ll just lay in the bed with the guitar and I won’t even think of anything in particular. I’ll just pick the guitar up and start playing and see what happens. And sometimes I’ll make a whole new song and sometimes I’ll just play and enjoy whatever journey I’m on until I have to get up and walk around.”
Keith has a unique sound, honed over many years, which is a result of his superb guitar chops, his in-depth knowledge of the musical canon and by the way in which he approaches re-interpreting an old song – he doesn’t just copy the way a song has been performed but he first internalizes it, allows it to become part of him before he begins to arrange it in a way that keeps the vintage vibe, but makes it sound new and alive.
I went on to ask Keith about something I’d noticed in Catfish Crawl, that I thought was a bit unusual. Here and there, you hear him using harmonics, which is not something that you often hear in country blues playing. But it adds something pretty nice to some of the songs.
“Yeah, you don’t really hear it within country blues. I listened to a lot of kinds of guitar playing and when I was a young man I heard a jazz guitar soloist playing in a lounge, and he would do all these finger style sort of standards. And then all of a sudden, he’d do a whole chorus that was in just in harmonics. And when I saw him, it just made my hair stand up. It made me realize if I could get some of that sound that I would extend the range of the guitar and it could stretch the possibility of the sounds, you can add colours and textures.
“So I took some of his technique. And there are other jazz players like Lenny Breau who had his own harmonics sound. And then, you hear it in rock and roll guys like Eddie Van Halen. It’s different, it’s more frenetic and it’s all electric guitar, but it’s the same technique. And harmonics were also used in Hawaiian music for lap style playing. I studied hard on all those harmonics, just so I could add some different colours to what I was doing. So I could take a really simple melody, and then if I want to, I can play the entire thing in harmonics, or I can add little skanky harmonic notes that add a little texture in the middle of a song.”
Catfish’s Nationals
Keith has been a endorser of National Reso-phonic guitars since the 1990s and has recently had a signature guitar made by Santa Cruz. I was keen to hear about his guitars. First he told me about Nationals:
“Well, it’s a very distinctive sound, a beautiful voice that really occupies sort of a cultural place. Nationals really captured my imagination when I heard the Hawaiian guys, like Sol Hoopii, who plays lap style and tricones, and then Son House and Blind boy Fuller and Booker White. But I have to credit Son house. When I was a teenager and I was into finger picking, I was already finger-picking pretty good. But then I found a Son House record – the Father of Folk Blues record he did in 1965.
“I got it in the cutout section of the record store. I don’t know if you remember that record stores had this section where the records were cheaper and they had the corners of the cover snipped off. The records were half price or a third of the price. And there were always some real treasures in the cutout bin. The Son House record was one of those records where I put it on and I was like, wow, what is that? And then I had to listen to it again because it really sorta threw me. It was like this sort of drunken banjo and garbage can sound together, and it really went with his moaning voice and it was very deep.
“And the poetry of some of those songs…He did a song called Death Letter, and one of the lines was, “It looked like 10,000 was down in the burying ground, I didn’t know I loved her until they laid her down.” You’re only 15 and you’re hearing this stuff! It was so heavy and unforgettable. It would draw me in and the sound of the slide was like the sound of a human voice. So I guess all those things are what drew me to the sound of National guitar. And I use a whole bunch of them a bunch of different ways, but it’s really part of what I do.”
Then there’s the Catfish Special from the Santa Cruz Guitar Company, based in…yes, you’ve guessed it…Santa Cruz, California. Keith told me he’d meet the Santa Cruz people at the big annual guitar show, NAMM, in Los Angeles, when he was helping at the National booth. In due course they offered to do a signature model and asked him about the specification.
“I was hypnotized by these little, all-mahogany guitars that they made, so I said, let’s try a mahogany guitar. Richard Hoover, the head honcho and guru took me through his own wood pile at his factory and showed me this one kind of mahogany from Guatemala and it had this sort of shimmering figure to it. That was it. And I think the guitar fits a funny little niche. So they made this guitar for me as my signature model and got Catfish inlaid on the peghead, and little bubbles inlaid on the fingerboard, so it’s fun to look at as well as really fun to play. And it’s probably the finest instrument I’ve ever had.
“And you know, as you play an acoustic guitar the tone gets better and better. I feel so lucky that I was able to get with Santa Cruz and I’m so charmed by everything that they do. It’s just a wonderful company.” [Check out the Catfish Special here.]
We’d had a great conversation and could’ve chatted on much longer, but I wanted to know finally about how the pandemic is affecting things for Keith, Clearly live performances are out for the time being.
“Yeah. Unless your audience is standing out in the field! But all the venues where people sit right next to each other, which is almost all of them – that model might take a while to come back. And a lot of those venues are gonna probably fold. There’s a place here in Iowa city that I play in, it’s been there for 58 years and they finally had to throw in the towel two or three months ago. It was really the nexus of folk music and alternative rock and all kinds of stuff in the heart of Iowa city. It’s hard to imagine the town without that place, it’s been such a part of the culture of the town. I think there’s a lot of places where the same thing is happening all over the world. I don’t know how we come back from that.
Keith went on to talk about his love for performing and the loss that has been.
“I really didn’t realize how much I love it, traveling all over the world. It didn’t have to be 300 gigs a year, but it was certainly a hundred plus, and we would always go to the UK and Ireland, Europe and all over the USA. But this March, everything died as far as that goes and I’ve had to cancel and reschedule things two or three times. So yeah, it’s been difficult. We would have done my 50th and 51st overseas tours this year had we had played. It was going to be my best year ever. But like with everybody, things got postponed. We’ll see what happens next year, here’s hoping.”
For artists and venues alike, these are difficult times for sure. We can all just hope that we get to the point where people like Catfish Keith can get to safely perform and entertain us again before long.
Happily for Keith, he has his wife Penny beside him as his manager, sound engineer, and President of their label, Fish Tail Records. “She’s been right by my side through all of this, since day one. It’s not just me. It’s the both of us, that make the band. She knows how to make the music sound powerful and big, and she knows what is right. She is a lot smarter than me, and we do this journey together. I love her with all my heart, and none of this would be possible without her.”
I’ve been listening to the latest album by Larkin Poe, Self-Made Man, and there’s a great track on it called Holy Ghost Fire. You tend to get a few references to the Bible in a Larkin Poe album, not doubt reflecting the sisters background in the Southern Bible Belt.
“Who’s gonna help me carry my load
Burn, burn baby burn with that Holy Ghost Fire
From your fingers to the frets…gonna testify.”
It’s raw, apocalyptic sounding stuff, conjuring up images of wild Pentecostal exuberance. Exuberant joy, is of course, the mark of the Spirit moving – it seeps through the Bible’s pages, even though you wouldn’t think it when you attend most churches today. Kenny Meeks’s song, When Jesus Takes You Dancing, catches the exhilaration of all this on his 2016 bluesy Americana album, New Jerusalem. “When Jesus takes you dancing…the Holy Ghost takes over you and sets you all on fire…”
You get the same holy dancing in Beth Hart’s Spirit of God from her 2012 album, Bang Bang Boom Boom which takes us on a rockin’ journey from Beth’s house to the house of God where she goes “hip shakin’ down the aisle”, then “breaking bread with my own special style”. Spirit of God worship is clearly not the sombre sit-in-your-pew, be quiet and sleep through the sermon version which is served up in too many churches. In Beth’s church, it’s a “soul celebration,” where the preacher’s “goin’ crazy…knocking devils down on the floor,” the choir is “giving it up to the Lord,” and Beth knows she’s sure “feeling something!”
The Holmes’ Brothers Speaking in Tongues from their eponymous 2001 album, gives us more Pentecostal action:
“You got me speaking in tongues, speaking your name,
Lord let me understand you
You got shaking my head, lifting my hands…”
Think it’s strange? Sister Rosetta Tharpe was singing in 1944 about the strange things that happened every day when God’s on the move. People might get healed:
“There are strange things happening everyday
He gave the blind man sight
When he praised Him with all his might
There are strange things happening everyday.”
Songs about the Holy Spirit in the blues go back to Blind Willie Johnson, with his Latter Rain. The lyrics of this are often misunderstood. You need to appreciate that for Willie Johnson’s Pentecostal church, the latter rain was the rain of the Spirit that the Old Testament prophet Joel had prophesied. Joel was quoted by Peter on the Day of Pentecost when the Spirit fell on the first group of Jesus followers – “I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh.” But Joel also talked about the early rain and the latter rain. The early Pentecostal believers like Willie Johnson believed that what they were experiencing was a fresh shower of the Spirit’s blessing – the latter rain, as opposed to the early rain that had fallen on the first believers. “It’s for you, it’s for you, it’s for you and your children too,” go the lyrics, reflecting the prophet Joel’s word.
Spin forward another 25 years and you have the Rev. Gary Davis singing I Heard the Angel Singing, where the “Holy Ghost on fire” fell on him, and he “got in the Spirit and began to shout.” The devil tries to stop him praying, but the singing of the angels spur him on. Eric Bibb has a great version of this song. [check out, too Eric’s Spirit and the Blues album]
Larry Norman, father of Jesus rock in 1972 wondered “why should the devil have all the good music?” He’d been filled with the Spirit, he sang, “I feel OK, because Jesus is the rock and he rolled my blues away.”
And bang up to date, we have the Mason Creek Project’s Holy Spirit Blues. “Everytime I feel the Spirit, I feel like dancin’ in my shoes.”
Giving a slightly different different angle is this great Kelly Joe Phelps song, The Holy Ghost Flood. There are no fireworks in Kelly Joe’s beautiful song, featuring his characteristic and wonderful guitar picking, just a recognition of his own need: “Oh Lord a sinner I am, Asking you to forgive me.” He needs a “flood” of the Holy Spirit, of God’s presence which means:
“Blessing us in kind,
Leaving not a soul behind.”
According to Pew Research, Pentecostalism and related “charismatic movements” represent one of the fastest-growing segments of global Christianity, with around a quarter of the world’s 2 billion Christians. They celebrate the gift of the Spirit in exuberant worship and a keen sense of God’s Spirit at work in their everyday lives.
Actually, this pretty much reflects the early Christian movement that we read about in the New Testament. These early communities were communities of the Spirit where the speaking in tongues, healing and prophesying we’ve seen in the songs above, were a regular feature of their worship. As were other Spirit inspired ways of life like love, patience and kindness.
Maybe it’s time to let the Spirit move and go with Beth Hart “hip shakin’ down the aisle.” Something to try next Sunday morning you’re at church!
How much can one man pack into one lifetime? In the normal scheme of things, not remotely as much as Paul Jones has. From incredible success as the singer in Manfred Mann in the 1960s, with chart-topping hits in the UK and US, like Do Wah Diddy Diddy and Pretty Flamingo, to lead roles in musicals and plays on London’s West End, to acting in films and on TV, presenting the Blues Show on BBC Radio for over 30 years, and singing and playing harmonica with his Blues Band for the last 40 years – and, “don’t forget songwriter,” he gently chided me, when we chatted recently about his life, the blues and faith.
Now in his eighth decade, Paul Jones is still going strong. He told me that next year is scheduled to be “the most gig heavy year out of the last ten or fifteen,” with shows all round the UK with the Blues Band and the Manfreds, a reformed Manfred Mann. Where does he get the energy from? “Oh,” he said nonchalantly, “I have energy! I always have. I enjoy what we do.”
That enjoyment and zest for life came across in spades during our conversation. I asked him, first of all, of all the things he’s done along the way, what does he consider himself most successful at. Singing was the obvious thing he said, because of all the Manfred Mann hits, the West End musicals and the other bands he’s been a part of. “But from, from my point of view,” he said, “I like being a harmonica player as much as I like being a singer.” It’s the one thing he would choose out of all he’s done, if forced to.
He’s been a top-notch harmonica player for a long time, and has played a long list of major artists, including Joe Bonamassa, Van Morrison and Eric Clapton, as well as his own bands.
What was the most challenging of all the things he’s done? Although in his acting career, there were some straightforward roles where the play was good and he had a top-notch director, sometimes, “at the other end of the scale, there’s stuff where you really have to dig deep.” Although he enjoyed the acting, he’s left that behind – “Things have changed and there’s very little I would want to be acting in now.”
Jones presented the BBC Radio Two Blues Show for 32 years, as well as broadcasting on Jazz FM and the BBC World Service. He told me he thoroughly enjoyed his years with the Blues Show.
“All credit to Dave Shannon, who was the BBC producer who invented the program in the first place and actually offered it to Radio One. They turned it down saying, no, that’s music for old people. You want to go to Radio Two. So we did, and it worked. The program survived for 32 years with me at the helm. And it still exists with Cerys Matthews.
“At the beginning Dave Shannon wrote most of the script. I was allowed to make some additions, which kind of suited me. If, for instance, we were talking about somebody that I had a personal knowledge of, then obviously that would be of interest to the listener. So that was fine. I could do that. And then after a while Dave said, ‘Just talk about this record yourself. You don’t need me writing stuff for you.’ And so I said, ‘Okay, I think I can do that.’ Well, actually I knew I could do it because before I was at Radio Two, I had about three or four years of the World Service so I obviously knew how to present the program.”
I asked Paul about the many artist interviews he’d done on the show. Were there any that particularly stood out for him?
“Van Morrison stands out. He was one of the first people that I interviewed – I had interviewed him previously for the World Service before the blues program came along. I concentrated mainly on that wonderful double album that he recorded in 1994, A Night in San Francisco. He was absolutely brilliant, tremendous guest. I remember doing that interview with Van, because people had warned me, he’s not easy. And actually, Van did sort of throw me a curve ball here and there, but I enjoyed it. And Junior Wells was notable.
“But the very first person I interviewed in my life was Memphis Slim. At that point I was still an undergraduate in Oxford. I noticed that he was in the UK, and with the confidence of youth, I got in touch with the organization for which he was touring. I’d just been asked if I would write on musical subjects for a magazine called Oxford Opinion, which was just starting up – we’re talking round about 1960, 1961. So they said, yes, okay. And Memphis Slim was staying in a rather nice hotel, not far from Trafalgar square. So I went to visit him and I think he thought I was very young. I was still spotty!
“But I, you know, I got a nice interview out of him. I remember he said that he thought it was not entirely fair that Ray Charles was a lot more successful than he was! And, of course, at that time, Memphis Slim was having a lot of commercial success with a couple of albums that featured not only him, but Matthew ‘Guitar’ Murphy – wonderful guitar player – and he also had terrific horn players in those times as well. They were some of the most successful, the most commercially slanted things that Memphis Slim ever did.
“So he sticks out. I never interviewed him again, although I did play on an album that he made at Ronnie Scott’s in London.
“Several times I interviewed Taj Mahal. He’s an artist I admire greatly because he’s never been entirely easy to categorize. And I kinda like that and I’m impressed by it, but he does have a wonderful voice. And he has lovely sort of style on guitar when he chooses to do that. And, of course, he plays harmonica and percussion and all kinds of stuff. I’ve interviewed him several times – the last time was when he came over to Britain with Keb’ Mo’ in 2018. They came in and did an absolutely marvellous interview.
“I’ll tell you one more, Gary. There’s an absolutely marvellous, wonderful jazz singer called Cassandra Wilson. And she sometimes does Robert Johnson songs and things, and always surrounds herself with absolutely stunning musicians. She’s wonderful. And she came in for an interview and somebody said, she’s very nice, but she is very serious. And one thing you mustn’t do is compare her with anyone else because she might get very difficult. She had a marvellous album out at the time and she’d done a song, I think it was a self-written and an absolutely wonderful piece of work. And I played the track somewhere about halfway through the interview. And I said as it came up, I don’t know if I should say this, but as I listen to that, surely I can hear just a teeny bit of Nina Simone. And she said…’I love Nina Simone!’
“And one more somebody warned me about was Koko Taylor. What a great artist and absolutely part of blues history. And the person who warned me was actually her manager and the boss of her record label, Alligator Records, Bruce Iglauer.” [Check out our interview Bruce Iglauer about his book, Bitten by the Blues].
“We had run into Bruce and Koko Taylor in Chicago. Bruce had warned me in advance, ‘She’s in a filthy mood. And you can have 20 minutes if you’re lucky.’ Now I actually think that Koko Taylor was tremendous, great artist. Anyway, I had all my Koko Taylor facts and all my Koko Taylor records lined up. And she came in and sure enough, she had a face like thunder and she was really just barely tolerating me. Well, I just told her what I thought of her, and I played the records and I told her what I thought of the records, and then I asked her some questions. And after about 25 or 30 minutes, Bruce said to me, ‘Well, Paul, I think that’s about it.’ And Koko turned round to him and said, ‘Shut up, Bruce, guy knows what he’s doing!’
“So I’ve had some marvellous interviews. I’ve always liked interviewing people over all these years – I’ve loved all the people that I interviewed.”
I then asked Paul about his relationship with the blues, which he’s been immersed for nearly all of his life. What is it about the music that really resonates with him?
“Well, like so many people of my generation and background, you can blame Lonnie Donegan for a lot of it. I was a jazz fan by the age of 14 and was listening to everything from Nat King Cole to Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, and by the age of 17, 18, I was into modern jazz. However, alongside that along came Lonnie Donegan. I think I was still only 14 years old when Lonnie Donegan did this wonderful recording called The Rock Island Line. And I heard him being interviewed on a radio program. The presenter said, ‘What an extraordinary song. What on earth made you write this?’ And Lonnie said, ‘No, no, I didn’t write it. I got it from Lead Belly.’ And the presenter said, ‘Who?’ It was Lead Belly – Huddie Ledbetter, of course, a wonderful folk blues artist.
“Anyway, I used to go to a second hand record shop in Portsmouth where I lived, and on Saturday mornings I would take my little amount of pocket money and I would I would buy a 78 – I think 45s were just coming in about then. I would buy a Humphrey Littleton record or a Count Basie record and I was already listening to singers like Jimmy Rushing in those Count Basie records.
“Then in first term at university, I went down to stay with my parents for the Christmas holiday in Plymouth where my father was captain of Plymouth dock yard. And I went into a record shop – Pete Russell’s Hot Record Store. I thought that sounded really hip. I mean, nobody used the word ‘store’ in those days except in America. So, I went in there a few times during that particular Christmas vacation, and about the fourth time I went in, Russell said to me, ‘You like blues, I suggest you should listen to this.’ And he put on the record, and it had wonderful electric guitar – most of what I’d been listening to had been acoustic guitar. And not only that, but it had a harmonica. I said, ‘What is this?’ And he said it was a 10-inch LP on French Vogue records by an artist called T-bone Walker. And I looked at it and I saw that the harmonica player was called Junior Wells. I went out of Pete Russell’s shop with that album and then I went to a music shop and bought a harmonica.
“And eventually, not long after that, I heard Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williamson and Big Walter. I’d already heard Sonny Terry by then. Although I was impressed, he didn’t make me want to play; Junior Wells made me want to play.”
Paul Jones became a Christian in the early ‘80s and his faith is central to him. So, I wanted to know about the relationship between blues and his Christian faith. People have referred to the blues as the devil’s music and there’s all the mythology linked to the blues about the crossroads, mojo and so on. What was his take on all of that?
“Well, one of my favourite interviewees – I can’t absolutely say for definite whether this was Pop Staples, or Clarence Fountain from the Blind Boys of Alabama, but one or other of those two eminent gentlemen – wonderful singers, and in Pop’s case, great songwriter as well, but just two absolute icons of gospel – one of them said to me, ‘What is this devil music stuff? Devil ain’t got no music, except what stupid people give him.’ And that’s right. Because if the devil could make music, then he would be doing something that was true. But as Jesus said, he’s a liar! He’s the father of lies. So, if he did anything, if he actually invented anything or created anything himself, he wouldn’t be a liar. No, all he can do is mess around with stuff that’s already been created and make lies and try and mess people up. So that’s what I think about the phrase, the devil’s music.
“I actually loved gospel music throughout my years of atheism and believe me, I was a serious atheist. I was brought up in a Christian family, we went to church as a family and it was real. At a fairly early age, I was discovered to have a fairly usable voice, so I was drafted into the local cathedral choir, and I actually began to take Christianity seriously. But at that stage – I was probably slightly younger than 14 – some very, very bad behaviour on the part of a Christian turned me against Christianity entirely. And I decided since I was never going to be a Christian, as long as I lived I should be an atheist.
“But in all my years of atheism, I liked gospel music. And in particular I liked early Mahalia Jackson, the records that she made the Falls-Jones Ensemble, which chiefly had a piano and a church organ, and sometimes a rather jazzy bass and drums as well. Boy, that woman’s voice! In 1958 I remember going to see the film Jazz on a Summer’s Day and Mahalia sang The Last Mile of the Way. So here I am, an atheist collecting Mahalia Jackson and Blind Boys and The Swan Silvertones, and things like that. I liked The Swan Silvertones because Claude Jeter had an almost falsetto voice and reminded me of quite a number of soul singers who did the same thing. And I used to walk around singing falsetto all those gospel songs like Smokey Robinson or somebody like Eddie Holman might sing.
“I loved all that stuff. I remember when I was doing a play in New York on Broadway, and I used to walk from my apartment to the theatre, singing the whole way. And at one point I was singing something by Smokey Robinson, Tears of a Clown or something like that. And this guy passed me and he stopped and turned around and said, ‘Righteous man, righteous.’ I just loved that music. So, when I finally became a Christian, I had all these albums I could pick out and listen to.”
We turned from talking about the blues to talking about Paul’s faith, which he said means “everything” to him. I asked him about deciding to follow Jesus – whether looking back, some things had happened along the way that were stepping stones, or whether it was a very sudden thing. He told me how important discovering the work of a 19th century German landscape artist had been in starting to unravel his atheism. As the Blues Band began to take off after 1979, and they started touring in Europe, it had tremendous success, with large audiences cheering, clapping and stomping their feet as the band came on stage. Paul was only too aware from the height of his success in the 1960s, when his life had gone badly off the rails, of the dangers of getting into a fantasy world of fan adulation where you could begin to think that was the only reality.
Paul told me he needed to “Get out from the centre of that maelstrom of his own success and popularity,” and that visiting art galleries whilst on tour allowed him to do that. And it was there that he discovered the spirituality of the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich. “When I look at them now, I don’t know why I didn’t become a Christian right there and then,” he told me. But he went on to explain what brought things to a head for him as far as faith is concerned:
“In 1982, Richard Eyre, the director of the National Theatre [in London] called me up and asked if I wanted his ticket for Guys and Dolls’ opening night, because he hated sitting in the audience on his own opening nights. So I sat in the best seat in the house, right in the centre of the stalls. And it was absolutely wonderful, and I’m a man who did not like musicals. By that time I had actually been in one or two, usually Lloyd Webber’s or something like that, but I didn’t really like musicals. And here I was absolutely blown away by this musical.
“And there was this one girl in the cast who really caught my eye. Anyway, about five or six weeks later, Richard rang me again. And he said, “My next production at the National Theatre is going to be the Beggar’s Opera. Would you like to come and play Macheath, the highwayman?’ So I soon found myself in the Guys and Dolls company. And the beautiful girl was in it! So, to cut a long story short, I fell in love with her. In October of that year [1982] – about 9 months after I’d first gone along to see Guys and Dolls – I wound up in Guys and Dolls as well, because Ian Charleson, the actor who was playing Sky Masterson, decided to leave. So I found myself playing Sky Masterson, and then the girl who was playing smaller roles in Guys and Dolls and Beggar’s Opera was suddenly promoted into lead roles in Guys and Dolls and Beggar’s Opera, so there we were, playing opposite each other, and life started imitating art, and we fell in love.
“So, fast forward to 1984. We were still at the National. And something happened where Fiona began to think she was missing something and she really need to do something about it. She was doing a play at the BBC on the radio, and when she finished, she came in to do the evening show at the National. So, she knocked on the door of my dressing room, and she said, ‘Don’t laugh, but I came out of the BBC and I went into that church just opposite the entrance to the Broadcasting House. And I just opened the Bible, and I read something about Jesus and eternal life.’ Turned out, of course, it was John 3:16.
“So she said, ‘I’m going to that church on Sunday,’ and I said I would go with her – partly motivated by the fact that I didn’t want her to go anywhere without me! But also partly because I’d been following these Caspar Friedrich paintings, and they’re so obviously Christian and so powerful. So we went to that church, All Souls, Langham Place, and we thought, this is absolutely marvellous.
“A few weeks later, the phone rang one afternoon, and it was Cliff Richard. And he asked us to come and hear a man called Luis Palau speaking at White City Stadium in West London. I hummed and hawed a bit, so Cliff said, ‘Tell you what, when the evening’s over, I’ll buy you dinner!’ And do you know something, he was just doing what God told him. God told him to get as many people from show business as possible into that stadium. And he invited over 130 people! The night that Fiona and I were there, we were not the only show business people there, there were some other very well-known people.
“And Cliff bought dinner for all of us. So I was pretty impressed by him at that point! Essentially, we gave our lives to Jesus that night. It wasn’t just what Luis said, it was what God said through Luis. And we just looked at each other, and we said we have wasted enough of our lives, let’s not waste any more.
“The next day I telephoned All Souls and asked if we could get married in the church – and they said no! And this lovely guy – who actually conducted our service of blessing, and with whom we’re still friends and are godparents to his three daughters – explained that because I was divorced, the Church of England couldn’t marry us. So we got married in a registry office on a Saturday, and then on the Sunday we went to All Souls and had a great service of blessing with a wonderful black gospel choir, and a large contingent of actors and directors from the National Theatre. We had a wonderful day, and we always celebrate our wedding anniversary on the 16th December, the day of the blessing.”
I wondered how Paul’s faith had developed and matured over the past 36 years, what his faith means to him, and he told me that it meant everything to him.
“Really, for the rest of my days, getting people into the kingdom is my priority. The Bible calls it ‘bearing fruit.’ That’s what both Fiona and I want to do.”
Paul Jones has had a remarkable life, and after nearly six decades as a performer, has clearly no interest in retiring – “retirement is a dirty word, as far as I’m concerned. We usually just refer to it as the ‘R’ word!” He was a breath of fresh air in our conversation, full good humour, full of stories from his rich and varied experience, clearly in love with life, and still inspired by the faith that dispelled his atheism all those years ago. If he’s appearing on a stage near you, or you hear of him coming to your town to tell his story along with his wife, Fiona, don’t hesitate to go and see him. You’ll not regret it.
[interview slightly edited for clarity and length]
There have been a lot of excellent tribute albums to blues artists over the past twenty years. We’ve chosen 16 excellent albums, some by just one artist covering the music of another artist from the past, and some with various artists covering the songs. In each case, the new artist has both re-interpreted the songs and kept the spirit of the originals intact, honouring the legacy of the original artist.
Billy Boy Arnold, Sings Big Bill Broonzy (2012)
Veteran blues harp player Arnold turns in a very fine acoustic guitar driven tribute album to the great Bill Broonzy. Broonzy had a very long and varied career as a musical artist, after life as a sharecropper, preacher and soldier. He copyrighted more than 300 songs along the way and had a wide range of songs in his performing repertoire including ragtime, country blues, urban blues, jazz, folk songs and spirituals. Arnold gives us 15 classic Broonzy country blues numbers.
Rory Block Avalon, A Tribute to Mississippi John Hurt (2013)
Rory Block is one of the world’s greatest living acoustic blues artists, whose talent has been recognized many times by WC Handy and Blues Music Awards. She has lovingly recorded a number of tribute albums to some of the major country blues artists, including Skip James, Fred McDowell, Robert Johnson, Son House and Rev. Gary Davis. All of them are terrific, featuring Block’s outstanding guitar chops, but we’ve gone with her tribute to the wonderful John Hurt, whose guitar picking style underpins the technique of so many acoustic artists that have come after hum.
Rory Block, A Woman’s Soul: A Tribute to Bessie Smith (2018)
Block turns her attention to the Empress of the Blues, after her set of 6 tribute albums to the founding fathers of the blues. Everything on the album is played by Rory Block, and as ever, the guitar picking and slide work are masterful. The songs, clearly, are very differently treated to the originals, Block cleverly translating the big band arrangements into guitar accompaniment. It makes for a fine and hugely enjoyable tribute to Bessie Smith. [Check out our interview with Rory here]
Eric Clapton, Me and Mr Johnson (2004)
Hugely successful album, selling over 2m copies. Clapton said he’s been driven and influenced all his life by Robert Johnson’s work. It was, he said, “the keystone of my musical foundation…now, after all these years, his music is like my oldest friend. It is the finest music I have ever heard.” The album, consisting of 14 of Johnson’s songs, sees Clapton in fine form, and features, as you’d expect, top-notch lead and slide guitar. A companion album and video release entitled Sessions for Robert J was released also released, featuring different versions of each of the songs from the studio album.
Fabrizio Poggi and Guy Davis, Sonny and Brownie’s Last Train (2017)
As fine an acoustic blues album as you will hear. Two top modern-day artists, Davis on guitar and Poggi on harmonica, both at the top of their game and channelling two of history’s greatest acoustic bluesmen. There’s a warmth, feeling and joy in the way these songs are presented that draws you in and puts a big smile on your face. The album was nominated for a Grammy. [check out our review here]
Marie Knight, Let Us Get Together: A Tribute to Reverend Gary Davis (2007)
Recorded by the late Marie Knight two years before she passed away, aged 89. Knight toured widely with Sister Rosetta Tharpe in the 1940s, but left to become a successful solo gospel and R&B singer. Davis was an incredible guitarist and Larry Campbell’s blues picking and guitar work more than does justice to the reverend’s genius. Knight’s soulful, gospel vocals in these 12 gospel blues songs pay a handsome tribute to the often overlooked artistry of Rev. Gary Davis. Superb. [check out our take on Rev Gary Davis here]
Mark Miller, Ain’t It Grand: The Gospel Songs of Blind Willie McTell (2010)
Nobody can sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell, sang Bob Dylan. True, but McTell also left us a fine collection of gospel blues songs, and Americana/Country artist Mark Miller’s gospel tribute has 10 songs which McTell regularly performed. Lovely old timey feel to the album, with some fine acoustic finger picked and slide guitar.
Various Artists, God Don’t Never Change: The Songs of Blind Willie Johnson (2016)
“Eleven stirring renditions which replicate the soul of the songs, not just the sounds.” Has earned plaudits from all quarters and Grammy Award nominations for Best Roots Gospel Album and Best American Roots Performance for the Blind Boys of Alabama’s recording of Mother’s Children Have a Hard Time. The album was produced by Jeffrey Gaskill of Burning Rose Productions. The album features a star-studded cast which includes Tom Waits, Lucinda Williams, Derek and Susan Trucks, Luther Dickinson and the Cowboy Junkies. [check out our conversation with album producer Jeffrey Gaskill here]
Various Artists, First Came Memphis Minnie (2012)
Maria Muldaur was the driving force behind this excellent set of Memphis Minnie’s songs, featuring Rory Block, Ruthie Foster, Bonnie Raitt, Koko Taylor and others. Dave Bromberg, Bob Margolin and Billy Branch all contribute to the music. Memphis Minnie was a towering blues figure and a gifted singer, songwriter, and guitarist whose recording career spanned more than 40-plus years, during which she recorded around 200 songs.
Various Artists, Muddy Waters: All Star Tribute to a Legend (2011)
A recording of a Kennedy Centre concert from October 1997 with an impressive all-star cast of blues musicians, including Muddy’s own son Bill Morganfield, Kok Taylor, Buddy Guy, Charlie Musselwhite, John Hiatt, Keb’ Mo’ and Robert Lockwood Jr. Songs include Muddy Waters favourites like Hoochi Coochie Man, Can’t Be Satisfied, Got My Mojo Working, Rollin’ and Tumblin’. A DVD is also available.
Various Artists, Shout Sister Shout: A Tribute to Sister Rosetta Tharpe (2003)
18 Sister Rosetta songs by the likes of Bonnie Raitt, Joan Osborne, Janis Ian, Marcia Ball, Maria Muldaur, the Holmes Brothers and others. Born in 1915, Rosetta Tharpe was a major star during the 1940s and 50s, sensationally filling arenas. Her trail-blazing rock ’n’ roll tinged gospel performances, driven by her exceptional electric guitar work, sent audiences wild and made her a major celebrity. She inspired the early generation of rock ‘n’ roll artists, and Johnny Cash called her his favourite singer and biggest inspiration. This stirring album has a contribution by Marie Knight, who toured and sang with Sister Rosetta. [check out our piece on Rosetta Tharpe here]
Various Artists, Things About Coming My Way: A Tribute to the Mississippi Sheiks (2009)
The Mississippi Sheiks were a popular and influential American guitar and fiddle group of the 1930s. They only lasted for about 5 years, but had a prodigious output and, while adept at many styles of popular music of the time, were notable mostly for playing country blues. Artists featured include North Mississippi Allstars, Bruce Cockburn, Carolina Chocolate Drops, Madeleine Peyroux. Kelly Joe Phelps and others. 17 classic 1930s songs in a sunny, feel good production.
Various Artists, ZZ Top: A Tribute from Friends (2011)
Eleven great ZZ Top tracks like Sharp Dressed Man, Gimme All Your Loving, and La Grange by artists from country to heavy metal, including Grace Potter, NickelBack, Jamey Johnson and Daughtry. It’s great rockin’, head banging fun all the way.
Various Artists, Avalon Blues: The Music of Mississippi John Hurt (2001)
John Hurt is the ideal entry point to introduce anyone to country blues. His guitar work is mesmerizing and has been the foundation for many of today’s acoustic guitar players. The story goes that Andres Segovia, after hearing John Hurt’s guitar playing for the first time, demanded to know who the second guitarist was. This loving tribute by a high-class cast covers 15 of Hurt’s best loved songs. There are contributions from Taj Mahal, Alvin Youngblood Hart, Bruce Cockburn, John Hiatt, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings and Lucinda Williams. A joy.
Walter Trout, Luther’s Blues: A Tribute to Luther Allison (2013)
Ace guitarist Walter Trout pays tribute to his great friend Luther Allison with 13 songs, including one written by Trout, When Luther Played The Blues. Allison was a wonderfully talented guitarist, who died in 1997 at the age of 57. He had been discovered by Howlin’ Wolf in 1957 and then mentored by Freddie King. His live performances were quite a thing, sometimes lasting four or more hours. In Trout’s song, he highlights a great quote by Allison “Leave your ego, play the music, love the people.” [check out our interview with Walter here]
Joe Bonamassa, Muddy Wolf at Red Rocks (2015)
A recording of Bonamassa’s concert from August 2014 at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre on Colorado. The show celebrates the music of Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, featuring many of the two blues legends’ greatest songs as well as a few of Bonamassa’s own songs. It is probably one of the best live blues albums of recent years. As usual, Bonamassa’s guitar work in incendiary, but his singing in the show is exceptional. Available in either 2-CD or DVD formats.
We’re at the half year mark and it’s been a pretty strange year so far. The coronavirus pandemic has stopped live music in its tracks – aside from the online variety – and there haven’t been as many album releases as usual. But what we’ve had has been top notch and we’ve chosen 12 of the best.
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 81st 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.” Full review 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. Check out our interview with Rebecca and Megan here.
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 nicely phrased and bluesy vocals. Full review here.
Sonny Landreth, Blacktop Run
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.
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 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.
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&B and soul from the ever-consistent Robert Cray and his band. A 12 track set 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 barrel down through the tracks. Wainwright is a terrific pianist and singer and the band are quite masterful.
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.
And a couple of live albums worth mentioning, both from Irishmen, both sadly no longer with us. But both albums capture the dazzling talent of each man.
Gary Moore, Live from 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.
Prakash Slim is a country blues musician and educator based in…wait for it…Nepal. His remarkable story is straight out of the history of the blues.
He was born in 1980 during the rainy season in a field in the small village of Lamatar, just south-east of Kathmandu in Nepal. Nepal is a country of 28m people, situated between India to the south and China to the north. It has eight of the world’s highest mountains, including Everest and a very ancient culture.
Prakash’s village saw its first electric bulb in 1983 and its first automobile in 1995. Although Nepal is now one of the fastest growing economies in the world, much of the country remains very poor – around one third of the population lives on under $3.20 a day and the GDP is only around $30bn (compare that to South Korea, with a similarly sized population and a GDP of $1.6tr.)
Prakash’s father passed away at a young age, leaving his mother to provide for three children by working in a neighbour’s field. Food and clothing was scarce and the annual festival was much anticipated by Prakash, when an uncle would gift him a set of new clothes. Life was tough.
So, perhaps it’s no wonder that Prakash has gravitated towards the blues. He’s lived the blues, growing up in a rural village with significant hardships, and the road to the future paved with considerable difficulties.
After becoming an accomplished guitarist and playing in a number of bands in Nepal’s lively rock scene, Prakash has become an acoustic bluesman, with Robert Johnson and Mississippi John Hurt as his guiding lights. He’s now a recognized, internationally affiliated Artist/Performer and Educator of the Blues with the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund in Mississippi.
The recent lockdowns because of the pandemic have enabled Prakash to play in a number of international blues events, so we were delighted at Down at the Crossroads to have the opportunity to chat to him:
Gary: For someone born in rural Nepal to become a blues artist sounds like an amazing story. Tell us briefly how you first started playing the guitar and how did you get started performing.
Prakash: Well, I was raised by a loving, loyal family but we had very limited means. I went to a public school where, instead of desks and benches, we had mats made of straw. When I was young the only ambition I had was survival. Ambition, as far as I was concerned, was a privilege for rich kids.
I was interested in music from a young age. I’d play music by drumming against a water container and sing songs all day. Music drew me in. My most prized possession back then was a bicycle that my sister gave me after she landed a job. Now I wanted to learn and play the guitar but I didn’t have the money to buy one, so I sold my bicycle to buy my first guitar. I told my family that a friend had taken it for a few days! But anyway, I got the guitar and started playing.
For two years, I searched for a mentor who could teach me everything I needed to know about music theory. Finally I found a teacher, and even though he lived 10 kms away from my home, my passion for music was so great that I never missed a lesson. Come storm or rain, I always arrived ahead of time and ready to learn.
I worked hard at my music for a number of years and was able to join my mentor, the legendary C.B. Chhetri’s band and gigged in a circuit of restaurants playing mostly rock music. I kept busy playing lead and rhythm guitar and bass, and doing vocals for various bands throughout Nepal.
Gary: Given your background, growing up with very little, is there a particular resonance for you with the blues, in their original setting in the struggles of black Americans?
Prakash: There are a lot of differences between African Americans and me, but, it’s true, we faced difficulties in life like education, economic depression, and discrimination. So many of the social issues are similar.
Gary: What blues artists did you first encounter, and which ones are important to you?
Prakash: I liked to listen to Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and many other rock blues artists. For over 12 years I played in rock bands and I’ve tried to give the songs I play an urban blues feel. When I first heard B.B. King’s recordings I was eager to learn the magical intervals: sixths, ninths, major and minor thirds. I wanted to learn his bee-sting vibrato technique. Then when I heard the country blues artists like Charley Patton, Robert Johnson, Bukka White, Son House, Mississippi John Hurt, Blind Blake, Mississippi Fred McDowell, and many others, I knew this was the style that most spoke to my heart. So, now these country blues legends are the most important to me.
Gary: Has where you live been an advantage or disadvantage in pursing your art?
Prakash: Well, that’s an interesting question! My life experiences, including my hardships and struggles, are reflected in my music. I really want to express my experiences and feelings through the blues. But then, the limited access I have to instruments, equipment, sheet music and online music other than YouTube is a real disadvantage for me.
Gary: What sort of interest in blues music do you find in Nepal? Is there any resistance to it as Western music? Is it confined to Kathmandu?
Prakash: Well, we have a history in Nepal of the blues that goes back three decades, so I don’t think there’s any real resistance to the blues as western music. Some well-known blues bands are still active. People are interested in the blues but most people think that the blues start with B.B. King and Eric Clapton. Very few people know country blues, all the early stuff which is root of the modern music. Blues in Nepal, for sure, is centred in the capital and major cities and really, we have very few platforms and venues for the blues.
Gary: Are you able to make a living with your music?
Prakash: It’s very hard to survive as a musician in Nepal. It’s difficult to convince people how important music is for all ages and walks of life. For musicians of all genres, of course we have some pubs, restaurants and hotels to play. But for me, there is not much of a platform as a country bluesman.
Gary: How did you get your nickname, Prakash Slim? That’s a very cool blues name!
Prakash: Well, when I finished some serious blues research funded by the Mount Zion Memorial Fund in Mississippi, Dr. T. DeWayne Moore gave me the name. Prakash “Slim” Papa Pokharel. But when I got some international platforms, many friends suggested that I go for something shorter so we settled on Prakash Slim – “Prakash” represents Nepal and “Slim” represents the land where the blues began.
Gary: Tell us about your work in promoting blues music in schools.
Prakash: Well, blues is not only the music but also a culture. Without knowing its history, blues would be incomplete. We can empower and educate people through the blues. Knowing about the blues helps race relations and makes aware people of social issues. I’ve been teaching blues in schools here for some time now. My students know very little about black communities in the US and the problems they faced. I teach them that blues is an experience of life. I also teach them to play instruments and how to write song lyrics. I’m very happy that some of the students from grade three and four have now started playing slide as well! This year I did a blues exhibition in one of my schools. So, blues education is very important and I feel proud to be a part of it.
Gary: You recently collaborated with a friend of mine, Fabrizio Poggi in Italy. Tell us about that. [catch our recent chat with Fabrizio here]
Prakash: Well, Fabrizio Poggi is a renown Italian blues harmonica player and Grammy nominee. He and his wife Angelina and I connected as friends when I did an interview for Blues Radio International. Both of them are great human beings!
After talking for few days, Angelina said to me, “Why don’t you and Fabrizio do something together? I really would love to see you playing together. It would be a great message of hope for the world. A musician from Nepal and another from Italy? Why not? The coronavirus won’t let us leave our homes but we can travel all over the world through music.”
So, I was very excited and happy to do play with a legendary blues artist. I asked if we could do a favourite number of mine, a Robert Johnson song. I will always be grateful to Fabrizio and Angelina for this opportunity.
Gary: Prakash, tell us about your ambitions and hopes for the future.
Prakash: I really want to establish myself as an acoustic bluesman. I hope one day to play the blues with a National guitar in Mississippi. I consider that the sacred land of the blues – the blues Mecca. I want to spread blues in every corner of the world.
Gary: How has the coronavirus pandemic affected Nepal and has it affected your music making?
Prakash: We are all living in different and strange times. Nepal was not much affected by the pandemic in April and May, but we now see the number of affected people and deaths starting to go up. So, of course, yes, it has affected my music making badly. Schools and colleges are closed and all the venues are too.
Gary: Thanks, Prakash. We wish you well in your music making and every success in the future. Hopefully we’ll hear a lot more from you!
So, the President of the United States and those surrounding him didn’t know what Juneteenth is. Trump said that “a black Secret Service agent” had to tell him what the day meant. He’s now claiming, because he’s decided to move the date of his campaign rally, that he “made Juneteenth very famous…nobody had ever heard of it.” Utter nonsense, of course.
An incredible show of racial ignorance and insensitivity at the very top of white America, which speaks volumes about the systematic racism that exists.
But on this year’s Juneteenth, more Americans than ever before will be celebrating the day which marks the end of slavery, with many major companies adding it as a paid holiday. Juneteenth celebrates the 19th June, 1865, when Union soldiers read the announcement in Galveston, Texas, that all enslaved African-Americans were free, two months after the South had surrendered in the Civil War, and more than two years after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.
It’s widely thought of as African-Americans’ Independence Day and has traditionally been celebrated with barbeques, parades and parties. The struggle for equality, of course, is clearly not over for African-Americans, as demonstrated by recent and on-going events and the racist-fuelled resistance to change at the very top. But perhaps the marking of Juneteenth by more than the black community is some grounds for hope.
Down at the Crossroads celebrates Juneteenth with two songs. The first is Juneteenth Jamboree, first recorded by Gladys Bentley, a Harlem singer, well known in the 1920s and 30s.
There’s no shirking, no-one’s working
Everybody’s stopped
Gums are chompin’, corks are poppin’
Doing the Texas hop
The second song, Uncivil War, has just been released by Shemekia Copeland. It was written by Will Kimbrough and John Hahn, who said in a recent Forbes interview “I didn’t want to write something that added to the divisiveness. I wanted to say ‘come on guys, we’re better than this, we’ve gotta stop fighting.’”
Copeland’s new album isn’t due to be released until August but she wanted to put this song out sooner because of what’s been happening in the United States.
Copeland says she does feel anger at what faces her community, but that she doesn’t “misdirect my anger…that’s why you don’t see me being just angry; I’m more interested in systemic racism. I’m more interested in our system being infiltrated with supremacists like the Senate and Congress and the police force. Those are the types of things that I think about: the system and figuring out how to change it in some way. And those are the things that I get angry about – I’m just not walking through my daily life being p*****d off at people; because I don’t have that kind of hate or anger in my art.”
Here’s her Uncivil War, which is both challenging and hopeful. Happy Juneteenth!
“A rare talent of such sheer genius” Blues in Britain
Not so long ago, Dom Martin was busking in the streets of Belfast. Now he’s just won the Acoustic Act of the Year award at the UK Blues Awards, on the back of a well-acclaimed new album, Spain to Italy, a Radio 2 Blues Show session with Cerys Matthews, and a sell-out UK Tour along with appearances at major Irish/UK Festivals.
Dom is a skillful player of intricate blues-infused finger-picked guitar and is a fine singer in who invites comparisons with Rory Gallagher and John Martyn. Spain to Italy is a top notch album, delivered with passion and considerable musical aplomb by Dom and his band. It consists of mostly original numbers and a couple of blues covers and is a combination of finger-picked blues, blues-rock and just beautiful songs.
He’s an acoustic blues artist whose star is clearly in the ascendancy and Down at the Crossroads was delighted to have the opportunity to chat to Dom, who’s been sheltering in his home these past few weeks during the coronavirus lockdown.
Gary Dom, you’ve just won that Acoustic Blues Act of the Year in the UK Blues Awards. Presumably you’re quite pleased about that.
Dom Well it’s a little bit of recognition. Just even to be nominated – there were three categories I was nominated in, and that to me was above and beyond. I couldn’t believe it. But it gives me great confidence that I’m heading in the right direction with my music. Like, there’s progress being made. To me, that means a lot.
Gary And you’d won a European Blues Award last year as well. Best Acoustic Solo Act?
Dom Yeah. That was a complete shock. Last August I was on tour and was pretty busy when I heard that I’d won something. So when I saw what it was for, I was like, wow, that’s amazing. How did that even happen?
Gary When you think about those awards, those categories. how would you categorize yourself and your music? Acoustic blues might describe it, but then when I’m listening to your album, there’s more than just blues there and there’s more than just acoustic as well.
Dom Yeah, it’s a really difficult question, actually. It’s hard to put a finger on it, but I would say, alternative blues, maybe alternative folk blues. But I really haven’t given it much thought, to be honest. Things just come to me in music, with the strings and the guitar. I just kind of sit down and figure out little bits and pieces and make songs out of them. But I wouldn’t call myself necessarily blues one hundred percent of the time.
I’ve obviously been heavily influenced by the blues. But I love Bob Dylan and all those folk types. John Martin, of course, and Neil Young. But they’ve all dabbled in the blues themselves. So, it’s hard to describe what my music is.
Gary But clearly, blues is a big part of what do you do. The blues have been drawing people in for the last hundred years or more. What is it about the blues that still draws people in, still draws you in?
Dom Well, I think it’s just the feeling I get from either listening to it or playing. The struggle you hear in other people’s songs. I can identify with that. And maybe that sounds strange, because I’m a fairly positive person. I don’t tend to write songs that are depressing or sad. I just like the vibe of it. I like writing songs in in a blues kind of way, but basically I’m a happy person.
Pop music – like Ed Sheeran and stuff like that – it’s kind of happy go lucky. You can dive in and out of it and it’s easy. But the blues, it can be difficult to listen to sometimes, but strangely, I get more a better feeling from listening to blues than I do from listening to happy songs.
Gary That’s the nature of the blues, isn’t it? There are two sides of it. There’s the singing about the difficulty and the hard times. But then it’s almost like the singer sings himself out of it. You know that old blues standard, Trouble in Mind. The singer is really depressed but then manages to say, “sun’s gonna shine in my back yard some day.”
Dom Definitely. But when I say to some people that I play the blues, they kind of shrug – “Oh, you don’t play that, do you? That’s so depressing and sad.”
Gary Now you’ve a couple of nice covers on the album, Leadbelly and Blind Blake, and when I was listening to you on the Green Room show at the weekend, there was a song that you were doing that was a minor key blues, and I thought, there are echoes of Skip James in that one.
Dom You know, I haven’t listened to a lot of Skip James, although I do have some LPs. I’ve dipped in and out of in a lot of different artists, people like Robert Johnson and Howlin’ Wolf, but Skip James is one that I’ve yet to actually just sit down and really just get a couple of hours and really listen to the music.
But maybe on some kind of subconscious level, all that listening to music in the background does shape what I play and what I come up with. But I do try and be as original as I possibly can, because I don’t like plagiarism or anything like that. If I play somebody else’s song, I always say, this is a Robert Johnson song, or whatever, and make sure people are aware of who wrote it.
Gary Most of the songs on the album, though, are originals. So tell us a bit about writing songs and how long you’ve been doing that.
Dom Well, I started writing very young, but I don’t think it was very good! That said, I sold my first song when I was 13. I sold it to my dad for £13.50! And I’ve still got the contract somewhere! He bought the rights to the song. It was just something he drew up for a laugh.
Gary So you’ve been writing songs for quite a long time. What is the process like, does it come easily to you? Do you knock ’em out or do you have to refine them or what?
Dom That’s a difficult question to answer. I mean, you can’t really just say, OK, today I’m going to write a song. It doesn’t work like that for me. Take Easy Way Out for instance. I wrote it in five minutes when I woke up one morning and I didn’t have to change any of the words or the way it was sung. I wrote all the lyrics in five minutes – done!
And then I didn’t write anything for three or four months after that. I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t think of anything, I wasn’t inspired by anything at all. So, it’s kind of like that, it comes and goes, and it’s strange and I don’t understand it and I have no knowledge about it. But one thing I try to avoid with songwriting is making everything rhyme! Sometimes I do it, but I’m very conflicted about it. But sometimes you just have to finish a song!
I’m incredibly hard on myself with songwriting. It typically takes me a very long time. The songs on the album weren’t written for an album. There was no deadline. It was just that I had written a handful of these songs and one day I decided to go to the studio and try and record them. And it was just really inexperienced, rushed, you know? Let’s just record something and see what happens.
Gary You must be pretty pleased with the reception the albums had. A lot of people have made fantastic comments about it.
Dom Yeah, honestly, I’m in shock. I’m in complete and utter shock about what’s been going on over the past two or three years. But I’m really critical of myself. I haven’t actually listened to the album back to front. I think once when it was finished, I listened to the individual songs, but not in any particular order. I’m happy with it, but I’ve moved on from it.
Gary Dom, give us a brief synopsis of your career. Things have obviously taken off over the last couple of years.
Dom So I used to live in Antrim in the north of Ireland. And I knew I could play guitar. I knew I could do gigs and play for four or five hours a night, So that’s what I did and that was all well and good. I met my wife there and we decided after a few years that we’d move to Belfast and I’d try to get some more gigs. So, we moved to the city but after going around to all the bars and festivals in Belfast, I got maybe one more gig. That was it – nobody would give me the time of day, I hadn’t two pennies to rub together – I still don’t! But for years it went on like that. I ended up busking in the city centre for a few quid to get something for the electric and gas.
Then out of the blue, Blast 106, one of the radio stations in Belfast, called. My drummer friend knew the guy who did the show, Big Chris. So we went down and played one of the songs which is now on the album, The Rain Came, and they recorded it. Before we played, it was all dance music, you know, rave music. And all of a sudden, we come on with our little folky blues and it’s just so bizarre.
What then happened was a guy called Ray Alexander heard this and we got a gig at an open mike night in Holywood Golf Club. So my drummer and I went, and we sat with other musicians having a talk and a couple of drinks, and we were due to be on last. But nobody was left when we got up to play – it’s late on a Monday night and everyone’s gone home! But we gave it our all, we don’t care, we’re gonna play some music!
Anyway, Ray recorded some of the stuff we did that night and he phoned Fenton Parsons, who is now my manager, and said, you got to check these guys out. Dom Martin can’t get any gigs. Could you help? So Fenton went and found a video of our performance of The Rain Came from the radio show and he loved it and wanted to meet me and see what he could do for me. The guy’s an absolute legend. He helped me when nobody else would, so I owe him an awful lot. I’m very loyal to that man.
Gary So you’ve been getting a steady amount of gigs over the last year or so?
Dom Yeah. This past year, two years, I’ve been pretty much flat out. And I love it. I play every gig like it’s my last, give it my all.
Gary But I guess things have come to a bit of a standstill at the moment?
Dom Yes, but it’s all just gone online. I’m doing something about once a week and there are little festivals, online gigs and stuff. But apart from that, I’ve just been writing songs and trying to come up with some fresh material. So, whenever this is all over I’ve got something new to play.
Gary Very good. Now, tell me about the guitar work on the album – there’s quite a bit of electric guitar going on there. Is that all you?
Dom Yeah, it is. All the guitar on the album is me, apart from a little tiny bit on Luka I think. That was Richard Brown, who is very, very good. He did a bit on that and maybe one of the other songs, but everything else is me. I got my first electric guitar just four years ago, so I haven’t been playing electric guitar that long. But I don’t find it much different than acoustic. I play them both exactly the same. It doesn’t make a difference to me. It’s just a bit smaller and there’s no hole in the middle of it! And that’s about it.
Gary How did you get started playing the guitar and did you start young?
Dom Oh yeah. When I was born, my father picked me up and he held me over a guitar. And I was just kicking it and scratching it and hitting it, and it’s just been a whole lifelong thing. It’s all I’ve done my entire life.
Gary Is there music in your family then?
Dom My dad played. In fact, he was the best guitar player I’ve ever seen. He was great. He didn’t just play – he was like another thing altogether. It’s hard to explain. He just had this certain charisma about him. The way he played was so articulate and just, you know, perfect. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s impossible to replicate. He was just a one of a kind of talent.
And my dad wrote these songs which I now have. And I’ve been trying to play them, but it’s still too difficult for me. It’s too hard because he’s passed on. And it’s just impossible for me to get into that, to play my dead father’s songs now. But I’ll get there with some of the songs. They’re just beautiful. But I can’t even touch them at the moment, you know?
Gary So sometime down the line, Dom, that could make for an interesting album.
Dom I know. Definitely, whenever I’m ready to do it. I’ve got the lyrics right now here in front of me and I’m just shaking as I look at them. But I believe in these songs, they need to be heard. Because they’re the most beautiful, beautiful things I’ve ever heard. I owe so much to my dad.
Gary Now, you’ve released a song to support the NHS. Tell us about that,
Dom I wrote a song called Mercy. And when the Corona virus hit, it was like there was no mercy for anybody. I’m not big on doing stuff technically but I felt we had to do something. But what could I do? Well, I do music, and so I thought, if I make a GoFundMe page where people can donate and then they get the song, I’ll just give all the money to the NHS. But at least it’s something, it’s better than just sitting around, even if it’s a small thing.
Gary Good for you, Dom. Brilliant. So have you just been playing your guitar and spending time with your family over the past few weeks?
Dom Yes. I’ve loved just spending time with my kids and my wife. A lot of people were joking at the start of this – you’ll be stuck at home with your family, it’s gonna be awful. But for me, it’s been the complete opposite. It’s just brilliant. It’s just been fantastic.
RT @tedgioia: If you’re CeDell Davis (1926-2017)—who died three years ago today—your blues multitasking involved a guitar, a knife, and a c… 12 hours ago
Van Morrison’s so-called protest songs are unlike real protest songs which rail against genuine injustices. He’s tilting at windmills when he goes against the scientific community’s growing body of evidence regarding mask wearing, social distancing and large gatherings of people.
