Guy Davis: The blues convey the truth.

“Guy Davis is an authentic and spell-binding bluesman, with an incredible voice and a great sense of humour.”

Guy Davis is a hugely talented blues artist, who delights his audiences with his snappy guitar work, gritty vocals, humorous monologues and impressive stage presence. He’s been on the road and making records for more than twenty years and is a past winner of the Blues Foundation’s “Keeping the Blues Alive Award,” which was presented to him by Robert Cray at the W.C. Handy Awards ceremony.

Guy toured the UK recently with Statesboro native, Brooks Williams, giving audiences an outstanding evening of good-humoured entertainment, as well as a master-class in acoustic blues guitar.  Down at the Crossroads caught up with Guy recently, ahead of a few gigs in the south east of England.

DATC: Guy, you’ve been touring England with Brooks Williams. Tell us a bit about it.

Guy: Well, my manager has been a friend of Brooks a long time. He got us together playing a while ago in upstate New York, and then came up with the idea of us doing a tour together. While I was getting some photos done for my last CD, Kokomo Kid (http://nodepression.com/album-review/ghost-pete-seeger), Brooks happened to be in New York, so we did a series of photos together before we even had a tour. I don’t recall having met Brooks before that. I wasn’t really familiar with his music.

DATC: Brooks is a nice guy and a terrific guitarist.

Guy: Oh yes, not only that, but what a voice! His presentation carries so well, the audience loves him!

DATC: So how has the tour gone?

Guy: It’s been going very well. We each take it in turns doing a few songs, one night I’ll open, he closes, then he’ll open the next night and I’ll close. It’s a friendly kind of tour, and at the end of the show, whoever’s on last invites the other on stage to do a few songs together.

DATC: I understand you have a new album coming out before long?

Guy: It is an album that gives a nod to Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, the folk-blues duo, from many years ago. The album is with a fella named Fabrizio Poggi. Fabrizio and I have worked on at least 2 of my CDs. He’s on one song on Kokomo Kid and on the album before that, Juba Dance, he’s on a lot of the songs, and produced the album. On this latest one, he’s half of the picture.

DATC: So why did you decide to focus on Sonny and Brownie?

Guy: Well, it was actually Fabrizio’s idea. Sonny Terry, the harmonica player, is a hero to both of us. I wasn’t sure Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee’s music really need covering, but Fabrizzio – I guess his love for the music was stronger than my ability to say no!

So I went in the studio with him, and I played guitar and some harmonica and he did all the rest of the harmonica, and we covered some of the songs.

DATC: Sounds great. There’s been a lot of the older blues artists have been covered in some recent albums by various artists, but I can’t recall something covering these two. So I’m sure it’s going to get a lot of interest. Thinking about my own interest in the blues, which goes back some 40 years, one of the first blues albums I listened to, which a friend let me borrow, was Sonny Terry and Brownie Magee, and that was one of the albums that got me hooked on blues music.

Guy: Very good. You know, I got to meet both those guys back in 1981, saw them perform. And then in the 1990s, Brownie actually came to a performance that I did, in Oakland, California. I got to shake his hand then, too.

DATC: Fantastic. Now Guy, as well as being a musician, you’ve done lots of other things –  you’re an author, you’ve been an actor – what are you primarily, a musical artist?

Guy: I think I’m all of the above. A performance artist most of all, and music is the closest thing to me. But I write for theatre, I write stories and I like to tell stories. They say I tell stories so good, I should be a politician!

DATC: You’d do pretty well just at the minute!

Guy: Yes I would! I’ve got a lot to say – they’d have to shoot me in the first week of my government!

DATC: And do you think of yourself primarily as an entertainer, or do you have something to say or convey in your music?

Guy: I do it through my music. I’m a very, very good – excellent – entertainer!

DATC: Yeah, we’d agree with that!

Guy: And modest. But yes – crafting words and a message.

DATC: And what would you say that was? A lot of what you do is blues based – what is the enduring quality of that music, why does it still resonate, what does it convey?

Guy: The blues is the kind of music that conveys the truth, even if the words you use are not factual. The blues to me is kind of like a religion. This music is my way of being in the universe, of being able to communicate the way that I feel.

The blues reflect an important part of American history – it’s not just black music. In some ways it’s a cautionary tale about some of the hurt, harm and danger that is in my own country of birth. It tells history.

DATC: The blues grew up in that period of terrible suffering and discrimination that was the experience of the black community in the Jim Crow era, but you’re suggesting that it has a broader historical resonance than that?

Convicts who violated the Black Codes

Guy: I’d risk saying yes. Jim Crow was a symptom, a small part of a greater sickness. In the time after the Civil War, there was a period when black people could be part of government, but that didn’t get the support it should have and consequently we got the Black Code laws – so, for example, if a black and white man went before a judge accused of the very same crime, the black man would do more time, because in prison, his labour could be used to build the country.

That has a lot to do with the formation of our country and even some of the difficulties that the American people are facing today. Including the divided emotions in our election. And blues continues to tell this story. It’s not all love songs.

DATC: Yes, when you look at the blues, the majority of songs are about relationships between men and women, but underlying it is this howl of protest and lament about the unjust social situation in which the back community found itself in that period.

Guy: Yes, blues is more complex than people give it credit for.

DATC: Does it have a healing force as well? It tells a story, yes, but does it have potential to do more than that?

Guy: Healing – yes, very much so. Blues can make us laugh, can make us laugh at things that are ridiculous, or refer to some things that are truly cruel, but to hear a man or a woman singing from their heart that they have been robbed, that they’re crying out for justice, I think this has the potential to heal us all.

There are a lot of voices that can stand and accuse one another of many things, but there are also voices that can bring us together, that can make healing possible, make crying possible, make belief and deep breathing possible.

DATC: Guy, you were born and raised in New York City. So why did you gravitate towards blues music? Presumably there were a lot of other influences.

Guy: I gravitated towards the blues because that was what was in me. My body was born in New York City but my soul is not from New York City. I first heard blues music and folk music and such at a summer camp when I was a young child. It was run by Pete Seeger’s brother – Pete Seeger, the great environmentalist and folk singer who knew Sonny and Brownie, Big Bill Broonzy and Leadbelly. So that reflects a lot more of whom I am than the fact that I was born in New York City. It’s my home, but it’s not where I’m from.

DATC: You teach as well, Guy – can you tell us a bit about that and why you do that?

Guy: Teaching music – I guess it comes as part of the territory. I enjoy that, I think it’s in my family’s DNA. Both my sisters have been educators; my grandmother studied with W.E.B Du Bois [American sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, educator, author, and editor of the 1^st half of the twentieth century], who was a black revolutionary and who was partly responsible for the NAACP. He knew Frederick Douglas [the great nineteenth century African-American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman]. And my father also knew W.E.B Du Bois. So teaching is kind of in my blood.

DATC: And is there an urge to pass on this legacy of music to a new generation?

Guy: I can see that perhaps in the future. Right now I’m primarily an entertainer. Being in front of people and showing what I do, passing along is gonna come out of that. Right now I’m just thinking of creating fresh and new things that are inspired by the blues. But, yeah, at some point in the future, I’d like to think more about passing on the legacy.

DATC: Guy, do you find that you get in your audience people from different age ranges; do younger people find a resonance in your music, in blues music?

Guy: Yes, but I also find a lot of people who are older who want to hear some of the things they heard when they were younger – people like Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee! So I get college students at my gigs; but also people bring their children with them. I always got something, you know, to delight the children. They can get interested in the same way that I found delight when I was 8 years old, sitting down the front of an auditorium looking up at someone making magic with just a guitar or a banjo.

DATC: Guy, thank you very much.

 

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Inside the Delta Tour – Guy Davis and Brooks Williams

Brooks Williams: “He’s a lovely player, a lovely singer, and a great writer. The real thing.” 

Guy Davis: “an authentic and spell-binding bluesman, with an incredible voice and a great sense of humour.”  

November sees a joint tour – Inside the Delta – around the UK by two of the most entertaining blues and Americana artists you’re likely to see – New Yorker Guy Davis and Statesboro native, by way of Cambridge, England, Brooks Williams. The tour has already started and you can find details here or here.

The two have played together before in the US but this is the first time they have properly collaborated, each taking turns to perform and then playing together at the end of the evening. These pair are great guitar players, singers and raconteurs – and reports already speak of outstanding shows. Not to be missed!

You can catch our recent interview with Brooks Williams here.

And watch out for Down at the Crossroads’ upcoming interview with Guy Davis who has some big news to announce – soon!

Brooks Williams – caretaking the blues

Brooks Williams has been described – rightly – as “one of the most consistently excellent musicians in roots music,” and his blues-infused Americana has been delighting audiences in the US and the UK for more than 25 years. Rolling Stone magazine once noted his “deft, tasteful guitar chops” – true, for sure, but if you get the chance to see Brooks Williams in concert, you’ll realize just how deft his guitar chops are. He’s a guitar master, guaranteed to make the jaws of any guitarists in the audience drop and to delight the rest.

Brooks, hailing from Statesboro, Georgia, has lived in England these past few years and tours incessantly throughout the UK and the States. He has a back catalogue of nearly 30 albums to his credit and has just recently released a new album of blues numbers. He’s touring the UK this November along with New York blues maestro Guy Davis – a concert with these two will be quite a show, believe me – and the new release, in support of the tour, is simply entitled Brooks’ Blues.

The album is a gem, featuring just Brooks’ voice and guitar  – acoustic, resonator and cigar box, and was recorded live in the studio. The result is a very fine album of traditional and classic blues numbers from the likes of Robert Johnson, Bessie Smith, Memphis Slim and the Rev. Gary Davis. Given his family background in Stateboro, Blind Willie McTell’s Statesboro Blues had to feature – eat your heart out, Allman Brothers!

Down at the Crossroads caught up with Brooks just prior to the UK tour.

DATC: Brooks, you’ve been living in England for a while now, and touring all over the UK. How have audiences here reacted to your music, in comparison with the US, and has your music changed or evolved since moving here?

Brooks Williams: When I moved to England six years ago it felt a bit like I was starting my career all over again. On one level that can be stressful and humbling, but it has also been very liberating. I’ve found the UK audiences to be very switched on about American roots music. They know the movers and shakers. They know the songs. They have an understanding of the tradition. They spotted my connection to American roots music right away and have, literally, applauded the ways I have dug deeper into that tradition both in my writing and in my performing. It’s been like having a mirror held up to my face and being reminded what I look like. There’s a saying in music about performers and writers “finding their voice,” as if it is a one-time thing. I believe that finding one’s voice is an on-going process. Moving to the UK and playing for UK audiences has played a big part in that on-going process for me.

DATC: But you’re still touring in the US as well?

BW: I tour the US quite a few times every year. This upcoming year looks to be the busiest year yet.

DATC: You’ve been very actively recording over the past few years and have just released a new album of blues songs, called Brook’s Blues, with twelve traditional blues numbers and none of your own songs. What was thinking behind this?

BW: I’m doing a month-long UK tour called “Inside The Delta” with American bluesman Guy Davis in November 2016. We’ll each be doing our own sets but also backing each other up. In preparing a set of mostly blues songs for the tour I realized how many songs I know without even digging too deeply into my repertoire. And I realized how much I love these old songs. So in celebration of the “Inside The Delta” tour I recorded all 12 tracks over 3-days, “old school,” with vintage mics, a creaky chair, just my voice and guitar.

DATC: It’s just you and your guitars on the album, Brooks – which puts your guitar work centre stage – always a pleasure! Tell us about the guitars you used on the album.

BW: I used a Collings acoustic with a vintage DeArmond pickup (like Lightning Hopkins had in his acoustic guitar), a National Estralita resonator and my Chickenbone John 3-string cigar box guitar. The amp is a new Fender I borrowed from John Boden. In terms of tunings and slides, I used both glass and chrome slides, depending on the song, as well as a range of tunings from standard to drop-D to open-D to open-G.

DATC: The album kicks off with Robert Johnson’s From Four Until Late, which was famously done by Cream in the ‘60s. You give more than a nod to Robert Johnson in your version, but yours gives us something a bit more sophisticated maybe in the guitar work. How do you go about transforming a song that a lot of people will be familiar with, from the original, into your own interpretation? Particularly with someone like Robert Johnson, who’s a pretty nifty guitar player!

BW: It’s the way I have of transforming a well-known blues song to something else that inspired me to call the album “Brooks’ Blues.” These are the blues as I know ‘em. I’m not even aware that how I know the blues songs is that different to the original. And I don’t really know how I go about arranging the songs. It’s just something I’ve always been able to do. Blues songs are just like any other song to me and that means the lyrics are central. Each song has a story. But the extra beautiful thing about a blues lyric is that it leaves the backdoor of interpretation propped wide open while at the same time being exactly what it says it is. We can meet it wherever we happen to be. I’m more interested in singing the lyric than playing the guitar part as it is known on those great classic recordings, which I listen to and love so much.

DATC: You’ve included a Bessie Smith song, Backwater Blues, which features some nice, dark resonator work. Very different from Bessie Smith’s original piano version and it works very well. There always seems to be much more attention given to the early men blues singers than the women – who actually in their day were the much bigger stars. Is there a mine of material there that we’re missing do you think?

BW: Though there are some excellent exceptions – see Sister Rosetta Tharpe playing “Didn’t It Rain” for one! – the blues does seem to be more about the guitar slingers and the men slinging those guitars. However, as you say, that wasn’t always the case – and it shouldn’t be the case moving forward. Early blues was more about the singers and singers in those days were accompanied by a piano. The guitar came to the front later, which is great and has inspired me, but we can’t lose track of the roots of the roots, so to speak. There’s a whole bunch of music we’re missing and some very interesting and nuanced song lyrics waiting to be rediscovered.

DATC: And of course, I suppose Statesboro being your home town, on this sort of album you had to include Statesboro Blues? I guess Willie McTell is an artist you admire?

BW: I had to include Statesboro Blues. It practically says so on my birth certificate! For someone who loves guitar and the blues, what an incredible birthright I’ve been handed. Willie McTell played a mean 12-string guitar and had a beautiful tenor voice. And he traveled the highways and byways of my home state. How he did that as a blind man of colour in the Deep South USA in the 1930s is beyond my scope of understanding. But what isn’t beyond my scope is the fact that all the early bluesmen were first and foremost entertainers. The music is for the people – the community – and it has a place in the community. As such I believe that the blues was just one aspect of their music. It’s the part that’s remained, for sure, but in order to make a living and to sing for and to the people, they had to entertain. That meant doing all kinds of songs – blues, gospel, ballads, show tunes, popular tunes, novelty tunes. My shows are not that dissimilar – nor is Brooks’ Blues – you need a bit of slide, some rock and roll, a gospel song, a ballad, maybe even a country-tinged song.

DATC: The last song on the album is a Rev. Gary Davis song, I Will Do My Last Singing. Of all the Gary Davis songs, that’s an unusual one to choose, but it’s a lovely, lovely version of it – you’d hardly recognize it as a Gary Davis song. Tell us about that.

BW: I was taught I Will Do My Last Singing by the delightful blues duo, Shari Kane and Dave Steele from Michigan USA. I had the great pleasure of doing a couple of tours with them last year. We closed every show with this number. Though I do it quite differently to them, and, obviously, quite different to Rev. Gary Davis’ version, I found the song quite evocative. A bittersweet sentiment that hints at hope. I play it with a slide on my acoustic guitar tuned to open-D.

DATC: Brooks, anyone who’s been to one of your concerts will know how great a guitarist you are. And you run guitar workshops from time to time and you provide tablature and chords for quite a few of your songs on your website. What’s the motivation behind that?

BW: I am more aware than ever that we all need to do our part to see this music lives on in future generations. We all need to tend the fields, so to speak, and plant the seeds. New blues songs need to be written. The old blues songs have to preserved. My hope is that the more of us out there teaching the songs, directing people to both new and classic recordings, and getting people listening to the blues, the more people that will get as hooked on it as I am and will keep it going, either as players, presenters, customers. We need it all. In terms of the players, and why I do the workshops and put tab/chords/lyrics on my website, I’m hoping that maybe they will put their own spin on a Brooks Williams version of an old blues classic. Or maybe even put their own spin on a Brooks Williams song. This stuff isn’t mine, after all. I’m just a caretaker, like everyone else.

DATC: And finally, Brooks, I know you’re a bit of a road warrior in terms of your touring. What’s on the agenda for the next few months?

BW: More touring. Haha! No seriously. More touring. I’m just getting started and I feel like I’m just getting to the good stuff. We’ve got a big tour lined up in the New Year: a month is USA, six weeks in the UK, two weeks in Europe with my band, and on and on. Mine is not an overnight success story. I’ve been doing it too long for that to be the case, but every gig presents the opportunity for me to introduce my music to someone new. I’m winning over fans one at a time and that ain’t a bad thing!

DATC: Thank you Brooks!

Check out Brooks’ website for news, albums, videos and guitar tab.

Lightnin’ Hopkins, Eric Bibb and Needed Time

If you’ve never been to an Eric Bibb gig, next time he’s on the same continent as you, make plans and go! Eric’s gigs are outstanding experiences – he’s not only a talented singer, songwriter and guitarist, but the whole spiritual, positive vibe from the gig will stay with you long after the gig has finished. You’ll have a smile on your face for a week afterwards – guaranteed!

His hallmark song, performed at every concert is “Needed Time.” This is an old traditional song, brought to prominence by Texas guitar-slinger Lightnin’ Hopkins (Rolling Stone magazine included Hopkins at number 71 on their list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time), and recorded by him in 1950. Hopkins, although a prolific recording artist – he is the most recorded blues artist ever, with an estimated 800-1,000 tracks recorded over five decades from the 30s to the 70s – recorded few spiritual songs, just Needed Time and Sinner’s Prayer, as far as I know.

Needed Time refers to the sense of needing God to come into whatever circumstances we’re experiencing. “Now is the needed time…” the song goes, and then prays for “Jesus to come by here,” “even if you won’t stay long.” It a song of aspiration, giving voice to a felt need of help in the difficulties of everyday experience. Hopkins once said, “I play it from my heart and soul…The blues is something that the people can’t get rid of. And if you ever have the blues, remember what I tell you. You’re gonna hear this in your heart… slowly rough and delicately brutal, like stones being rattled in a can of ribbon cane syrup.” For sure Needed Time is a song that seems to come from the heart and soul.

Never more so as in the hands of Eric Bibb. It’s always a special moment in his gigs when he launches into the song and invites you to “think of someone you love,” as he caresses his way through the song. The song reminds me of Psalm 42: “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.” The Psalm talks of turmoil and trouble, the taunts of enemies and a sense of abandonment by God. And yet somehow there is the an underlying sense of trust in God’s goodness and a cry from the heart that God would eventually “come by here.” As Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann says, the Psalms work on the assumption that “if you don’t summon God, nothing will happen.” (see brief video below)

The Psalms seem to wrestle at a deep, gut level with the experience of trials, and yet they are also shot through with a deep seated hope for change – which is one of the reasons why they are so widely read and appreciated. Needed Time is a kind of modern Psalm, with a sense of both despair and hope, a realistic facing of the troubles of the hour, a cry for God to come and hence a hope for the future 

“Now is the needed time…now is the needed time

Jesus won’t you come by here…prayin’ won’t you come by here

Even if you won’t stay long…prayin’won’t you come by here.”

Lightnin’ Hopkins’ memorial in Crockett, Texas

Lightnin’ Hopkins’ New York Times obituary named him as “one of the great country blues and perhaps the greatest single influence on rock guitar players.” Here is Brooks Williams’ tribute to Lightnin’…

Walter Brueggmann on the Psalms

And finally, here’s Lightnin’

Brooks Williams – blues that touch the heart

Brooks Williams is a singer-songwriter-guitarist from Statesboro, Georgia, who has been entertaining audiences all over the world with his original material and reworked blues songs for over 25 years. He’s been ranked as one of the Top 100 Acoustic Guitarist and is one of the coolest vocalists you’re ever likely to hear. If you go to a Brooks Williams gig you’ll be dazzled by his guitar work, charmed by his singing, and drawn out of yourself by the stories in his songs. But more than that, you’ll go away with a big smile on your face which will last all week. According to americanaUK, Brooks is “impossible not to like.”

Blues Matters says simply, Brooks Williams is “…classy, tasteful, bright and hugely enjoyable!”

Gary: Tell us a bit about your relationship with the blues, Brooks. If you look at your albums, it looks like your interest in the blues has developed over the past few years.

Brooks: I’d say that fundamentally the blues has always been the bedrock of my musical understanding. The blues cadence, the musical, the lyrical cadence. Coming from Statesboro Georgia, it’s in the rhythm of life there!

I left Georgia to go to university in Boston when I was seventeen and I was eager to get away from home, to spread my wings. In Boston, what I found myself doing was more acoustic, singer-songwriter, jazzy stuff – there was this contemporary thing that was happening there at the time and I got swept up in that. That was the mid-late 80s, and blues was at a real low ebb. Especially in America. But in those days, even though I was doing this contemporary acoustic thing, I was still immediately identified as having blues roots. I was asked to support people like Taj Mahal, John Hammond, Maria Muldaur, Rory Block, David Bromberg – and they were playing the smallest venues, because there was no big audience for blues [at that time]. And as I look back now, I think – what an amazing opportunity to see these fantastic blues artists in very intimate, 40 seat venues.

Gary: So have you noticed the appetite for blues music change?

Brooks: It’s definitely changed since then. Promoters kept putting me with these sort of artists and although I fell into that very easily, I was with record companies that saw me as doing this new acoustic thing. So I was quite split in my feelings about what I should do – because my performances were quite different from my recordings. I did a lot more bottleneck guitar in my gigs. But when I’d get in the studio, the engineers would say, oh that bottleneck thing’s noisy, we don’t like that sound, can we clean that up? I was in my twenties and I thought, well, they must know better.

So I would say that what’s happened to me and the blues is a growing realization of how important the blues is to what I do – as a writer, as a player. I came to this point of crisis, when the record industry was beginning to implode, when downloading was starting to happen, and my record company practically went out of business. (They just hadn’t anticipated the change in the market.) I found myself done with my record deal, didn’t know what to do. I was really struggling and I had a young family at the time…and I really seriously thought about packing in music and looking for something else to do.

And meanwhile I was getting phone calls and emails from people asking me to come and do gigs – not based around a record or anything, just come and play. I’d go to these gigs and I just started playing what I knew – which was Statesboro Blues, Weeping Willow Blues, Belfast Blues and so on. That’s what I played at home, that’s what I loved. I had no set list, I’d just play what I wanted. And what happened was – I had a great time! And even more importantly, the audience had a great time! And the more I just went with the flow, the better it got.

And that’s where I began to introduce blues back into my recorded work. And it was a revelation – it was like closing the page on one chapter of my life and opening another. And I’ve never looked back.

Gary: And what you often do is to take an old blues song and rework it and breathe new life into it – what do you think is the enduring appeal of these old songs?

Blind Willie Johnson

Brooks: Well, it’s the timeless lyric. The lyric to do with suffering and injustice is timeless. And alienation. We often think of that being the territory of the poor and disenfranchised financially – which is very true – but equally, I would say it’s about moral poverty. This sense of being disenfranchised is something most people can relate to. So what I find enduring in those old blues songs is they link to wherever we are in the strata. Like Soul of a Man by Blind Willie Johnson – that’s a timeless song, he’s captured something there.

And it doesn’t matter whether you’re in the palace or the poorhouse…

Gary: …that’s a question facing us all?

Brooks: Yes, that’s right. And then equally, back to your question, I have such respect for those players who can recreate the pre-war blues sound or the 50s blues sound – but for a lot of people, the minute they hear that old sound, they switch off. So I’ve been looking for ways to introduce this great timeless music in a way that an audience is going to listen to long enough to get it.

Gary: So looking back at some of these old artists, who are your favourites, your heroes?

Blind Boy Fuller

Brooks: It tends to be the acoustic players. I’m a big fan of the Blind Boy Fuller school of playing, that Piedmont blues. As an acoustic guitarist, I just kind of relate to that. And Mississippi John Hurt is a great story teller – I love songs that have a good story in them. More so than lyrics that just hang on a hook and so on. But in the early days, I listened to Blind Willie Johnson and Fred McDowell – those were my early influences.

Gary: And these guys were great guitarists as well….

Brooks: Yes, I really, really liked that. And then, of course, being from Statesboro Georgia, I have to listen to Blind Willie McTell – I have to! And what a beautiful singer – I love his musicality.

And a later guy who influenced how I play the blues, rhythmically – although he’s not strictly speaking a blues player – is Snooks Eaglin, from New Orleans. He has such a universal way of playing the song – playing the bass line, the chords, and some lead – and he sang!

Gary: And of course you have a song about Lightnin’ Hopkins…

Brooks: Right. When I’m in a Texas mood – the way he plays, that slow delivery, he’s great.

Gary: I read a biography of Blind Willie McTell recently – Hand Me Down My Travelling Shoes. Really enjoyed it, very nicely written.

Brooks: Yes, that’s a very detailed biography, packed with so much information. When my wife and I were on tour earlier this year we were in Georgia and one afternoon we drove up to where Blind Willie McTell is buried. It’s in Thomson, Georgia, which is a little speck on the map between Augusta and Atlanta – it’s a stop on the way, but that’s where his music came from. And it made me really value that book even more, because you really would have had to dig to get information on Willie McTell – he was from the middle of nowhere!

Gary: To change direction slightly, Brooks, you recently made a trip to Africa to work with some kids there who don’t have too many opportunities. Can you tell us a bit about that adventure?

Brooks: That was amazing. It was very challenging because the cultural differences are enormous. We were with a charity there which hooked us up with children in schools, doing music, dance, movement to music. From the schools’ point of view it was about getting English language into the schools. From our point of view, we were bringing Western music to the schools. Now, funnily enough, the missionaries had already been there years before, so everyone’s sense of music was old gospel and folk songs. But they’d done something to these old songs – they changed the lyrics and they added this marvelous life to the songs. It was amazing!

Pashua School, Tanzania

In East Africa they don’t really have an instrumental culture, it’s all about drums and voices. So I brought my resonator guitar – largely because it’s really rugged and it was really difficult terrain where we were. And these children had never seen a guitar or seen someone play one in person. And the most amazing thing that really excited me was trying to teach them a 12 bar blues. It was a really simple blues – Good Mornin’ Blues, an old Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee song.  In a blues song there’s a gap between the lines, the ‘response’ part of the ‘call and response’, where the music vamps around the chord changes. The kids didn’t know what to do with those gaps in the lyrics! They just raced ahead and just could not get the sense of there being space to wait to sing the next line – until we got them dancing. Now if they had a dance to do, they could keep time, but otherwise they just couldn’t stop themselves going on with the song. And that was fascinating. How would they want to change a 12 bar blues and make it their own. It got me thinking: what would an East Africa 12-bar blues look like?

Brooks teaches guitar

We were in Tanzania for about 2 weeks and were in the classroom every day. 70 kids in a class, 12 classes a day! We were exhausted! But what happened was – in about the middle of the 1^st week – the 10, 11, 12 year-olds came into class something they’d made at home that resembled a guitar. Maybe a broom handle stuck to an old watering can, with a bit of twine for a strap. And you could see the wheels in their minds turning: how can they make a guitar more like mine? And I thought to myself – how long until they put a nail in the top of the broom handle and another nail in the base of the watering can and put a piece of wire between them? How long until they start twanging? And of course I had my slide there – and I thought, how long until they pick up a bit of metal or glass and slide it along that piece of wire? I was imagining something like an early rural South plantation era musical experience.

It was an amazing experience. And one that, musically speaking, has been…gestating… percolating…. in my mind since. Everything they did was rhythmically based, and so joyful, even in their poverty. It has influenced how I look at rhythm.

Gary: That is one of the things about going to the developing world, where you meet people who have nothing and yet they’re joyful, or they are so hospitable to you, when you have so much and they have so little. It’s a remarkable thing to experience.

Brooks: Yes it is.  I did a few gigs in a dusty square and the people came out and they would be hundreds deep and closing in…and we would get them dancing.

My favourite memory was the final concert/celebration that we did. We had hired this guy to bring a sound system. He brought it in the back of a pick-up truck and it was massive. Nobody knew how to work it. So I ended up running the sound as well as performing. The students sat for hours in the afternoon sun and the local dignitaries were there giving speeches in Swahili. At one point the head of the school board got up and gave a speech about the honoured guests and so on, and then he looked at me and he said, “Would you play something?” So I stepped up to the front, plugged in the resonator guitar and started playing the opening riff to Boom Boom, the John Lee Hooker song. I was no more than 2 bars into the tune when all 800 kids got to their feet and came towards the makeshift stage, and there in the dust they all started dancing to this lone guitar. I thought: the dignitaries are going to be a bit cross about this. Well, the dignitaries were not: they got off the platform and came down into the dust and were dancing as well! The place went bonkers!

I thought: there’s something in this music. John Lee Hooker had this riff which I sort of developed, but it linked with these children in East Africa and they were on their feet dancing. After it was over and the kids sat down, a little boy got up and whispered something to the head teacher. The head teacher then came to me and told me that this boy had been so inspired by what had been happening, that he’d composed a rap and he’d like to perform it for everyone – now! And he wants me to play guitar for him.

So this little boy, ten years old, in dirty trousers and a ripped jumper, takes a wireless microphone and begins to rap – with the attitude! He had the hand in the trousers – the whole bit. He did this rap in Swahili and I did a little funky groove on guitar for him. And everybody just went crazy. I was deeply touched, and when it was over I asked the director what he’d been rapping about, and he said, “thank you friend for coming, for bringing your music and your guitar, we’ve never heard this before, and we hope you’ll come back soon and we’ll dance again.”

And I thought, how can we get this boy a guitar – because this music is just waiting to pour out of him. It was a powerful moment. But made sober by the reality that the future for this boy is probably very grim, mostly because of AIDS. If the boys do survive to become men, what kind of work will they do? The last thing he needs is a guitar, there are other things he needs a lot more, but you can’t help but wonder.

What they’ve given to me is a sense of this: when you sing, you sing from the heart. They sang from the heart. Also, music is meant to be moved to, which is a good reminder for a solo performer, that you can move to what you’re doing.

Gary: This whole sense of music touching people – John Lee Hooker said, blues is a healer. And if you ever go to a Bruce Springsteen concert – it’s a spiritual experience. And he seems to have this sense of the redemptive power of the music to touch people, but clearly what you’ve been talking about is pretty much the same thing…

Brooks: Yes. Exactly right. I do think music transcends barriers and boundaries. And I know I have been deeply touched and deeply healed, if you will, by music. It’s a powerful conduit. I get frustrated when I lose sight of this and I get all wrapped up in the details.

Gary: It touches you emotionally – and as sophisticated Westerners, that’s something we’re often not that comfortable with.

Couple of final questions. You made an album this year called State of the Union with Boo Hewerdine. Have you been pleased at the way that’s been received?

Brooks: Yes very much so. At first we thought maybe we’d do an EP and maybe one local gig for charity. But when we got to the studio, we just loved the simplicity of it – two acoustic guitars and two voices. We didn’t labour over any of the takes, we just played it in the moment. We were finished recording in a day and a half. Shortly after, it got picked up by a label and then a tour was put together.

The tour went very well and the whole thing got stronger and stronger. There’s something in the way Boo thinks about music – as an English songwriter, with a very sophisticated ironic and quick-witted Nick Lowe, Elvis Costello type of song writing – that I can relate to. And he seems to find a link with my blues/American/roots thing. When were gigging I kinda know where he’s going and he kinda knows where I’m going, and we know how to sing together.

We’re just about to begin the 2^nd part of the tour in November. Then we’re looking to make a new record in the new year. It’s the first time I’ve worked in a serious duo and had a serious collaboration.

Gary: But you’ve a solo project that you’ve just completed as well?

Brooks: Yes. I do want to keep my solo thing going alongside State of the Union.

Gary: What can we expect to hear?

Martin Simpson

Brooks: Well the songs are definitely more evidently rooted in the blues tradition than the songs I write for State of the Union. Plus, I had some fantastic guests join me as well. Martin Simpson came in for one track – the Doc Watson classic, Deep River Blues – that was just mind-blowing! A young banjo player from Sheffield called Rowan Rheingans and a harmonic player from Cambridge called Steve Lockwood joined me on a few tracks as well. The other tracks are based around a trio of me with a great double bass player called Andy Seward and an exciting drummer called Keith Angel. But the thing I love the most about this new album – probably on the back of going to Africa and on the back of working with Boo – is that I’ve been in a very creative writing phase, so I really like all the songs. Plus I’ve learned a little bit about irony in my years in the UK. Americans, as you know, don’t do irony! We’re not naturally endowed that way, but I’ve been learning how great irony can be, so I’ve introduced this into a few songs!

Gary: And a few bluesy numbers?

Brooks: Yes definitely – a cover of Deep River Blues, Mercury Blues and some originals that are very much in the a traditional roots/blues song style.

Gary: We’re looking forward to it. Thanks, Brooks.

Brooks Williams: Weeping Willow Blues

Brooks Williams, acoustic guitar & slide