DMZ’s Anthony “Amp” Daniels – hope in troubled times

Dedicated Men of Zion – or let’s use the more cool abbreviation, DMZ – is band with a powerful combination of soul and gospel that will make your day brighter, your smile broader and get your feet dancing. It’s infectious, inspirational stuff, packed full of tight harmonies and funky rhythms. The music is traditional in many ways, with a clear heritage in 1960s and 70s soul and gospel, but it’s got a very contemporary feel. It’s music for today. It’s what Music Maker Relief Foundation co-founder Tim Duffy calls “sacred soul.”

And that’s what Bruce Watson of Fat Possum Records recognized three years or so ago, when he signed DMZ to his new Bible and Tire label. [check out our interview with Bruce Watson here.] The band recorded its first album Can’t Turn Me Around, in Watson’s Delta-Sonic Sound studio backed by his all-star band, in Memphis in 2019 and have followed that up now by The Devil Don’t Like It. Like the first album, it’s bursting with positivity, gospel truth, beautiful harmonies and sweet lead vocals.

DMZ emerged in 2014 in eastern North Carolina, a region renowned for its musicality and gospel harmonies. The music made in rural Black churches for many decades has, in fact, been the foundation for so much of the commercial music we’re familiar with. DMZ taps into the deep roots of gospel which its members have experienced in the church, as well as classic sounds of soul and R&B.

Anthony “Amp” Daniels is the eldest of the group, and he’s had a successful a career in R&B down in Atlanta, backing up the likes of Bebe Winans and Toni Braxton, and producing records.

The other vocalists in the band, all fine singers, Antwan Daniels, Dexter Weaver, and Marcus Sugg, are all related by blood or marriage.

I got talking to Anthony about DMZ, the new album and making music. Our conversation sparkled with joy. I asked him first of all, about his musical background. He told me,

“My family was very musical and from a small child, that’s what we did. As a small boy, it’s just music and singing. My mother, she taught me to sing. It’s always been a very serious thing in my home, singing. My mother was more serious about singing than my education! Later she started being more serious about my education, but singing was just so important to her. It came from her father and then from her to my brother and sister and me. So it’s just something we always did.”

I assumed that the singing was really fostered in church but Anthony said that, although he sang in church, it was really his home environment that was his training ground and where his love of singing was nurtured.

“It was a home thing and it was something that we had to do every day. My mother would come in and we would have to sing. In fact, we had to talk in harmony as children!  That’s how it was.

“But we started out in the choir, church choirs, and just traveling to other churches and singing. And even when I visited with my grandmother, she would have my brother and my sister and me sing for her all the time. It’s just singing, singing, singing. I love to sing though. So, it wasn’t a problem. I loved it. And I love to sing now.”

Anthony is a talented guy, not only a terrific singer, but an experienced keyboards player, having played in church and then for years with his mother’s group, the Glorifying Vines Sisters, a longstanding Farmville gospel institution. He’s also had a career as a record producer, producing recordings for the Glorifying Vines and also for R&B and pop music artists. His nickname is “Amp,” which I assumed had some association with amplifiers, but Anthony told me he wasn’t entirely sure how he got it.

“As a child I grew up with that. I guess it’s an abbreviated kind of thing. Sometimes it might be hard for children to say “Anthony” and they’ll say “Amp” instead of a “Ant.” It’s a Southern thing. People give you a nickname!”

How, I wondered, did DMZ get started?

“Well, back in 2014, I was working with a relative of mine on his project and it fell through. His guys started leaving his band so I began to recruit some guys that I knew, but the band fell apart. But the guys didn’t wanna quit, so the group became the Dedicated Men of Zion.”

DMZ consists of four singers – Anthony’s son Antoine, his sons-in-law Marcus and Antwan, and Dexter Weaver, his nephew in-law – and four musicians. They perform far and wide in the United States, but Anthony wants to get the band to Europe.

“I performed in Switzerland with my parents and I’m just ready to get back. I’m ready to get back in the UK. I love that. I just want these guys I’m with now to get an opportunity to just experience that. They’ll love it.”

I asked him how the relationship with Bible and Tire, Bruce Watson’s label, came about.

“We actually met Bruce through Tim Duffy of the Music Makers Foundation [check out our interview with Tim Duffy here]. Tim put us together and it was like a great marriage, man. It was fantastic. I love working with Bruce. We just have a great relationship. I mean we’re talking about a third album already.”

Both albums are brimming with musicality, groove and inspiration. They are obviously gospel, but the description “sacred soul” seems to nail it.

“I think so, because sacred soul music is music for the soul, you know. It’s gospel music and sacred soul is like a division of that. It’s very similar to gospel, but I guess it’s just focusing a little bit differently musically. But I love the name sacred soul. I think it describes it really well.”

When people think of gospel music, they often think about a certain musical sound, certain piano chords and a certain feeling from the music. But I wondered, does it need to be more than that? How important for Anthony is the lyrical content?

“It’s very important. Music is good but the message is important. A good song to me has a message. You can have instrumentals, like, for example, a jazz instrumental and all this kind of stuff, and people still call it a song. But to me, a song should have a good lyrical content, a good story, a good message. And it helps if it’s therapeutic. Sometimes you hear music and it’ll take you somewhere, take you back to another time and place in life. You could be in 2022 and you could hear a song and it’ll take you back to 1985 or something, you know? And it’s just a really good feeling.”

Anthony went on to sum up the message in DMZ’s music: “I guess I would say that the message is positive. We want to give a good positive message, we just want to sing something that will lift your spirit and be encouraging.

“We want it to be encouraging, uplifting, inspirational. Just therapeutic. You know, just help to bring people through – sometimes we need that. You can have a bad back and you have to go to the chiropractor, but where do you go when you’re feeling down? When you need to be uplifted, when you just want to get away and free your mind from some other things. We have a lot of things that we go through – people have bills and they’re dealing with sickness and death, but sometimes a good old song will lift you up, make you feel better. Inspire you. So those are the kind of things we want to get across with this music. And make people smile just for a minute anyway.”

I wanted to know about the faith component of the music. You can have a nice song that has a nice feel about it that might make you feel good. But DMZ songs are more than that, there’s a faith component to the songs.

“Well, yeah, there’s definitely a faith component, we’re dealing with faith and belief. But it gives hope and it’s still encouraging and it still can be uplifting [to anyone]. It’s a feel good. When we were in Switzerland playing, some people didn’t speak English, but they were still saying it felt good. One woman told us, my daughter doesn’t speak English, but she wanted to tell you that she really enjoyed it. So sometimes you don’t have to understand it and it still feels good.”

I asked Anthony about the new album, The Devil Don’t Like, which is very, very good, the levels of production, song arrangements and musicality all very high. It was the band’s second experience of working with Bruce Watson of whom Anthony has said has “a way of pushing an artist to get the best out of them without the artist ever knowing that they are being pushed…the guy is just extraordinary as a person as well as a producer. Trust me when I tell you an outstanding band and a great producer can really bring the best out of an artist and a song. Bruce’s vision of preserving the originality of sacred soul music is educational, unique and inspiring.”

On song selection, Anthony said, “Bruce sent us songs and asked us to select ten. So we listened to them and selected songs that really felt good to us, ones we could really hear ourselves doing.”

Most of the songs, I didn’t recognize, but there’s a great version of Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s Up Above My Head. I can imagine a congregation or an audience singing along with it and also God’s Got His Eyes On You. I was intrigued by the title track, The Devil Don’t Like It, which funny enough, isn’t very much about the devil. Most of it is about God “putting his hand on me.” You just get that little phrase at the end.

“Yeah. And that’s the ironic part about that song. It’s a very small portion of that song. But I guess it’s a catchy phrase. But when I first heard that song, I said, I’m doing it!”

The harmonies on the album are stunningly good, but so too are the lead vocals – beautiful, modern-sounding singing. I’m Going Home is a great example, where the lead vocalist is to the fore and the harmonizing kicks in here and there to support. Who, I asked, takes the lead vocals?

“Well, mostly we share the lead parts. Everybody in the group can sing lead and everybody has their own style of singing. We’re all different and everybody sings it their way. I love it that variety, you know – it’s one group with multiple talents, so you don’t get so tired of just hearing that same thing over and over. You need to have a variety, you know?”

I was intrigued by A Change Is Gonna Come. We’re all familiar with the famous version by Sam Cooke from 1964, which came right in the middle of the civil rights movement and was clearly about events of the time. So I wondered what DMZ’s song is all about.

“When we heard that song – my son sings that song – and what we got from it, and what we feel with the conditions in the world…to me, it’s about hope, you know? No matter what we’re going through, especially with all the bad stuff – change is coming. And I know Sam Cooke’s version was totally different but it’s still the same message. When we look at the conditions, the bad in the world, the message is don’t worry, don’t give up. Change is coming. It’ll get better.”

As a non-American, someone who doesn’t live in America, I wondered if there was any particular reference to today’s America. Is there any particular change that needs to come?

“I would love to see change in America. Of course there are some things I would like to see changed. No matter how many times people tell you things are equal, things are not equal. If we had more equality, treating everybody the same, instead of, you know, separation, I think that would really solve a lot of the issues that we have.

“Everybody being treated equal, regardless of race, colour or whatever. We should just treat people like people, everybody just as humans. We know that there’s some bad everywhere. It doesn’t matter about ethnicity, black, white color, whatever. You have bad everywhere. But everybody’s not that way. So I would just love to see every person being treated the same. Regardless. You know what I’m saying? That’s one thing I would love to see change.”

Does America need to make a more progress with that?

“Yes, I think so. I really believe in that. I just wish that it would happen. I wish that there was some way that it could. Even with a job application, just as simple as that – why do we have to put our race on a job application? It doesn’t matter – if a person can do a job, then a person can do a job. But there’s just so much division, you know?”

Again, as a non-American, I was intrigued to ask Anthony about the divisions in church life in the United States, where there are black churches and white churches. Would it be better if it wasn’t that way?

“I think it’s historical. It’s just the freedom of religion. But if we’re both in the same belief, in the same faith, why can’t we worship together? Instead of you gotta be over there in that black church and I’m here in a white church. We’re worshiping in the same faith, but we can’t do it together. So much division, so much separation and it would be so much better together.”

Anthony told me that he saw a little bit of movement towards people worshipping together, towards integration, but he sensed that people can be afraid and so division continues.

Bruce Watson

We finished off our conversation talking about the music. Anthony was enthusiastic about the band that Bruce Watson had put together for the album – really, the backing band sounds superb.  

“We had studio musicians working with us and they were fantastic and their attitudes were awesome. Just awesome musicians. And just the greatest guys to be around, that whole band and I love them. Bruce Watson put those guys together. That’s his studio band. We went into the studio and no one wanted to leave.

“You know, studio work is hard work. They want more than you can give sometimes, but you gotta give some more. But those guys made it so relaxed for us. And Bruce had a way of just pushing you without you even realizing you’re being pushed. It’s cool. He’ll nudge you, all smiles, and he’s just trying to get the best out of you. I love it.”

Like most musicians, the pandemic put paid to DMZ performances, but things are picking up for the guys now, with up to twelve dates a month. And Anthony’s raring to go.

Like the music DMZ makes, Anthony Daniels exudes sunny positivity. If you get the chance to go see these guys, don’t hesitate, and in the meantime, go pick up a copy of their two albums. The devil may not like them – but you will, for sure.

The Remarkable Blues Art of Kreg Yingst

Kreg Yingst is an artist, originally from Chicago, but now living in the warmer climes of Pensacola in Florida. He specializes in unusual and rather fabulous portraits of musicians, mostly from the blues, but also from jazz, rock and country. On the wall facing my desk, I have a wonderful wood-based print of Rev. Robert Wilkins, complete with some lyrics from his famous Prodigal Son song.

In his catalogue, blues fans will find work representing Muddy Waters, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Son House, Blind Willie Johnson, Buddy Guy, Willie Dixon…the list goes on. They are all superb and every blues fan ought to have one of Kreg’s pieces on display.

With art degrees from the Trinity University,Texas, and Eastern Illinois University, Kreg was originally a painter, but has come to specialize in printing carved wooden blocks. He describes himself as a narrative artist, where the story of the person he is dealing with becomes represented in the finished art-piece. Along the way, Kreg ruminates at length on the story, and then produces a sketch which gets transferred to a block of wood or linoleum, which he then will carve, before ink-printing.

As well as his music range of art, Kreg also has a body of work which focuses on sacred themes, ranging from illustrations of the Psalms to Celtic saints to the Passion of Christ. During the pandemic, when he could not exhibit as usual in the art festivals and fairs where he normally sells his work, he was surprised to find that, when his online sales spiked, it was the sacred art that was being sought.

His hand-coloured woodcuts of the parables illustrate Kreg’s concern that faith be grounded in real life. So, in Jesus’s story of the Good Samaritan, an African-American man rescues a Ku Klux Klansman, while in his Lazarus and the Rich Man, a beggar grabs for the cigarette butts tossed by a limo rider.

In similar vein, Kreg has published a book called Glory among the Ruins: The Homeless Project, a portfolio of 15-linocut portraits of homeless men, a portion of the proceeds of which go toward feeding programs in the Florida panhandle. He says, “I joined a group of like-minded men and women from various churches to provide food, clothing, and spiritual nourishment for the homeless of our city. Over time, as I heard their stories, I began to know them individually, and not just as a people group. They had names and faces, hopes and dreams, and a past that would play into the situation they currently found themselves in.”

Kreg is soon to publish a new book entitled Black Light. I’m honoured to have been asked to write a forward, and I’ve seen an early copy of it. I can tell you that it is a stunning piece of work. It’s 28 portraits of black gospel blues artists, with a Kreg Yingst image of the each one along with a short introduction/reflection on each. The book celebrates Black History Month, which occurs in February in the US and Canada, hence the 28 portraits.

I got the opportunity to talk to Kreg and ask him about his work and the new book.

First off, I had to ask him about his name – there aren’t a lot of Kregs or Yingsts in my part of the world, nor, I’m guessing in North America. Kreg told me it came from his German ancestors who came to America in the 1700s and got a bit changed along the way from Juenst to Yingst. That settled, we talked about Kreg’s approach to his art.

“Well, I’ve been working with printmaking probably since the mid-1990s. I was always somewhat interested in narrative or storytelling arts and so I connected initially with the magic realists. I just loved their work from the 1940s, 50s, in America – people like George Tooker and Paul Cadmus. I liked the quirkiness about it. It felt inquisitive, there was something very magical to the work.

“In terms of the narrative aspect of my work, I’d go to libraries and fiddle through different books and try to find artists. And I came across two artists who were working with wood cuts at the time, Lynd Ward, an American, and Frans Masereel from Belgium. They had done what were called wood cut novels. You could read these visually no matter where you lived in the world. And I found that really fascinating. The graphics really appealed to me. And so I started moving into doing wood cuts and lino cuts and relief prints.

“Now the musicians, the subject matter – I think part of that was I had struggled with creating people in my art, so I started doing figurative art just because it was more of a challenge. I used to do more cityscapes and I was very good at it, but I felt it was somewhat of a dead end. So I started doing people, which I wasn’t very good at. To be honest, I still struggle with it!

“At some point I might like to get back to my painting, but at this time I enjoy the printmaking for a number of reasons. It’s more affordable art – that appeals to me. I’ve always liked, say, the Mexican socialist artists for making art so accessible for people. I don’t like painting that is only for the ultra-rich or museums. I like this aspect of art in our daily life.”

And what, I asked him, about the music aspect of his art?

“I remember the first piece I did was a Robert Johnson piece and it was just because the story appealed to me, the myth, the legend. So I did it and I thought it worked well. It was on aged paper, it had particles of the bark or the plant still in it, and to me, it seemed like a tobacco paper and it just represented Johnson’s time. I did it very scratchy with my cutting and I liked the outcome. I then started digging into the blues guys – not that I knew many of these people. So, my art became more of a journey into people I didn’t know, areas I don’t know. And something from it evolved into a work of art on my part.”

Kreg has a wonderful gallery of art covering blues artists, but he also has covered jazz, rock and country artists as well.

“The rock came a little bit later and doing that allowed me to bring in colour. And again, I was trying to represent the time period. On a technical level, it was more difficult because now you’re using multiple blocks, you’re using multiple colors. I also dabbled a little bit with jazz but with jazz, I started doing backgrounds with multiple blocks that I would piece together in different ways and I’d use different colors. And then I would bring the face as the last block on top. So, in a sense, I was able to improvise. I was trying to do visually what I was hearing audibly. So, you got the scratchy blues, you got the high key powered colors of rock and you got the improvisation of jazz.”

All of Kreg’s art has a spiritual element to it, sometimes explicitly, often just in the way that he creates, as an artist. But as well as the extensive music-related catalogue, he has a range of specifically sacred art.

“There’s a spiritual line that runs throughout the entire body of my work and I’m looking for that same element, I guess, that John Coltrane would’ve talked about with the audio.

 “I’m looking for that with the visual, but that’s, I guess, part of my faith and my faith journey that has been embedded in my work. I did a whole series on the parables quite a while back. At the time I was looking at the German expressionists and they were very loose, and I tried to translate the parables to a modern-day context.

“And then eventually I went to do the Psalms in the same manner, but the Psalms were not narrative, so that proved difficult. And to be honest, I thought I was gonna knock out this project in about a year. But it transitioned into more of my own spiritual journey, where I was reading the desert fathers and a lot of monastic literature.

“And I started to incorporate these visual blocks into my own prayer life. Where I would read through a Psalm and I would take something with me, maybe just a sentence. That’s the sort of thing the desert fathers would do, they’d sit around, they’d listen to the speaker, they would take this line and then they would kind of ruminate on it throughout the day. That’s what I would do. And then I’d find the visual within that. And that whole project took me eight years. So, it became kind of my daily practice, taking the Psalm, embedding it, saying it, speaking it, and then doing it visually.

“And then I did another thing too, after the school shooting at Sandy hook, which kind of devastated me. I had young children at the time and I couldn’t understand how these people could live with that. It happened in December, and I decided the following year that I was going to find a prayer and I was going carve one piece per week until that whole year had gone. My output then became an opportunity to change this darkness into light for me. In my work, you start with a black block, basically, and every mark you make, you’re making white into the block. You’re literally carving light out of darkness. If this evil’s gonna happen, I wanted to have something good come out of it.

“And I like the idea that these prayers that are carved, they continue on in life, in somebody else’s reading. And then I started using these books I’d produced of my work as fundraisers so the profits would go to an orphanage. To support the children that don’t have parents, that did survive somewhere in the world. So, I didn’t want the darkness to win out in this. Like some light’s gonna come out of this.”

As Kreg talked about his approach to his art, it made me think of iconography, the icons that have been done in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, where the painting of those is a spiritual exercise in and of itself.

“The icons are very interesting. I’ve recently finished a series on Mary, in conjunction with a book that’s coming out by an American author who now lives in Ireland, Christine Valters Paintner. Whereas with the Psalms, I was taking a word, this project, with the Mary series, I was taking an image – I would take the image through the day and see then how that was going to be interpreted through my concept of what was going on.

“But I have a couple of icons of my own and it’s a calming thing. I like the idea of it – it isn’t really a cognitive thing. We take in art, we take in music, we take in smells, our senses, directly. And so it is with our experience of God or our communication with God. By doing art this way, you’re making a deliberate act and saying, use this time, and this time is going to be with God. And this is going to be prayer.”

As I look through Kreg’s catalogue of art, it seems to me to have a potentially wide appeal. What sort of people, I asked Kreg, buy his art?

“A real mix. It’s kind of fun to be in the booth selling because you have this interaction with the people that are actually buying. It may be people covered with tattoos that love it for the black and white graphics. Or maybe a little grandmother buying one of the icons – so you get a real mix. And sometimes people will unload on me. I’ve had people come in and buy a piece, say like my Clapton’s Tears in Heaven. And the person’s about to walk out the booth but they turn around and say, this means so much to me, my son just died last week. You get that kind thing.

“Sometimes it has a lot of meaning to them. I’ve seen people laugh. I’ve seen people cry. I’ve heard miracle stories.”

My ears pricked up at that – let’s hear about the miracle stories, Kreg!

“I was doing a show in Texas and one person was buying a piece based on Here Comes the Sun, you know, the George Harrison song. And she goes, ‘Oh, I gotta tell you about this. This piece means so much to me.’ She said her son had been diagnosed with a rare disease and she was supposed to meet with the specialist after the weekend. She’d gone home and was really distraught and she’s praying, just pleading with God. It looked like her son had been given a death sentence basically.

“Monday, she gets in her car ready to leave. And she goes, ‘God, if this is gonna work out well, let Here Comes the Sun come on the radio’! So, she turned on the radio and after a moment of dead air time, the first notes of George’s guitar come in. So, she got to the hospital specialist, and he says, ‘I don’t understand this, we’ve taken the test again, and it’s has come back negative.’ And the doctor said, ‘Do you believe in God?’ And she’s like, ‘I do now!’

“Another lady on that same weekend came in and she’s got two of my Psalm prints in her hands and doesn’t know which one to take. So, I said, get the one which speaks to you more. She asked me if I believed in God and I said yes, I do. She told me, ‘You know, I used to. But my brother got sick and I prayed and prayed but he died.’ I replied, ‘Listen, I don’t have the answers, I don’t know why this happens, but I do know God loves him. And he loves you and he’s always there.

“On my iPad, I had all the psalms and I was going back through them and I was trying to find what prompted the image from the Psalm. I had something highlighted and it said something like, ‘I’ve never left you,’ that kind of thing. And I said to her, ‘I don’t know what this means, but I think maybe this is for you.’ And I turned the iPad round and she read the two highlighted lines, ‘I’ve always been there, I’m not gonna leave you’ whatever the Psalm had said. And she goes, ‘I think that’s for me.’ So, I found it very fascinating that, that weekend there were two diverse but related things. One was a miraculous healing, the other not, and yet both in their own individual way, there was a miraculous encounter with God.”

I was very interested to hear about Kreg’s new forthcoming book, Black Light, the one that celebrates Black History Month with the portraits of the gospel blues artists. What’s the story behind it?

“It kind of developed on the spur of the moment and it was my wife that suggested I do this project. I’d done a lot of black musicians and gospel blues is my real interest. So, I thought, I could do something to take us through black history month. So, I started going back through all the people that I’ve done and, sure enough, I had more than enough images. I like the concept of ‘black light.’ I’m living over here in the thick of it. It’s been some crazy times, these last couple of years over here.

“So, I want to get out the history and what this group of people came through and what their faith did and supported them to get through this. And is still having to get through. And I’ve seen how, even as artists or whatever, people misunderstand black and white. I do graphics of black and white, and we’ve always associated black with evil and white with goodness. I want people to know this is incorrect. So that’s why I call it black light. It’s light, but it’s coming from blackness.

“I like the gospel blues. It’s deals with hard times. It deals with reality. It’s the good and the bad, it’s, you know, on the one hand, why is this happening to me, but on the other, praise God for that. I like how it kind of merges these two things. I mean, your book touches on all of that. [here Kreg refers to my The Gospel According to the Blues.]

“So, you get the highs and you get the lows, whereas sometimes, gospel music is just one extreme and full out blues might go to the other. But the gospel blues deals with both of these issues. And that always intrigues me. Most of the people in the book are gospel blues artists who are fairly obscure to most people, but I’ve also included some people like Marvin Gay and Aretha Franklin who are more well known.”

Take it from me – the book is quite wonderful, and you’re going to want to get yourself a copy. It’ll be printed quite lavishly on heavier, coated paper and will be around 8” by 6”. It’ll be a book you’ll be proud to have in your home, and Kreg tells me it will be available from Juneteenth this year – that is June 19^th – and you can order it from his website. Proceeds from the book will go to orphanages that Kreg knows.

While you’re waiting for Juneteenth to come around, head over to Kreg’s site and browse through his catalogue of wonderful and remarkable art. But don’t just browse – find a piece that speaks to you and buy a copy.

Check out Kreg’s gallery at http://www.kregyingst.com/

Corey Harris – “The blues is a textbook for life”

“Blues is the news we can use to survive in a world on fire”

For nearly thirty years, Corey Harris has been at the forefront of blues interpretation, fusing jazz, reggae, gospel and Caribbean influences to traditional blues. Along the way he has recorded and played with artists like B.B. King, Taj Mahal, Buddy Guy, R.L. Burnside, Ali Farka Toure, and others, performing throughout North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Australasia. He starred in Scorsese’s Feel Like Going Home and collaborated with Billy Bragg on the Mermaid Avenue album series.

He’s a W.C. Handy Blues Award winner, has an honorary doctorate in music and was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship Award for Genius.

Insurrection Blues, his new album, is a fantastic collection of traditional blues songs performed with passion, rawness and fine guitar picking. The album was recorded in May 2021 in

Abruzzo in Italy, where Corey lived during the pandemic before returning to the United States. The album also features contributions on a couple of tracks from harmonica player, Phil Wiggins, and the mandolinist Lino Muoio.

Down at the Crossroads got the opportunity to chat to Corey about the new album and about his music in general.

He told me, first of all, that he’d wanted to show his roots and let people understand know where he’s coming from. “I’ve done a lot of different excursions over the years,” he said, “but this is my foundation. So, I wanted to re-inscribe that into people’s memory banks; that this is what it’s about.”

So you’ll find interpretations of songs by the likes of Rev. Gary Davis, Mississippi John Hurt, Skip James and Charlie Patton, all performed with passion by a skilled guitarist and singer.

In dealing with such a wide scope in the tradition, I wondered how he goes about selecting a particular song and then making it his own?

“I try and be faithful to the form of the song, how it’s supposed to be played and the recognizable licks, if you will, but at some point, you can’t ever play it just like the version you’re learning – at least I can’t. So that’s where my own creativity and character comes in. Because, you know, you’re gonna sound like you!

“In these the traditional songs, I really try and be faithful to the musical presentation of the song, how it’s sung and the rhythm, unless I’m really trying to do something that is adding to it and doing a totally different version – but I normally don’t do that. Some artists will take, say, a Skip James tune and make it totally different, but I’m not really into that. I’m really into trying to interpret a song through my own filter if you will.”

Corey Harris has been performing, rootsy, bluesy music for a long time now. I asked him what is it about this music that is so important to him.

“Well, I would say that this music connects us to our ancestral heritage in America. And it also opens eyes to the realities of what we’re dealing with. You know, the blues is like our CNN, it is what is happening. It’s the news, you know what I mean?

“So, with the times as they are, I just really felt it was important to get back to the basics about the strengths in the culture, and that’s why I was looking at the different song forms and the different varieties within that culture. Nowadays a lot of times, in the popular context, people assume black culture is gonna be hip-hop, or Lil Uzi Vert or something, but it’s actually quite deeper than the commercial varieties we’ve been conditioned to accept. So, I wanted to show really where it’s coming from, and try and do a survey, not only of how I see the music, but of the last hundred and fifty or so years of it.”

This coheres with what Harris has previously said of Insurrection Blues, that it “is an unflinching look at desire and destruction in 21st century America…as an African American living in America, as a descendant of slaves that built this country, I am looking at the survival mechanisms that have existed for people to persevere in difficult times. And when we think about that, the blues always comes to mind.”

“Yeah. There’s a tendency in the popular press and even in academia, to typify the blues and say it’s this sad music about being drunk and losing your woman. But it’s actually so much more than that. And so, I just want to show that the blues is a textbook for life. It’s just like any other great art, it describes the condition of man and woman in all the different situations in life. So that’s what I’m trying to show. Also, that this is a rich tradition and it’s not anything that can be easily diluted or reduced into simple song forms and like, a skinny tie and a hat, you know what I mean? It’s more than that. And that’s what I wanted to show.”

The blues, clearly, grew up in the context of terrible injustice suffered by Black communities. But, I suggested to Corey, the music and the form, and the spirit seems to be something that has a very broad application and appeal, so that there are all sorts of people all around the world who feel drawn to it.

“Well, you know, we all struggle. That’s why we’re here, to struggle and to overcome, as human beings. We can all relate to that journey of struggle and overcoming, in our own way, because it’s not all equal and not all the same. We all have our own different little histories, but we all have that same feeling of, you know, it’s hard, but finally, I’m victorious. Let’s look back and celebrate how hard it was.”

The blues always seem to have that double edge about them – a lament for the way things are, but hope that things might get better. You see it in so many of the songs, where the singer seems to be able to sing his or her way out of the blues feeling.

“That’s it, being able to see the sun on the horizon and being able to get that strength you need to see the next day and to persevere and to keep going. This is the tradition. It wasn’t a tradition that people did for money. There was no profession back in the days with the ancestors of blues singers, blues performers – I’m talking, like, before the Chitlin’ circuit, before the recordings of the twenties, before Mamie Smith. There was no occupation of blues singer, people did it because they had to, because this is what their culture showed them – how you can deal with the things that the world is giving you, all the oppression and all the Black codes, the lynching, you know, all of that. So, this is a tool for survival is the way I see it.”

Harris was profoundly disturbed (along with most other right-thinking people) about the events in Washington at the beginning of 2021. He has said, “When I saw the insurrection, I saw how race and history collided there.” So Insurrection Blues directly channels his feeling about all this – “I felt there was a duty, a responsibility, to use the craft to say something.”

As I listened to the album, any message of resistance is not very explicit. Somebody could listen to the album and miss that. So I wondered, for Corey as an artist, how explicit or otherwise does he feel he needs to be about issues that he feels are important?

“Well, I think it depends on how you feel at the time emotionally. There are some issues that kind of speak for themselves, and you can make a commentary very easily on them. With the insurrection, depending on your political persuasion, you’re gonna see that event through drastically different spectacles, you’ll have a different perspective. And also, depending on your ethnic origin, with your ethnic history in America, you’ll have a very different perspective on this event. So yeah, there’s some resistance in it, because just the act that I’m here alive is proof that there was resistance.

“Because the system wasn’t built so that I would thrive. But also, this project is like an analysis of where we’ve been, where we are and what might happen in the future. If you listen to the record, there’s an interlude to the song Insurrection Blues, which is some audio of the actual crowd at the insurrection. And then after there’s the sound of thunder and lightning; and then the sound of rain, to symbolize that there needs to be sort of a cleansing. This is a storm, and then after a storm, the clouds go away, the sun comes out and things are fresh and clean. So, that’s what we’re going through. We’re going through a purging right now.”

Prefaced by this short interlude, the title track, Insurrection Blues (Chickens Come Home to Roost), becomes a powerful commentary on the infamous storming of the Capitol, such a symbolic emblem of American democracy. As the storm fades and the rain washes things clean, Insurrection Blues kicks in, a minor key blues. The lyrics are not explicit, but the repeated, ominous minor key riffs on the guitar are the repeatedly intoned, “it’s time to get wise” and “chickens come home to roost” make the point well enough.

It comes right in the middle of the album, and although the songs on either side might just be taken as enjoyable interpretations of acoustic guitar blues numbers, Harris has cleverly drawn attention to his African American blues tradition as pointing to both the struggles and the survival of his community.

On a more general note, I asked Corey about the re-emergence of acoustic blues back in the 1990s when he was starting out. Before that there had been a lot of electric blues for several decades.

“Yes, there was a renaissance of acoustic blues. I think the Columbia Records release of the Robert Johnson box set around 1990 had a lot to do with that. And then, shortly after that Keb’ Mo’ came out with his record on Sony’s OKeh Records – it was on a major label and made a big splash. So those two things had a lot to do with it. And then just by happenstance, I came along, Alvin Youngblood Hart came along and so did Guy Davis. And people were realizing, wow, black people still play the blues and they still play acoustic blues! And they realized that this is part of their culture. So it was a great confluence of events at that time.”

And what is the popularity of blues music, particularly in the United States. What, I wondered, is Corey’s sense of the people and the demographic listening to this music and the more traditional forms of it?

“My sense is that there are people my age – I’m in my early fifties – and older who are listening to this music and coming to these shows. The blues market is still people who buy CDs at shows. They’re not really downloading as much as other genres yet. So we’re kind of oldies but goodies blues people, as far as the fans go!” Harris is encouraged, though, by some of the younger talent coming up, like Jontavious Willis and Buffalo Nichols, whom he referred to as “a really monster guitar player.”

Along the way, Corey Harris has played with a lot of wonderful artists from both North America and Africa. I was very interested to hear about his experience of playing with B.B. King in the 1990s.

“I opened up for BB about 75 times around the world, over the years from about ‘95 until about 2005. I was around him quite a lot over the years and what I observed was he was very professional. He put the music on a level where you just had to respect it because the way that it was presented was first class. And very well mannered, very diplomatic, well spoken. You know, it was really like royal, like he was aptly named. You really felt, wow, I’m with somebody who’s putting their art on the top shelf. And so you felt inspired being around him because you felt wow, I got to raise my standards.

“He was someone who came from nothing, but he just dedicated himself to his craft. He studied a lot, he practiced a lot and he elevated his craft so that you just had to respect it for what it was. That’s what I really loved about him. And then he engaged people really well – he talked to you like you mattered and he was interested in you. He was a good people person. Just great being around him and you know, his stories – he had stories about hanging out with Satchmo in the fifties. He said Satchmo used to cook him bread, beans and rice backstage! And he had stories about hanging out with Miles Davis and Charlie Parker. And thinking of that, he used to tell me, ‘Stay away from drugs!’ But I’m like, don’t worry. I don’t do drugs!”

Corey Harris is a multi-talented guy. Not only is he a successful and talented musician, but he’s the author of several books and is currently doing a PhD (he already has an honorary doctorate in music).

“I’m in the music department in the University of Virginia and I’m studying all sorts of different things. Some are things that I didn’t know a lot about, for example, 17th and 18th century classical music.  But my main thrust is music of black resistance. So that could include anything from capoeira to blues, to jazz to music associated with Santeria. So I’ve really whittled it down. But that’s what I’m really interested in – black music of the Americas, of the Atlantic, of the black diaspora.”

As well as studying, Harris is teaching as well, working with university classes along with renowned jazz writer Scott DeVeaux. All of this is sure to find its way into future Corey Harris performances and recordings.

At the moment he’s planning an album in collaboration with Cedric Watson. “He’s a great Louisiana, old-school Creole player who plays a violin and a push button accordion. He also plays banjo, so he’s an excellent talent. We’re going to do a duet record. We both speak French, so we’ll do some French songs and some Creole songs, so, it’s gonna be good!”

And Corey has a book just recently published, Blues People Illustrated.

“People can buy that on my website at Nattyworks.art. It’s fifty-one blues artists, men and women, the cool, all-traditional blues artists, mainly those who were active from the 1920s through the blues revival of the sixties. Each artist has a drawing of them and I’ve written a biography of the artist and included a complete discography as well. So it’s a kind of reference book.

“So those who don’t really know about the specific genre of traditional acoustic blues, the pre-war, can learn about people like Son House, Tommy McClennan, Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey. And even little-known people like Hacksaw Harney, Precious Bryant or John Jackson. I talk about people that I knew as well – Cephas And Wiggins are in there, and Brownie and Sonny.”

One worth checking out as well as the terrific Insurrection Blues.

Best Americana Albums 2021

Here’s our roundup of fifteen of the best of Americana music in 2021. There’s some tasty fare here for sure. However you want to define Americana (you probably know it if you hear it), these albums are all classy records by artists at the top of their game and are music you want to listen to. (btw, if you’re looking for blues, check out our Best Blues Albums of 2021.)

Here they are in alphabetical order, rather than ranked.

American Aquarium, Slappers, Bangers & Certified Twangers Volumes 1 & 2
Two ten song collections of classic 1990s country, covers of songs by Trisha Yearwood, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Patty Loveless, Faith Hill, Brooks & Dunn, and others. The pedal steel is never far away from these toe-tapping melodies – what’s not to like?

Jackson Brown, Downhill from Nowhere
The music is reliably good throughout, with fine musicianship and song arrangements, featuring superb, less-is-more guitar work by Greg Leisz and Val McCullum. The lyrical content, as always, is superbly crafted by a master songwriter, often with a nice synthesis of the personal and the political. For more on the album, click here.

Hayes Carll, You Get It All
Carll’s gritty, world-weary vocals never fail to draw you in, in this superb set of eleven songs. It’s unapologetically a country singer-songwriter record, all telecaster, pedal steel and occasional fiddle. Clever lyrics and memorable melodies throughout make it very listenable-to. Look out for the duet with Brandy Clark.

Jimmy Carter, Blind Faith
Jimmy Carter, the last original member of The Blind Boys of Alabama, remarkably at 87 has released his first solo album, Blind Faith. He said he wants this album to be “a ray of hope and encouragement.” In nine songs which encompass gospel, blues, country and roots music and yet cohere wonderfully, Jimmy Carter’s positive outlook on life and faith shine through. The music is great, the lyrics and inspirational. Catch our interview with Jimmy here.

Steve Earle and the Dukes, JT
Earle’s lament for the tragic loss of his son. All the songs are Justin’s apart from the final “Lat Words,” a poignant goodbye from his father. There’s nothing morbid or downbeat about the album however, and musically, it’s hugely enjoyable.

John Hiatt & Jerry Douglas, Leftover Feelings
A rewarding set of songs from Hiatt and Dobro master Jerry Douglas. Hiatt taps a rich vein of song-writing skill and experience in a mixture of ballads and blues songs with compelling stories. The combination of Hiatt’s always interesting voice, Douglas’s jaw-droppingly good guitar work and eleven good tunes makes for a hugely enjoyable experience.

John Hurbut and Jorma Kaukonen, The River Flows
Wonderful album of acoustic roots music in two volumes, the first thirteen songs which include classics from Bob Dylan, Curtis Mayfield, Ry Cooder and the Byrds, and the second live versions of a number of the songs. Hurlbut takes the vocals and rhythm guitar and Kaukonen backs it up beautifully with some exquisite solo work. Here’s our interview with the remarkable Jorma Kaukonen.

Jamestown Revival, Fireside with Louis L’Amour
Texan folk-rock duo’s tribute to legendary Western author L’Amour comprises six songs which reflect six of his short stories. Each is quite brilliant, lyrically and musically, performed simply with beautiful harmonies. It’s an album I’ve returned to again and again.

Sean McConnell, A Horrible Beautiful Dream
Grammy nominated singer, songwriter and producer McConnell here showcases his wonderful vocals and song-writing. Honest searching lyrics which cover love, justice and faith, and melodies and arrangements that just draw you in. One of the best voices in modern Americana.

James McMurtry, The Horses and the Hounds
McMurty, one of Texas’s finest songwriters, delivers ten songs of vividly-told stories, full of carefully drawn characters. He’s a fiction writer, like his dad, Larry, just a different medium. But the music’s great, as well, with some fine guitar work by David Grissom and, of course, McMurtry’s languid vocals. “This James McMurtry album is really great. It blew me away,” said Jackson Browne. That ought to be enough for you.

Maria Muldaur, Let’s Get Happy Together
Let’s Get Happy Together captures the note of hope we’re all looking for, not only in its title but in the exuberance and joy of the songs. The album “is a historic project that pays reverence to many of the early New Orleans women of blues and jazz,” recorded by Maria with Tuba Skinny, a group of traditional jazz musicians. Don’t miss our great interview with Maria here.

Emily Scott Robinson, American Siren
This is one beautiful country album, featuring terrific three-part harmonies, songs of loss and love and the exquisite voice of the siren herself, Ms Scott Robinson. Her songs are well crafted stories, wonderful vehicles for her sharp wit and observation. Best of all, it’s just hugely enjoyable.

Blackberry Smoke, You Hear Georgia
This band does Southern country rock and does it awfully well. This their seventh studio album, produced by Dave Cobb, is filled with energy, rockin’ guitars and rasping vocals. Get out your air guitar, get up and boogie!

Christina Vane, Nowhere Sounds Lovely
Nowhere Sounds Lovely is a terrific amalgam of blues, bluegrass and country. She’s a wonderful talent – a skilful guitar picker and slide player, a fine songwriter and a beautiful singer. Intelligent, classy, and, most importantly, hugely enjoyable. Here’s our full review.

The Wallflowers, Exit Wounds
Their first album in nine years and it’s classic roots-rock, unmistakably The Wallflowers. Great melodies, Dylan’s distinctive rasping voice and good old bass, guitar, drums and Hammond driving the songs. And the added value of Shelby Lynne on four of the tracks. No attempt here at modernizing, and why fix it if it’s not broke? It’s terrific.

Blues Artist Interviews: Five things We Learned

“Where there is light there is hope; and where there is hope, there’s a chance”
Jimmy Carter, Blind Boys of Alabama

During 2021, we had the opportunity to speak to 15 great blues and roots artists, as well Mark Carpentieri of M.C. Records and Tim Duffy of the Music Maker Foundation. All of them, plying their trade, entertaining us, at times challenging us, against the significant odds posed by the pandemic. Each of them doing what they do with determination, grace and even joy. Pick any one of the interviews if you feel in need of a little inspiration – go ahead, you’ll come away feeling just a bit better about life.

So, looking back, what did we learn from talking to each of these exceptional people?

1. Age is no barrier to following your dream.
Several of the people I talked to are in their eighth or ninth decade of life. A time when many people just want to sit back on the sofa and start watching daytime TV, thinking their best days are behind them. Not so with people like Jack Ward or Elizabeth King, who at 83 and 77 respectively had just released their first solo albums and were looking forward to going on the road to promote them. Or Maria Muldaur, in her late seventies, who teamed up with a bunch of young people to record Let’s Get Happy Together, the most upbeat, cheerful album I heard all year. She told me simply, “you have a choice every day – you can be bummed out of you can be happy.” Atagirl, Maria! And I love the positivity in Bryn Haworth’s Boom Baby Boom, which he wrote about getting older: “you’ve got one life and so much left to give…there’s still time for one more dance.”

Jorma Kaukonen

Jorma Kaukonen, now turned 80, told me he was just about to embark on a new tour with Hot Tuna. He has just released a new album and has been performing regularly online from his Fur Peace Ranch during the pandemic. He told me performing was “just as energizing as it ever was.”

And then there’s Jimmy Carter of the Blind Boys of Alabama, who’s 88 and has just released Blind Faith, a terrific album of Americana/gospel songs – his first solo album – and who told me that he hopes the album “will energize people and change lives.” Now that was impressive – Jimmy’s still wanting to be a blessing to others.

2. Music can be a great vehicle for not only entertaining us, but challenging us.
Guy Davis, Eric Bibb, and Leyla McCalla didn’t make protest albums, but they included songs that highlighted injustice and made us think about our response to that. Davis’s God’s Gonna Make Things Over about the Tulsa Massacre and Eric Bibb’s Emmett’s Ghost dealing with the murder of Emmett Till both used historical tragedies to shine a light on the present. And Leyla McCalla’s stark Song for a Dark Girl, about a lynching “way down in Dixie” is as arresting as Strange Fruit. She told me that music isn’t some sterile environment where an artist can simply be apolitical. Musicians want to entertain us; we want to be entertained – but music, the blues in particular, has always been an important way for artists to comment on what is going on around them, and to help us all to see the injustice that many of us, in our comfortable lives, might miss or ignore.

3.Faith is a vital life-force for quite a number of these artists.
Jimmy Carter told me “my faith is strong” and “when it gets rough, I pray.” He and Elizabeth King and Elder Jack Ward have had considerable challenges in their lives, but each told me how important their faith in God was for them. Jack Ward came from a life of poverty as a sharecropper and told me “when you weak, God will make you strong; when you lonely, he would never leave you alone.”

Elizabeth King

Ms. King, who also grew up picking and chopping cotton, told me the incredible story of how God had healed her after a horrific injury from a drunk driver; now she says, her job “is just to encourage people…when you’re going through something, just turn to God.” Maria Muldaur told me she’s being going to her neighbourhood African American church for the last 40 years and is inspired by joyful worship.

Bryn Haworth, slide guitarist par excellence, who’s featured on the albums of a who’s who of top rock artists, as well as having an excellent back catalogue of his own, spends a lot of his time visiting prisons and talked about the “amazing stuff” he’d seen happen through prayer. His vibrant faith shone through our conversation – a faith, which, incidentally, has him on a mission to save the trees in England, about which he has a song on his new album.

4. Blues music is alive and kicking.
It may have been around for more than a hundred years now, but artists old and young are breathing new life into the genre all the time. Mark Carpentieri of M.C. Records spoke of his optimism as he looked around at the blues and roots scene and saw people “taking the blues and gospel and making it their own.”

Grainne Duffy, a young Irish guitarist and singer, who’s performed on stages with Keb’ Mo’ and Van Morrison, has recorded an outstanding album, Voodoo Blues, with a set of original songs that both tap deeply into the legacy of the blues and breathe positivity. Joanna Connor, whose terrific 4801 South Indiana Avenue was produced by Joe Bonamassa and is packed with raw, high energy musicianship, is one of today’s great electric guitarists. She told me she was “fleshing out” stories as she played the songs, and making them sound epic in the process. She talked about the joy in the blues, despite the hardship out of which they emerged and the way they speak to the human emotion, And Carolyn Wonderland, the blistering Texas guitar-slinger, just finishing a stint in John Mayall’s band, whose vocals and guitar work on Tempting Fate are positively spine-tingling, talked about the fun and joy in making her music.

5. And the blues is a worldwide phenomenon.
Yes, the blues are founded on the experience of African Americans, and are deeply rooted in the souls of people like Guy Davis and Eric Bibb. And Tim Duffy, through his Music Maker Foundation, is working hard to preserve the tradition of unsung Southern musicians and present them to the world – he talked about the “very special people” in the communities he works with and the need to “amplify their voices” and promote “cultural equity.”

Ireland’s Grainne Duffy

But I talked to Paul Cowley, an Englishman living in rural France, playing traditional acoustic blues – which he discovered relatively late in life and was smitten with; and to Mark Harrison, another Englishman, whose story-telling blues reflect deeply on the human condition; to Leyla McCalla, whose family roots are in Haiti; to Grainne Duffy from Ireland; to Bert Deivert, an American who’s lived most of his life in Sweden, and who says “it’s the soul of it, the emotion, which drives me.” Eric Bibb, of course, has also made his home in Sweden for many years.

All these people are doing more than just keeping the blues alive – they are, of course, deeply drawing from the well of music and blues feeling from the past, but as well, lyrically, they are applying the blues to new and current situations, and musically, they are either forging new directions or keeping it fresh by their talent, dedication and musicianship.

There are links to all the interviews below for you to read and enjoy:

Jorma Kaukonen: “The good life is more than material stuff…”
Bryn Haworth: Still time for one more dance
Jimmy Carter: And his Blind Faith is a ray of hope
Carolyn Wonderland: Is Tempting Fate
Bert Deivert: His story-telling blues
Eric Bibb: “Everything can change if we believe”
Elder Jack Ward: From sharecropping to soulful singing
Elizabeth King: Living in the Last Days is a gift for us all
Mark Harrison: His Unique Talent
Maria Muldaur: Wants us to get happy with her
Guy Davis: Hits a rich vein of creativity
Paul Cowley: Long Time Comin’ – but more than worth it
Tim Duffy: “A glorious awakening of musical tradition”
Joanna Connor: “The blues is honest music”
Mark Carpentieri: Optimistic about the future of the blues
Leyla McCalla: Making Music that Matters
Grainne Duffy: Drenched with the blues and Southern soul.

Jorma Kaukonen: “The good life is more than material stuff…it’s being able to be honestly at peace with yourself.”

Jorma Kaukonen is something of a musical legend. He’s played with Janis Joplin, was a founder member of Jefferson Airplane, one of the biggest rock bands of the late 60s and early 70s, as part of the band was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and has performed with Hot Tuna off and on over the past 50 years.

Along the way he’s shared a stage with Muddy Waters (who opened for Airplane – “it just didn’t seem right, but there it was. I remember him as the most gracious of human beings”), headlined Woodstock, the first Isle of Wight Festival and the notorious Altamont Festival in Northern California in 1969 (“rock and roll’s all-time worst day”), and been an avid ice speed skater and motorbiker.

In addition, over the past twenty years, he’s re-invented himself as an outstanding acoustic guitar picker, releasing a number of top-notch solo albums, and has established Fur Peace Ranch in south eastern Ohio as a centre for guitar tuition and musical comradeship, drawing in top class guitarists like Larry Campbell, Warren Haynes, Tommy Emmanuel and Eric Bibb to share the instruction.

The rock and roll years took their toll – in his autobiography, Been So Long: My Life and Music, he says, “alcohol, cars, motorcycles, girls, and all that jazz – yeah, I definitely took risks. I can only say that I was lucky to make it through.”

But make it through he has, happily married with a young family, and at…whisper it…at 80 years young, is still performing solo and with Hot Tuna.

Jorma took the time to chat with me from his Fur Peace Ranch, where he was accompanied by his two dogs – “our bigger dog is a boxer-doodle mix, but he looks like an Irish Wolfhound and our other dog’s a Chihuahua.” The occasional bark over the telephone line was matched by the complaints from our own two Lakeland Terriers about the temerity of the postman to come to the door. So, we both took the dog noises in our stride.

He was just about to embark on a major tour with Hot Tuna, which he said “we’re pretty darn excited about,” public appearances having been curtailed by the pandemic. Jorma did, however, do a lot of “Quarantine Concerts” online from his ranch, which were free to view and are still available on YouTube, all fifty or so of them.

The man clearly has a lot of energy – the tour schedule made me tired, just looking at it. Is performing just as energizing as ever?

“Well, first of all,” he told me, “for an 80-year-old, I’m really lucky. I’m really still pretty healthy It’s the first long tour we’ve done in a while, but we did a show here at the Fur Peace Ranch last week. And so far, it’s just as energizing as it ever was – maybe more in some respects, because I appreciate it so much more because we were unable to do it for a while.

“I think that my appreciation of music in general is much more multi-dimensional than it was when I was younger. I spend a lot more time thinking about, not just the hot licks and stuff – I love them, I’m a guitar player, what’s not to love? – but the harmonies and chords and stuff. They’ve started to mean a lot more to me.”

Jack and Jorma (photo by Backstage Flash)

Hot Tuna was a band that emerged out of Jefferson Airplane which was essentially a collaboration between Kaukonen and his long-time friend, Jack Casady. The band typically plays Airplane material and covers of American country and blues artists such as Reverend Gary Davis, Jelly Roll Morton, Bo Carter and Blind Blake. There have been various other musicians in the band along the way, but always it has been Jorma and Jack. The band’s fifty year lifespan show a quite an unusual level of longevity. Has that been down to Jorma and Jack’s friendship?

“Absolutely. No question about it. Jack is my oldest friend. He’s a little bit younger than I am but we started playing together in 1958. So we’ve basically been doing it ever since. And we are absolutely still friends.”

I had been reading a recent blog post from Jorma, where he was reflecting on the process of getting older. I found that interesting, because I had been talking to Jimmy Carter from the Blind Boys of Alabama recently, who at 87 has a new album out, his first solo album. [Here’s our interview] He was very excited about it and was telling me about his hopes and dreams for the future. That’s a remarkable thing, actually – continuing to have hopes and dreams for your life as you get older.

And, I put it to Jorma, the same could be said for him, establishing Fur Peace Ranch when he was around 60, with a vision for what a piece of land in rural Ohio could be. Along with his wife Vanessa, they envisaged a place where musicians could come together and surround themselves with music for several days and emerge with a new found inspiration.

“Well, first of all, Jimmy and I are both obviously very lucky because some people, for whatever reason, are unable to keep that kind of hope for the future. But the music still speaks to me with the same power as it did when I was a kid – that’s undiminished. So that’s part of it, but just generally speaking, in a normal world, I’d probably be a great grandfather, but I have a teenage daughter and a son in his twenties. I’m not saying that keeps you young because nothing keeps you young but being young! But it keeps you involved. And it keeps a view of the future closer at hand, as opposed to just being a grumpy old so and so.

“Almost 30 years ago, I lucked into a large piece of property in Southeast Ohio. It’s very rural and we’ve got over a hundred acres here in a county with less than 20,000 people. When I first moved to California in 1962, Paul Kantner, one of the founders of Jefferson Airplane, was one of my early friends there. And he got me involved in teaching and even in an era when I’m not sure what I had to teach anybody, I loved it so much.

“Anyway, fast forward to the eighties, Happy Traum got me doing a couple of videos for his Homespun instructional videos. And I loved that as well. So when we looked at this huge piece of property we said, what are we going to do with this? And Vanessa – God bless her, she had a real life before she married me, and was a civil engineer – said, we could build this, we could do it. And it sounded like a great idea to me which would not be mutually exclusive with my ability to tour. So here at the Ranch, after almost 25 years, we now have close to thirty buildings.

“We have cabins, we’ve got a theatre. We have a little video production studio. We do a radio show for our local national public radio station. And we’ve been doing live classes for all these years. It’s about getting together with a bunch of like-minded spirits….we have lots of different teachers who all do different stuff, but basically we just love the music and geek out about it and play with each other. And our classes tend to run from Friday morning to Monday morning.”

Teaching, Jorma told me, has made him a better player. Is that, I asked him, because it makes him think more carefully about what it is he’s doing on the guitar?

“I think there are a lot of levels to this. My teaching style tends to be anecdotal – I’m not a theorist and I teach pretty much from songs. Looking at the music that I have loved for so long, I get a much more three-dimensional view of it now than I did when I was a kid. And that makes me a better interpreter, a better player. And certainly, it’s made me a better singer – even later in life, in the last decade or so, my singing has got better. I’m a lucky guy, because I’m in good shape, I’ve got good lungs!”

I mentioned to Jorma that I’d learned the old blues song Trouble in Mind from his Homespun instructional video years ago, and he was kind enough to suggest a cool new way to play part of it which he’s recently discovered after Jack Casady had found an old tape of Jorma playing the song from 1960. (I’ve now tried it out, and, yes, it’s pretty cool!). And, guitarists – check out his online instructional videos here.

Notwithstanding the psychedelic rock years with Jefferson Airplane, Jorma Kaukonen has been a roots musician all his days, ever since hearing a friend play him A.P. Carter’s Worried Man Blues in 1956 as a teenager, after which he rushed home and told his dad he wanted a guitar and lessons. In his autobiography, he says, “Strange to say, I started out as an acoustic player, but I had been sidetracked by rock and roll for many years.”  What, I asked him, is it about roots music, blues music, that appeals to him? It’s music that has been around for a hundred years or more, but why does it still appeal to people?

“Well, there are lots of levels to this. First of all, it was just so cool. And in my era, when I was a teenager and I started to play it, so much of the popular music was just so insipidly boring. But here were songs that had lyrics that spoke about real life. Now, it wasn’t real life in terms of me as a middle-class white kid – because I’d never been in prison, I didn’t pick cotton, I hadn’t suffered racial inequities and all this kind of stuff. But the blues lyrics just seemed to show a real side of life that I wasn’t getting from my mom and dad.

“And the music is so permanently hip anyway. Everybody doesn’t have to sound like Ray Charles or Aretha Franklin, but even so, just to have that pure honesty coupled with music that’s still to me after all these years so unbelievably hip.”

One of the artists that has been important for Jorma from he was a teenager is the Reverend Gary Davis, and he continues to play Gary Davis songs both as a solo artist and with Hot Tuna. Rev. Gary Davis, the blind son of dirt-poor sharecroppers in South Carolina, went on to exert a major influence on the folk scene of the 1960s and the early rock scene of the 70s. Bob Dylan called him “one of the wizards of modern music” and for Alan Lomax, the folklorist, he was “one of the great geniuses of American instrumental music.” What makes Gary Davis special for Jorma Kaukonen?

“When I had got turned on to Reverend Davis, that would have probably been in the late winter of 1960. I’d never really heard anything like that before, and if you studied the Reverend’s style, he’s a heavyweight guitar player. He knows a lot of stuff. But his right hand, he only uses his thumb and his first finger. He’s a two-finger picker. As was Ian Buchanan, the guy who was my mentor – he and the Reverend were friends. But it was just immediately apparent to me that it would be easier to go where I think I wanted to go by using three fingers rather than two, because it made it easier to play triplets and stuff like that.

“But all that being said, there was something that was so spiritually invigorating about the Reverend’s music. And this is interesting because, I mean, I’m a Jewish guy from an utterly unobservant Jewish family. But because my dad traveled around [during his career as a State Department official], I’ve been at a lot of Christian schools. So I’m comfortable with denominations and stuff like that. And the Reverend with that fundamentalist Baptist preaching stuff, seemed to made sense to me. Not in a religious way, but in a spiritual way, because I consider the two things are different. Reverend Davis was such a lover of life.

“I mean, think about this guy, born in the eighteen hundreds, going out blind in the American South, this can’t have been a lot of fun for him. But he never complained in his music. Although I didn’t know him in the way that guys like David Bromberg and Stephen Grossman knew him, I did meet him a couple of times, and he was an upbeat guy, and, even with a song like Death Don’t Have No Mercy – not the most cheerful song in the world – I never turn away after a Reverend Davis song depressed. I’m always, like, there’s hope for the future.”

[Check out Ian Zack’s great biography of Rev. Gary Davis, Say No to the Devil]

I was intrigued reading Jorma’s biography to see him refer time and time again to “G-d” and saying how he felt God was willing things along the way. In the midst of all the chaos, somehow God was at work. Had I got that right?

“Yes, exactly. I consider myself more of a spiritual person than a religious one. I’m able to look at my life today and I realize in spite of everything, I’ve always been a blind optimist. Maybe even sometimes I shouldn’t have been, but again, like we said, you know, the Reverend’s got that song There’s a Bright Side Somewhere. And I think I always felt that.”

In Been So Long, Kaukonen is very honest about a lot of his personal struggles and the chaos there was at times. But towards the end of the book, he talks about living a good life. I asked him, reflecting on all he’s experienced, the good and the not so good, what makes for a good life?

“That’s a really good question and it’s more than it’s more than material stuff. You know, I think it’s being able to be honestly at peace with yourself. I mean, listen, obviously every day’s not a blissful day. But basically speaking, I’m able to be honest with my daughter, my wife and my son in a way I probably couldn’t have been a number of years ago, and I think I’ve come to know myself pretty well most of the time, and I’m okay with the way things are. To me that’s a good life.”

Jorma has released an album with his long-time friend, John Hurlbut, The River Flows, which grew out of the Quarantine Concerts. It’s a wonderful album of acoustic roots music in two volumes, the first thirteen songs which include classics from Bob Dylan, Curtis Mayfield, Ry Cooder and the Byrds, and the second live versions of a number of the songs. Hurlbut takes the vocals and rhythm guitar and Kaukonen backs it up beautifully with some exquisite solo work. I asked Jorma about his collaboration with John Hurlbut.

“Johnny and I have been friends for probably 40 years and we’ve played together off and on, and he’s my ranch manager. And over the years, from time to time we’ve gotten together and played just ‘cause it’s fun. Well, it became apparent to me even before the pandemic, one of the things that I got to do playing with him, was what I got to do with Jefferson Airplane, which was there was no burden on me to be a front guy, whereas in Hot Tuna I am obviously singing and playing solo. But with Johnny I’m just trying to do my best to fill in the blanks for him.

“But then the pandemic came and shut us down, but we still kept on doing some outdoor lunches and stuff – with social distancing. And all of a sudden it occurred to me, I’m really having a good time playing with my buddy here. And since we have nothing else going on, let’s make a record! So I called up my friend, Justin, who’s our drummer in Hot Tuna, and he came down from Woodstock to be the engineer and the co-producer on the record, and Johnny and I cut all those songs in two days. And we did it all live. We just had such a good time. Just being able to make music with an old friend, with no pressure on me, was what it was about.”

Jorma Kaukonen’s acoustic guitar accompaniment throughout this album is exceptional – it’s everything a guitar accompaniment often isn’t – it’s tasteful, it doesn’t interfere with the singing and it just enhances the songs. Listen to any one of the songs – especially Knocking On Heaven’s Door, and you’ll see what I mean.

“Today I was listening to the Jefferson Airplane’s version of We Can Be Together off the Volunteers album. It’s a long song and there’s all these parts, and I’m thinking, wow! When we produced that song, there was so much thought that went into all these parts, and it worked, and that’s good. But one of the things that I got to do with Johnny, because of the way he and I play together is to just try to add whatever you want to call what it is I, do my musical art or whatever. It’s to be able to surround his voice and his playing without calling too much attention to what I’m doing, because it’s all about the song.

“And he makes it so easy for me to do that. I mean, if you saw him play, he plays with a flat pick and his right hand is the weirdest looking thing you’ve ever seen, but it works for him. And his rhythm is so solid that I don’t need to worry about anything except to try to support the lyrical content of the melody. So it was just really a lot of fun to play along with it.”

The River Flows is a fine album for sure – as are Jorma Kaukonen’s other acoustic albums from the last twenty years (I confess Stars in My Crown is my own favourite). Check them out.

I found Jorma Kaukonen not only generous with his time chatting to me, but remarkably unassuming for someone with his musical history. He’s a man who clearly has found himself, and, along with continuing to press on with his musical journey, he’s found a level of contentment. Maybe a visit to one of his guitar workshops in Fur Peace Ranch is in order…

Slide guitarist Bryn Haworth has still time for one more dance on Ready or Not

Bryn Haworth, slide guitarist par excellence – no, just great guitarist, full stop – has had a stellar recording career with his own albums and as a session musician for the likes of Chris de Burgh, Joan Armatrading, Cliff Richard and Gerry Rafferty. As well as jamming in the 60s with Jimi Hendrix, he has toured extensively with bands like Traffic, Bad Company, Gallagher & Lyle and Fairport Convention.

His career started in the late sixties with “Les Fleur de Lys” a Motown/soul band which became house band for Atlantic Records in England. After moving to California, he became a founder member of Wolfgang, a band put together and managed by the legendary Bill Graham, and appeared on bills with Led Zeppelin, Jefferson Airplane, Taj Mahal and others.

In 1973 he returned to England and was signed to Island Records where he made his first LP, Let The Days Go By and followed this up by Sunny Side Of The Street. These are both excellent albums which I bought on vinyl at the time and, on listening to again recently, have stood the test of time. You know how when you put on a record you listened to as a youngster, you know every line and what song follows what? – that’s me with these two albums.

I talked to Bryn a wee while ago and he told me his moving and powerful story about finding faith around this time and then a little of his work over subsequent years, taking his music into prisons around the country. [you can find this here]

He’s got a terrific new album just released, called Ready or Not and I got chatting to him about it. First of all, I asked him about the prison work which is so dear to his heart and which he’s been involved in for a long time, but which had been interrupted by the pandemic. He told me he’d continued sending talks and music videos for prisons to play on their community radio stations, but that recently he’d begun to go back in both women’s and men’s prisons in Surrey and London for their Sunday services, where prisoners are entitled by right to an hour of religious service.

“It’s coming back, but you can’t do big gatherings. I basically take the Anglican service for the hour, but you get people just coming along because they want to get out of their cells and don’t have any particular beliefs, but they’re just wanting to see something, a visitor, see something different, hear some music. And that’s been really creative, in that it starts them off thinking about God and about their lives.

“We have a Post Office box and prisoners can write to us through that. So we’re in communication with various prisoners, and then sometimes, when they get out, if we feel it’s appropriate, we can see them. We’ve seen some really good turnarounds in people’s lives. It’s not big numbers, but people can genuinely turn around in a major way in prison. What we do is a drop in the ocean, but I think it’s like what Jesus said about the woman who gave her offering to him, “she did what she could.” So we just do what we can. We feel particularly called to this work. It’s not everybody’s cup of tea, but we’ve always felt called to it.”

The new album, Ready or Not is a really fine collection of eleven songs, a couple of rerecorded older songs, some new songs, a great cover of Let’s Stick Together and two nice guitar instrumentals. Bryn is not only an excellent guitarist, he’s a talented songwriter and singer, and this album showcases all of this. And it’s also got a group of very talented musicians contributing. He told me about the making of the album.

“I got the title track Ready or Not and I thought, right, that’s a good title for the album. But just as I was supposed to record it in 2020, Martha Rafferty, Gerry Rafferty’s daughter, asked me if I’d play on an album of Gerry’s she was putting together. [Gerry Rafferty passed away in 2011]. And that was more urgent. So I dropped my own plans and I did Gerry’s stuff. [Bryn contributed guitar work on five tracks on the album, Rest in Blue, which was released to critical acclaim in September 2021].

“So then, I started my own album in November a year ago. I did some live sessions with Paul Beavis [drums] and Dave Bronze [bass], just the three of us together, about four or five tracks. And then it all kicked off after that. I then had rebooked to do some live work in January, but COVID came in and the lockdown happened again.”

So Bryn had to improvise, travelling up and down the country to accommodate various musicians he wanted on the album. People like Henry Spinetti, who played drums in the Climax Blues Band, was previously a member of Eric Clapton’s touring band and played on Gerry Rafferty’s Baker Street, and Teri Bryant, another world class drummer who has done world tours with the likes of Faith Hill, Peter Gabriel and Matt Redman. And then he worked remotely with Chris Stainton, long-time keyboard player in Eric Clapton’s band.

Keyboardist Chris Stainton

So, this album is chock-a-block with top notch English rock musicians and the song arrangements sound like a proper band playing.

It gets off to a great start with the title track with some characteristic Bryn Haworth slide guitar as the song begins. I asked Bryn about this song.

“For me, the whole idea came about when I was playing hide and seek with my niece’s children. You let them go and hide, then you count 20, and then shout “coming, ready or not!” It’s just that whole thing, that you can be doing something, and then you can be suddenly found. And I think Jesus’s return is something we need to be reminded of in the church and the world as well, because to me, it begs the question, am I ready?

“When I first became a Christian, a guy said to me, ‘are you living in the light of his coming?’ And it always stuck with me. It does makes you think. I think generally the album is about that, about that theme – so it’s just that urgency.”

We talked a bit about another song Bryn had written and recorded many years ago, on a similar theme – The Grand Arrival, the title track of his 1978 album. And then I asked him about All I need is a Home, now re-recorded on Ready or Not, which had originally appeared on his 1974 Let the Days Go By album. It’s a beautiful song where you really appreciate Bryn’s singing voice. When I asked him why he decided to include it on this album, he immediately started thinking about his work with prisoners.

“So many people are released from prison and they don’t have anywhere to go. They just end up committing crimes and going back into prison. And there are various homeless charities that we’re involved in as well.

“I wrote that song nearly 50 years ago when I was 23. And that was my experience when I came down to London, then. I didn’t have a home. I slept on buses and bus stations. And then during the day I’d go and try to look for work in music shops, and try and get a gig somewhere, but then I’d go back and sleep on a bench.

“So I know what it’s like to not have a place to live and especially in London, it’s horrible. And I just felt that in the next couple of years, it’s going to be more of an issue in this country, homelessness and people not being able to afford rent, and we’re going to need to do something about it. There are some really good initiatives already going. So I thought recording this song might just help raise the profile of this problem.”

Bryn’s not the young guy he was when he made Let the Days Go By, but here he is still being creative, still making great music, as evidenced by Ready or Not. I wondered what he thinks about getting older and continuing to be creative?

“It’s like the song, Boom, Baby, Boom, that’s on the album. That’s really about this whole thing of getting older. Because when you get older, you feel sidelined, you feel useless, irrelevant, and invisible, and you’re not wanted, but at the same time, you have so much experience from your job, what you’ve been doing and your experience in life.

“And especially as a follower of Jesus, you’ve got so many things you’ve experienced, seeing Jesus working and seeing miracles. I’ve seen amazing stuff happen through prayer. I want to carry that on. Psalm 92 verse 14 says that the righteous will stay fresh and green and they’ll still bear fruit in old age. And that’s what I feel. I mean, as long as there’s something to sing about and something to play, then you keep going as long as your hands are able to play. Boom Baby Boom was about that.”

Boom Baby Boom, a great 1950s style rock’n’roll song with some terrific piano and guitar work, is one of my favourite songs on the album. As I get older myself, I appreciate the positivity here: “You’ve got one life with so much left to give…there’s still time for one more dance.”

When I spoke to Bryn a while ago, he mentioned having problems with his hand, his fingers, so I wondered how that was going.

“Well, you always find there’s a way of playing around it that you can figure out. Bruce Coburn, has problems with his fingers and he’s figured out a way to still keep playing. For me sometimes there’s a way of placing your fingers where you wouldn’t have done normally – you can do it and it still works. You adapt. And I think the thing with slide guitars, it makes it a little bit easier because you’re only playing with a slide, you’re not playing with the fingers so much.”

We Never Thought This Could Happen is a delicious country number. At first I thought it was a song about the pandemic. But as I listened, it seemed to be broader than that – it’s all about the sense of foundations shaking, loss of confidence, “cold hearts and empty eyes” – a hard look at the world as it is.

“I got the idea for the song in a dream ten years ago. In this dream, my grandparents were singing this song, we never thought this would happen, and I thought, that’s really good. And they said to me, don’t you know this song? And I said, no, and then suddenly realized I was dreaming it. And so I better get up and write it down.

“There are two or three songs here that came through dreams. But I think for me how it developed was just looking back in history and it struck me how quickly, how easy it is for the way of life people take for granted to just disappear overnight. And that’s what it’s about. It’s about the things that we take for granted.

“That song’s got many levels, but I think it’s important for people just to think about it. Because it’s not just about the pandemic – although, of course, we never thought this could happen. We never thought our way of life could be disrupted and that’s the weakness that we have.”

I asked Bryn about Enough is Enough, which he released as a single a wee while ago. This is a lovely slice of Americana which starts with Bryn singing over a strummed acoustic guitar and eventually gives way to some sumptuous slide guitar. The song is about our trees being destroyed, which Bryn has been quite vocal about.

“I just changed a couple of lines in this new version. I just think we’re losing so many of our mature trees unnecessarily through the building of houses and roads and railways. The government can say, well we’ll plant more trees, but you know, trees take 150 years to grow. The UK is the least forested place in Europe already, we’ve lost so many mature trees.

“William Blake says, the tree, which moves some to tears of joy, is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. I thought that was really good. To a builder, it just stands in the way. But to some people this is massive. This tree is going to outlive me. And then you start to think how much you need them just to live on this planet. They’re just being felled indiscriminately. So that’s why that song is there.”

There’s a great reworked version on the album of Let’s Work Together, which again has some tasty slide guitar. I only knew the Bryan Ferry version, but Bryn put me straight.

“Wilbur Harrison wrote that in 1969. He was a Black American, one-man-band kind of guy, with a bass drum and a guitar. I remember he supported Creedence Clearwater in the early seventies at the Albert Hall.”

Apparently, Harrison wrote the song as Let’s Stick Together and then changed it a few years later to Let’s Work Together. Bryan Ferry went back to the original title and then Bryn went with Let’s Work Together. All clear?

“I’ve gone to the Canned Heat version [a million seller in 1970) and the Harrison version. I just felt that community is the one good thing that I’ve seen come out of these last two years. Our street has gotten much, much better over these last two years – we have a WhatsApp group and we can look after each other, do people’s shopping for them. And I think in the coming years, we’re going to need that sense of community more and more. So that’s why I put this song on.”

The last couple of songs on the album are Holy Spirit of God, and Doxology, the first of which, within the bounds of a lovely tune, contains a remarkable amount of theology. I asked Bryn if he thought there was enough emphasis on the Spirit and what the Spirit does in the church.

“No, I don’t think there is. Christianity is more than having your sins forgiven, as amazing as that is, and then waiting to die to go to heaven. You don’t really hear much about the fact that we’re called to live a new life and God’s got things for us to do. You know, I love Ephesians two verse ten – it says we are God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus to join him in the work that he does and the good works he’s got ready for us to do. If that’s the case, then I need to be able to recognize his voice because he’s got stuff for me to do.

“And I think the person of the Holy Spirit is so vital to living this new life. I wrote that song just to remind myself that every day, you need to be asking, ‘Holy Spirit, teach me to hear your voice.’ When I wrote it, I just played it to myself. I’m saying it to myself because I just wanted to be reminded. But then I recorded it and I was pleased with the way that it came out.”

The album wraps up with Doxology, a beautiful, finger-picked acoustic guitar piece, which reminds you again what a fine guitarist Bryn is. But more than this, as you listen and begin to think of the words of the Doxology hymn behind the tune, it’s a fitting note of praise on which to complete the album.

Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow;
Praise Him, all creatures here below;
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Jimmy Carter and his Blind Faith is a ray of hope

“I have always wanted to help people. I hope this project will energize people and change lives. Where there is light, there is hope; and where there is hope, there is a chance.” Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter is the last original member of The Blind Boys of Alabama and, remarkably, at 87 has released his first solo album, Blind Faith. He told me he wants this album to be “a ray of hope and encouragement.”

And that it certainly is. In nine songs which encompass gospel, blues, country and roots music and yet cohere wonderfully, Jimmy Carter’s positive outlook on life and faith shine through. The music is great, the lyrics and inspirational and it’s one of the albums I’ve enjoyed listening to most this year.

The album was produced by Ron Pullman – multi-talented guitarist, songwriter, music business manager, writer and wood craftsman – who wrote most of the songs on the album, and who says, “I spent a lot time trying to understand what Jimmy wanted; the feel and message, and the overall sound.”

Guests on Blind Faith include Charlie Musselwhite, Alan Parsons, The Mendelson Choir of Pittsburgh and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. They all provide a suitable backdrop to Jimmy Carter’s distinctive and still-strong voice, which is the highlight of the album.

Jimmy Carter has been a member of The Blind Boys of Alabama for forty years and has sung for three presidents, won five Grammy Awards, been inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame, and collaborated with a who’s who of the music industry, including Willie Nelson, Marc Cohn, Ben Harper, Peter Gabriel, Mavis Staples, Robert Randolph…the list goes on.

Carter was there in 1939, one of the boys at the Alabama Institute for the Negro Blind, when the Blind Boys started out and began to play church engagements, but he was too young to join them on the road. He began singing with them in 1982 and has seen them become the world’s premier gospel group, legendary musicians and hugely respected far beyond the gospel genre.

I had the great pleasure of chatting to Jimmy Carter while ago (check it out), but was pleased to get the opportunity to speak to him again, specifically about this excellent album, along with Ron Pullman.

Jimmy was in fine form, having weathered the storm of the pandemic. “I’ve stayed well. I have all of my shots and I’m doing good.”

From the kick-off I knew this was going to be an enjoyable chat. Before long, Jimmy was joking that “it’s my first solo album and, I mean, I’m beginning to like it!” It helps, of course, that there’s been so much positive feedback for all sorts of quarters, especially ordinary listeners who are finding inspiration and encouragement in it.

Taking over the interview, Jimmy asked me, “what’s your favourite song?”

That’s a hard one, actually, given the quality to choose from. I mentioned Lord Take Me, a gently rocking Americana track, with some rootsy violin by Ryan Joseph and an oh-so-cool guitar solo. The song morphs beautifully into Swing Low Sweet Chariot with the added harmonies of the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh. Then again, there’s I Love to Pray, written by Joey Williams, band leader of the Blind Boys of Alabama, which Carter puts across in a very personal way. Jimmy declares, “my faith is strong” and “if it gets rough, I start to pray.”

Jimmy Carter is a man who believes that God answers prayer, and he told me that “prayer is very important to me. When I pray, I think of the verse that says, the fervent prayer of a righteous man does much [James 5 v16]. If someone is connected with God, you can call him and he’ll hear you. That’s what I’ve been doing. I know what prayer will do. I know what God will do, and I know what Jimmy Carter’s going to do. He is going to stay right there with him.”

Talking of favourite songs on the album I wondered if Jimmy had one? “Yeah, I have one. I Am With You Still.”

This is a quite beautiful song, a tribute to Jimmy Carter’s old friend and fellow original Blind Boy, Clarence Fountain, whom we lost in 2018. The song features a choir of young people from the Alabama Institute for the Deaf and the Blind, the school which Jimmy attended when he was a boy.

There’s a great video for the song which shows the young people singing. Said Ron Pullman, “They got to go down and record in a real studio. They got the experience of going to the Sound of Birmingham Studio and it was just amazing.”

Ron went on to tell me that he and Jimmy had gone recently to visit the school again and brought signed CDs for all the students who had performed on the record.

“And it was most touching when Mr. Carter addressed these kids about how you have to stay fast to your faith. And, you know, the things that happened early in his life didn’t dissuade him – ‘I didn’t deviate from my faith!’ I could hear Jimmy calling out in the background – and he ended up performing for several white house presidential administrations and then on every major TV show. And of course, you’ve seen him perform many times around the world. So, it was a most inspiring speech Mr. Carter gave to the students yesterday. It was amazing. I got to tell you, it made me cry, Gary, because Mr. Carter was so inspiring.”

I Am With You Still is an incredibly powerful song about God’s presence with us. Jimmy told me that this is something that is very important to him.

“I was brought up in a Christian environment in my early life. My parents were Christian people, and they told me about God. They told me about Jesus and all of that. And then I had a personal experience with God – I have – and that built my faith. My faith is strong. That’s all I can say.”

The very personal nature of the record comes to a head in the final song, written by Joey Williams, Why Me. It’s a nice bluesy piece where we get some honest reflections on the fact of Jimmy Carter’s blindness.

Ron Pullman said, “In Why Me Jimmy starts out asking God, ‘Why me? Why was I blind? Because all my brothers were all healthy sighted individuals.’ But then at the end of the song, he’s saying to God, how could I have known that you would select me to do God’s work and would give me so many blessings.”

Jimmy added, in a remarkable testimony of faith, “Yeah. That’s what I felt. I felt that I was called to do what I’m doing. You know when I found out that all my brothers could see, except me, I felt all alone. I was blind, but God saw further down the road, he knew what he was going to do. He knew what he wanted me to do. Because I think if I had gotten my sight back, I don’t think I’d be doing what I’m doing now. He knew that that’s what I needed.”

Ron provided some detail about the recording of the song. “When we got into the studio with that song, we realized the third verse wasn’t written. And so we were trying to come up with writing a quick verse, and finally Jimmy says, how about I just go in there at the chorus and speak? And that’s what he did – we all got chills! And what you hear on the record is the very first take when Mr. Carter sat down in front of the mike and did it. I mean, we all got chills and it was a blessing right off the bat.

And the great Charlie Musselwhite plays on the song. And Peter Levin on Hammond B-3. Just so many people came together on that song to keep that bluesy, gospel feel. But I used to always say. blues is the cousin of the gospel. So we kept that real, real traditional.”

Photo: Charlie Hussey

There’s a great song on the album called Dream On, on which the Blind Boys provide the backing vocals. As I listened to it, I love the fact that Jimmy Carter is still talking about having dreams, even though he’s reached a ripe old age. It kind of follows up a line in the title track, Blind Faith, where Carter sings about following the light that God shined for him when he was a boy. He’s followed his dream all these years, despite the difficulties along the way, including his blindness. “Well, you know,” he told me, “I still have a dream and I’m still following it.”

To add to that, however, Ron Pullman said that “Mr. Carter has an amazing dream still, and that is for this album to bring peace and serenity to the world.” Most people at 87 have already kicked back and forgotten about the ills of the world, but Jimmy Carter’s not finished yet.

In addition, there’s one particular dream Jimmy mentioned to me, that he and Ron are currently working on. “There’s one special thing I want to do before I retire, I want to go and perform in Jerusalem on a Christmas Day. That’s my dream right now.”

It’s one thing to dream your dreams when life is easy. But as you look at Jimmy Carter’s life, for sure there’ve been hard times – not least growing up in the Jim Crow South and, of course, his blindness. He remains resolutely positive:

“Well, you know, that’s when my faith comes in. Like I told you before, I have had a personal experience with God. I know what he will do. I know what he has done and know what he will do. All he’s asking me is to keep the faith and I’m going to do that. My faith is very strong.”

This positivity shines through every song in the album. But it’s not positivity for the sake of it, some attempt to make the most of things. There’s an authenticity here, a sincerity and a joy which is just part of Jimmy Carter. He’s a man who has learned, like St. Paul in his letter to the Philippians, “to be content, no matter what happens to me” because of the “great joy of the Lord.”

Ron Pullman spoke movingly of the great blessing it has been for him “to be able to work with an icon like Mr. Carter. It’s just been a life changing experience.”

Blind Faith finds Jimmy Carter in strong voice and ever-hopeful spirit. Ron Pullman has done a fine job of arranging the songs and assembling the perfect set of musical contributors for each song. It’s an album that will appeal to a wide range of listeners and one which will inspire and speak to each one.

Thank you, Jimmy Carter, for your message of peace and encouragement in these dark times.

Carolyn Wonderland is Tempting Fate – but she’s got her Texas boots on!

“Mighty and joyous rock-injected blues…luxurious vocals and fine guitar work. Her voice is as muscular as her name is evocative.” – Austin Chronicle

Photo: Marilyn Stringer

“Nothing can be this raw. Nothing can be this real.” Mike Nesmith

Carolyn Wonderland is a blistering Texas guitar-slinger, multi-instrumentalist and song-writer, with a singing voice replete with full-throated raw emotion that will reach right inside you and give you a darn good shaking. Which you probably need.

She’s been making music since she was a small child, damaging her mother’s prized Martin guitar along the way, and developing a distinctive picking finger style approach to her guitar playing. She’s been compared to other Texas musical titans like Janis Joplin and Stevie Ray Vaughan, but really, Carolyn Wonderland is one of a kind, something special in the broad area of blues rock.

Influenced at an early stage by Albert Collins, Jimmy Hendrix and Joe “Guitar” Hughes, she formed her first band when she was 17 and has never stopped singing and making music. She’s won multiple Austin Music Awards and been inducted into the Austin Music Hall Of Fame and has played with artists like Bonnie Raitt, Buddy Guy, Johnny Winter, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, James Cotton, Robert Earl Keen, Ray Wylie Hubbard, and Levon Helm.

Over the past three years, she’s been the lead guitarist in The Blues Breakers, the band of legendary musician and bandleader John Mayall, the first woman guitarist after a who’s who of electric guitar royalty that includes Eric Clapton, Mick Taylor, Peter Green, Coco Montoya and Walter Trout.

She has ten previous albums to her credit, and has now released, with Alligator Records, Tempting Fate, a glorious ten song tribute to her scorching guitar skills and rockin’ vocals. As well as blues, there’s some country, some Tex-Mex, and a whole lot of heart. The album features a number of guests as well as Wonderland’s longtime road band of bassist Bobby Perkins and drummer Kevin Lance, including Jimmy Dale Gilmore, Cindy Cashdollar, Marcia Ball, Shelley King, Jan Flemming, and Red Young. The album was produced by Dave Alvin who also plays guitar on three songs.

Alvin said, “I wanted to work with Carolyn because her guitar playing isn’t imitating anyone. She is especially not imitating the imitators, like so many modern blues or blues/rock guitarists do. She developed her own effective way of playing the blues, plus she always surprises me with her guitar lines and melodic twists and turns. As for Carolyn’s vocals, they are soulful and powerful to the point of being often spine-tingling…I also love that Carolyn has a wonderful, mischievous sense of humor that makes her performances honest and charming and keeps them far away from getting too bogged down in too much serious ‘artiste’ posturing.”

We were delighted to get chatting to Carolyn about the new album. I asked her about moving to Alligator and the making of the record.

“I got really lucky. It all really came about because I’ve been working with John Mayall the last three years. He’s so generous. Not only on stage with everyone, but he’s just a generous individual. Anyway, I saved up enough money and decided I should make a record. And while I was on tour with my band, I ran into my friend, Cindy Cashdollar, in Woodstock and she asked me if you could have anyone do the record, who would it be? And I was like, oh, I’d love to have Dave Alvin do it. So she called him and he said, yes!

“I couldn’t believe how lucky I was. So we all got together last January in Austin and I had my band, Kevin and Bobby, and our friends Shelly King, Marcia Ball and Cindy happened to be in town. And Jimmy Dale Gilmore came by and sang some, and it was great. It was just a hoot. I think you can tell how much fun it was. Like you can hear the joy.

“And then the pandemic hit, of course. But I got a call from Bruce Iglauer at Alligator who asked to hear the record and again I couldn’t believe my luck – really?! And so he put it out and I was so amazed.”

The guitar work on the album is outstanding – all you’d expect from a Carolyn Wonderland record, but Carolyn’s comment was a modest, “I know that I wouldn’t be here, you know, if not for the many trailblazers ahead of me.”

What you notice on Tempting Fate, hot through the guitar work is, is the vocal performance – she’s absolutely at the top of her game on this album – the range, the dynamics, the emotion on this album seems better than ever.

“I think some of that was me just being so comfortable and happy to be home, and so I really got into the record. But also I think some of the credits should be split between Dave Alvin and Stuart Sullivan [Sullivan is a recording engineer, and the founder, owner and engineer of Wire Recording in south central Austin].  Stuart and I have worked together for years and years. He makes me sounds like me instead of me going, oh, what’s that? So I was very happy that he had the time to do it and I really think he’s real good at capturing that kind of stuff. Making the voice sound like the voice.”

Photo: Laura Carbone

The album gets off to a cracking start with the first song, Fragile Peace and Certain War. There seem to be a lot of things in Wonderland’s sights there – desperate people getting evicted from their homes, water that ain’t fit to drink, and inequality between the rich and the poor. “We’re standing on the precipice” she sings. I asked her if that is that how she sees things in the United States currently.

“Yeah, I would think so. But it’s also the way I see things throughout history and in our human existence. Sometimes we tended to not do great things, and it’s hard to understand why. So I think sometimes it’s good to look at ourselves.”

John Mayall’s The Laws Must Change, from 1970 is an interesting inclusion on the album. One of the lines in the song is, ‘Some people are saying you’re wrong, and they’re right. But we’ve got to see both sides.’ And that seems to me to be very apposite in the world at the moment. As an outsider, looking on in America, there’s clearly a lot of division.

So I asked Carolyn if she had hope that things can change. She replied, talking about the need to reject the us and them attitudes that dog us, and if we can do that, then there can be hope for us. “You and I are the same. It has always bothered me when we don’t see each other that way.”

Carolyn told me about performing the song in The John Mayall Band. “When I joined John’s band, it was like, here’s 80 songs, go and learn them and who knows which ones will be pulled out on any night. It’s so fun. It’s perfect. But even with that many songs, he never pulled out The Laws Must Change. And I always loved that song. Well, during the show, John would always let me sing a song or two, so I thought, well, maybe if it’s not too cheeky. I’d like to do one of his songs. So I started doing The Laws Must Change!”

I wanted to know about her experience with the John Mayall Band, three years as his lead guitarist, following in the footsteps of some legendary guitarists. I wondered what was it like to have a sense that she was going where Eric Clapton and Peter Green and Walter Trout and so on, had been before.

“It’s often times best not to think about it because it’s a little scary! John sent me so many CDs to listen to so I could learn the songs. And I gathered that these would be his favorite versions. And there was so much Peter Green. I was in heaven. And I’ve always loved Walter and I’ve always loved Coco, but I had never really gotten to dig into Buddy Witherington’s stuff. His chord choices were sublime. And I actually wrote him a little fan letter, and he was very cool about it.”

During this three-year stint, The John Mayall Band at one stage did fifty shows in sixty days in nineteen countries, which sounds like a hugely demanding schedule, particularly for Mayall who turns 88 this year. I asked Carolyn about this.

“Oh, it’s crazy. But John loved it that way. I remember asking him at one point, like, don’t you want to take a day off and maybe go sightseeing? And I could see his eyes roll at me. Like, no, I’ve seen it, I want to want to play music. And it’s so joyful when he’s playing. Everybody wants to be on stage with John. It’s such a great time. And there’s a reason everybody in that band loves him – because he’s a really, really good guy.”

I wondered, as she looks back on this experience with John and his band, what does she thinks she learned from it?

“Oh, man, I learned so much. I mean, aside from playing more guitar than I’ve ever got to play in my life, I got to watch one of the best band leaders ever. And I’m hoping that I learned how to bring some of that to my own band too. I mean, his generosity, the way that he lets everyone express themselves on stage. And his kindness. I mean, it’s a band, but it’s very much a family, you know? When we’re out on the road it’s a family.”

Turning back to the album, while there are songs with some strong social comment, on a less serious note, there is the delightfully quirky Texas Girl and Her Boots, a great fun-filled, rockin’ blues: “This Texas girl fears no snake in the grass, I got some big bad boots baby.”

“Yeah, I’ve a good collection of all kinds of boots, mostly thrift store finds, but yeah! You get the little insert and it doesn’t matter who else walked in it!”

Texas boots. I have to say, I’m quite proud of my engraved leather, slanted heel cowboy boots which I acquired a few years ago in San Antonio. I don’t think they’re snake-proof, though. Getting back to the song, there is some rollicking piano on this track, courtesy of Marcia Ball.

“I was so happy to have Marcia on that one. And also, that one’s a great example of how having a great producer makes a great song. I had that song written and when I played it, Dave Alvin stopped me. He said ‘It sounds like you really are proud of those boots. Maybe you should kick in the door with them, instead of asking permission!’. I was like, oh! So he got me to take this guitar part we had at the back end of the song and put it at the beginning. And sure enough, I mean, instantly, the song was better.”

I always like to hear a Bob Dylan number on an album, and Tempting Fate gives us It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry, a song from Dylan’s 1965 Highway 61 Revisited. With Jimmy Dale Gilmore in tow, it becomes a real country number, quite different from the original, but brilliantly done. What, I wondered, made her choose this Dylan song and decide to do it in this way?

“Well, it’s a song that I had done in the past with my guitar player, Scotty Daniels, who passed away a few years ago. So whenever I would do it, I would think of him, and with it and Honey Bee, both of those songs, I do them in remembrance of Scotty. But it turns out while we were going through possible songs, Dave said Jimmy Dale used to do it when he was younger. I was like, oh, really? Jimmy Dale said yeah and he came over and we sang it together and it was so amazing. Because that voice is just one of a kind. I’ve had dreams that I could sing with him. Really awesome.”

It’s perhaps fitting that there’s a Dylan song included, because Bob, it seems is a bit of a Carolyn Wonderland fan. Apparently, a few years back whilst having lunch with legendary musician Ray Benson, Bob remarked “Hey, have you heard Carolyn Wonderland? She’s something else.” Dylan went on to meet her and they’ve jammed together on a few occasions. I mentioned this famous fan to her and she replied modestly:

“Oh, I don’t know. He’s called a couple of times. I’ve been super lucky, to get to hang out and play some guitar. But, yeah, it’s always surprising. I never know if, or when, he’ll call. I don’t know if he’ll ever call again. Just in case, I’m keeping my phone number the same!”

We finished up with me asking about her planned live performances.

“We’ve been very careful, but we’ve done a couple of things mostly outdoors and then one indoor festival where everybody was vaccinated and masked indoors. That’s the tricky thing on the road in America – every place, every state, has its own rules, so we want to be safe and healthy. So, we test every week and we’re just pretty much going to live in our little bubble.”

If you’re not able to go see her and her band live, do the next best thing – get your hands on Tempting Fate and enjoy a completely original, talented artist at the top of her game.

Blues at the Crossroads Podcast: Episode 3 – Eric Bibb in Conversation

Episode 3 of our podcast

Blues at the Crossroads

This episode features a chat with blues troubadour, Eric Bibb, about his new album Letter to America. He says he “was very aware going into this project that we were dealing with very uncomfortable issues.” Nevertheless, the album is full of great songs, wonderful musicianship from Eric and his musical guests, and features Eric Bibb’s characteristic hopefulness in the midst of difficult times.

Listen and subscribe here.