Bryan Lee: still travelling that old lonesome highway – and loving it.

“Whether he’s wailing a Freddy King inspired blues ballad, stomping out low down and dirty blues, or getting down with a super funky New Orleans groove, Bryan Lee is gonna grab your soul and squeeze it till you scream in blues ecstasy.” – Duke Robillard

BMA Award winner and Grammy Nominee, Bryan Lee, has had a lifetime in the blues. In his mid-seventies, the bluesman, who lost his sight at the age of 8, is still playing consistently and has just released a new album, Sanctuary. His vocal and guitar playing powers are still very much in evidence in a very fine collection of unabashed gospel blues. A long-time resident and performer in New Orleans, with a Chicago blues guitar style which channels Luther Allison, Albert King and Albert Collins, Bryan now resides close to the beach in south Florida, but his musical enthusiasm and passion for the blues is undiminished.

The new album Sanctuary is a top-notch blues album, well produced, recorded and mastered by Steve Hamilton, and, as well as a classy band, features the wonderful, gospel vocals of Deirdre Fellner. There’s a detectable funky, New Orleans feel throughout, from the opener Fight for the Light onward, and Lee’s and Marc Spagone’s guitar work sparkles. Lee lays out his stall pretty early, telling us in Jesus Gave Me the Blues, that the blues is a gift from his saviour – even though he’s “getting low down and dirty.” There’s humour as well – in U-Haul which gets materialism in firmly in his sights, he sings, “I never saw no U-Haul behind a hearse.” You gotta hold on to things lightly. He follows this them again in Mr. Big – where the guy has the big house, fancy car, a Fortune 500 company – “but you ain’t happy.”

The album concludes with two songs recorded with the Adam Douglas band some time ago, but which make a fitting inclusion in Sanctuary. The Lord’s Prayer is as you’ve never heard it before in church – a blues version, but with a distinctive gospel feel, and reverently sung by Lee.

Down at the Crossroads chatted to Bryan about his life in the blues and the new album. He was upbeat, excited about the release of Sanctuary and about life in general.

 

DATC: Bryan, congratulations on the new album. I’ve been listening to it these past few days, and it’s great, catchy tunes, great musicianship and arrangements. We’ll have a chat about it in a minute. But first of all, Bryan, you’ve had a lifetime in the blues. Tell us about how you got started all those years ago – who inspired you?

BL: I guess in the beginning, the early 50s when I was about 10 years old, I started getting into my folks’ music. I heard Chuck Berry and right away, it was like, “if I could play guitar like that!” And then I heard Little Richard, and I was, “man, I wanna sing like that!” And that kind of drew me into the blues a little bit, but the thing that did it completely – I was 17 years old, and we were getting a new drummer into our band, and we went over to his house. And he played Freddie King’s Hideaway, and we were just knocked out! And then we listened to the B side and it was a slow blues called I Love the Woman. I just fell in love with it and I said, “man, that’s where I wanna go.”

So I went down to the record store looking for Freddie King and found a couple of 45s, and the guy working there sold me an album with Hideaway on it. And I really got into that record – that first song…[breaks into song]…man I was hooked. I’ve heard Wolf and BB and all these guys, but Freddie King is the one that connects to me.

Along the way I got to be good friends with Albert King – he was always nice. I recorded an album way back in 1984 that had four Albert King songs on it, and he came to New Orleans, so I went to see him and gave him a copy of the album. And he listened to it and appreciated what I had done with his tunes. That’s really cool.

But through my 20s my shows were getting bluesier and bluesier and I started getting into trouble with the club owners, who only wanted to hear Top 40 music. But then we had that era when the Allman Brothers hit, and it kinda helped for the blues guys to get their foot in the door.

But, you know, I travelled that old lonesome highway, because that’s what I wanted to do. If you love it, man, you do it.

DATC: What is it about this music that has keep you playing it all these years?

BL: As I get more into the music, the blues gets better with age. It’s the understanding of it. It’s not the devil’s music. You can go to, say, Sao Paulo, Brazil, a very large city, and you get 40,000 people answering you with “hey, hey, the blues is all right”…The blues is a universal language. B B King said it’s places, people and things. It goes to our make up in our soul. You can’t just sit there, you gotta move!

And some guys have that knack. I could listen to T-Bone Walker all day. And probably one of my favourite guitar players of all is Matt Guitar Murphy. I got to be friends with him over the last years of his life. I met him back in 1976 when I opened up for the James Cotton Band and Matt was the guitar player. And he was such a gracious guy. Same with James. James and I were really good friends. There’s something in these people, It’s their soul, that’s what it’s about. You gotta feel it, it’s in your soul.

And you can overcome so much in your life with the power of the blues. And that’s why I made this album, to try and make people understand – Jesus gave us the music. It’s pain, it’s sorrow, but it’s also laughter and success. You gotta fight for the light, you can’t just let darkness break you down. God gave you your life and you gotta respect that. To me, music is the thing that will lift you and will bring you to church and will bring you through stuff.

DATC: And of course, Bryan, your new album, Sanctuary, is an album of gospel blues. And you pull no punches – you’re very explicit about your faith. You say in The Gift, “I’m an old bluesman.” And then you say “Jesus has straightened me out.” Tell us a bit about your journey in faith, how this bluesman found faith.

BL: Well, there was a short time in my life, probably about two years, when I rejected organized religion completely. But I was raised as a Catholic, and we were working in a bar in New Orleans in the early 90s, and we’d have a lot of conventions in the city, there were always people in town. And every evening after dinner, they’d be looking for entertainment. So we would fill the house. Anyway, I met this woman one Friday night, and she was from Seattle, Washington. And she said, Bryan, “I’ve been in town since Monday and I discovered you on Tuesday, and have come every night since” – and she told me she was going to go to the St Louis Cathedral on Sunday and she invited me to go with her.

So we went to church and when I walked up to communion, I knew that was where I was meant to be. And I was like, “Jesus, thank you for not forgetting me.” And she and I had dinner and had a wonderful discussion about things, and we became friends. But she was the one that brought me back to church.

But you don’t just be a good person on Sunday. You gotta be a good person 7 days a week, 24/7. But that’s hard to do, with all the trials and tribulations you might have to go through. Even the rich man has got lots of problems.

DATC: You lost your eyesight when you were a boy. How difficult was it for you to get started playing guitar and start performing and then forge a career?

BL: Well…like most young people I was fearless. So, I’d be up on stage, and to me the place was always full, and people looking at me in a funny way, I don’t see it! I had an advantage!

I remember one night I was walking home. And I had a three-piece suit on, with a fancy tie, and I’m walking home, with a cane in my right hand, and all of a sudden, somebody yells at me, “Stop, stop! Blind man, stop!” So I stopped, and this woman comes up to me and says, “Where is your bucket?” I said, “My bucket?” And she said, “Well you’re blind, you have to have a bucket, I want to put something in your bucket.”

So I said, “Ma’am, that’s all right, give it to the Salvation Army, or the church. I don’t need it, as you can see, I’m working, I’m a musician.” And then she was like, “Aw, shucks.” She’d seen this blind man and thought she better do this man a favour. And I got helped across streets I didn’t want to cross, and up steps I didn’t want to go up. But things like this just always used to make me smile. I think now that people are more aware, it’s not so much like that now.

DATC: You’ve a song on this album Don’t Take My Blindness for a Weakness – you don’t downplay the difficulties, but you sound as if you’ve become very strong through it.

BL: Yes. You got it Gary! It might take me a little bit longer than you, but I will get there. I’ve been playing music since I was 13 years old, and I’m 75 now. I’ve travelled all around the world. I got a chance to play the Montreal Jazz Festival this year – 5^th or 6^th time I’ve done it – and oh, it was so much fun! People say at my age you shouldn’t do a lot of travel – but I want to get my message out.

This is what I’ve discovered through the years – if we were all blind, we wouldn’t have all these prejudices, we wouldn’t have all this hatred and stuff. Human beings would have to come together and help each other. So, who’s blind? For me, if I’ve got a choice between eyesight and insight, I’ll take insight every time.

DATC: Bryan, tell us about The Lord’s Prayer. How did that song come about?

BL: I was doing a festival in Norway in an island called Svalbard. This week is their dark season festival, it’s basically a blues festival. It was a 5-day festival, with quite a few bands. On the last day, the woman who organized the festival picked two groups to play in the church to close the festival. So she asked me if I would work with the Adam Douglas group. So we got together, and they were just a killer band – they could take a Michael Jackson song and make it sound like the blues! Well, the night before the rehearsal, I went to bed, fell asleep and had a dream about the Lord’s Prayer, the arrangement, the chords changes and all. And when I got up the next morning, it still was in my head – lot of time, that doesn’t happen – normally you dream a song but when you wake up you don’t remember it. So I went to the rehearsal and they asked me what I wanted to do. So I went through the chord changes with the band and they said, that’s great, let’s do it.

So we did it in the church, and we also did the other one, Jesus is My Lord and Savior, Then after the festival we went back to Oslo and we had about two days, so Adam said to me, “we should record those two songs.” So we went into the recording studio and we did ‘em! And we hugged each other afterwards and said, you know, we’re gonna have to finish this some day. And we all hoped we could get back together somehow in the future – but that never happened.

So in 2017, I just decided that if I don’t record this record, I’ll feel like I cheated the good Lord. Because I had promised him this album, for all the good music he’s put in our soul, and the ability to entertain people and to communicate with an audience. I can rip up an audience, you know! I tell stories, but I don’t think about what I’m going to say. I call the first three tunes and then after that, it’s what happens happens!

DATC: It’s a great album, Bryan – the arrangements and the musicianship are all wonderful.

Bryan: Out of my brain and out of my soul! And I’m not through – I’ve an idea for another album, and another album beyond that. And I used to do 300 dates a year, now, not so many as that. But it’s quality, not quantity!

It’s a day at a time, one step at a time. And Jesus is there – we just need to go to that place of sanctuary, where it’s real still, it’s real quiet, where you can really touch the good Lord and find answers to your problems.

DATC: Thank you Bryan.

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Eric Bibb at the Grand Opera House: 7 Things We Learned

Legendary acoustic bluesman Eric Bibb is a two-time Grammy nominee and multiple Blues Foundation award winner in what has been a five-decade career of performing all over the world. His music fuses blues, jazz and world influences to create an exquisite and welcoming style that draws people in and together. He played to a packed audience at the Grand Opera House in Belfast, along with drummer Paul Robinson, bassist Neville Malcolm, and guitarist Stefan Astner. Ulrika Bibb joined the band for a song and local singer-songwriter Ken Haddock played a delightful supporting set. 

1. Playing and listening to the blues can make you feel good. Eric Bibb kicked off his set with a John Cephas number, Going Down that Road Feeling Bad, which he prefaced with the comment, “which I’m not!” And neither were the rest of us in the packed, beautiful, oriental-style, old theatre, the Grand Opera House in Belfast, as we went down the road with Eric and his band for the next couple of hours. An evening with Eric Bibb sends you away with a huge smile on your face, which will last the rest of the week.

2. Always listen to your mother. Eric’s mom told him always to include his Don’t Let Nobody Drag Your Spirit Down in his concerts. Good advice. He had the whole place rockin’ with this one. And good advice with “don’t let nobody turn you around.”

Stefan Astner

3. You don’t have to play at 120 decibels or make squishy faces to be an awesome guitarist. Stefan Astner, Bibb’s long time guitarist, noodled away effortlessly on his Tele, almost in the background, tastefully adorning the songs, before stepping self-consciously forward on a few occasions for some terrific solos. Actually, truth be told, he could have done with cranking the volume up a bit.

4. You don’t tour with jazz legend Nina Simone for 20 years without becoming one of the most artful drummers I’ve seen. Boy, was he all over those drums, making full use of everything at his disposal, and – not often you’d say it of drummers – he was musical.

5. If you’re playing the blues, the spectre of racism isn’t too far away. Eric played With a Dolla’ in My Pocket from his 2017 Grammy-nominated album, Migration Blues (he should have won that Grammy), the story of someone he knows who escaped lynching in Mississippi, travelling to safety in Chicago. The genesis of the blues is in the Jim Crow South and songs like this are a stark reminder of the horror of those days – and a call-out to the racism that persists.

6. An unaccompanied song can be a powerful thing. Eric Bibb stood up from his normal seating position to sing Refugee Moan, also from Migration Blues. A stark reminder of “all those who are looking for a safe place in the world.” Wayfaring Stranger, sparsely arranged, was superb too and continued the theme. More on this in his newly released album, Global Griot.

7. In his sixties, Eric Bibb has hit a rich vein of creativity. He’s performing with as much energy and verve as I remember from first seeing him twenty years ago, and his song writing continues apace. He only performed one song off Global Griot last night – so the next tour is definitely one to look forward to.

Ry Cooder at the National Stadium: 7 Things We Learned

Multi-Grammy award winning Ry Cooder has been making music and recording for the past 50 years. He’s a songwriter, film score composer, and record producer. A multi-instrumentalist, he is maybe best known for his slide guitar work,with Rolling Stone magazine ranking him eighth on their list of “The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.” His latest album, The Prodigal Son, his first for six years, has been hailed as “destined to become an instant classic” (Daily Telegraph), and “completely fresh and contemporary” (NPR). MOJO declared it “A career-high.”

Along with his band – Joachim Cooder on drums, Robert Commagere on bass, saxophonist, Sam Gendel and the fabulous vocal trio, The Hamiltones – he played to a sold-out National Stadium, Dublin, having played there some 20-odd years ago. Here’s what we learned.

1. At 71, Ry Cooder can still command the stage and have a crowd eating out of his hand with the quality of his music and his engagement with the audience. He joked about going off to have a few hits of oxygen half way through the set, claiming that Emmylou Harris had got him into it by letting him use her gold tank a while back while playing together. Oxygen or not, he bounced back after a short break to give a barnstorming performance which featured superb versions of Jesus on the Mainline and How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times And Live.

2. If you have a superb singing group in your band, why not let them take centre stage for a while? Which is exactly what happened with The Hamiltones, Ry Cooder content to let them have at it during his break and later on when he seemed to enjoy just playing a supporting role on guitar behind them. These guys from North Carolina – Antonio Bowers, James Tillman Jr. Corey Williams II – were terrific, three cool looking dudes with bushy beards and shades, with the sweetest tenor voices you ever heard. And they were not just backing vocalists, they were performers who know how to entertain. Their ability to recreate the sound of the old gospel quartet was perfect for the material of Ry Cooder’s new album, The Prodigal Son.

3. You don’t have to wear a beanie cap to be in Ry’s band – but clearly it helps! All but two members of the band sported a beanie – must get chilly up on that stage!

4. Putting a bass saxophone into the mix and giving it a few lead breaks might not seem obvious, but boy, it worked. Sam Gendel doesn’t look as if he has enough puff for that big baby, but when he launched into a solo in Everybody Ought to Treat a Stranger Right, we all sat up and took notice and the ground rumbled beneath us.

5. Updating a Woody Guthrie song with a contemporary reference made complete sense. Guthrie’s Vigilante Man morphed into a sharp commentary about Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old African American teenager, who was fatally shot in Sanford, Florida, supposedly in self-defence. Blind Alfred Reed’s How Can A Poor Man, got a similar update, to huge roars of approval, with a riff on Donald Trump.

6. Cooder’s slide guitar playing really is something to behold. The technique on How Can A Poor Man where he played slide and worked the volume knob on the guitar at the same time was impressive.

7. And finally – about half the songs he performed were from The Prodigal Son, a carefully curated selection of blues and gospel from the early 20th Century, which really is Cooder’s masterpiece. The audience, presumably like Ry Cooder himself, may not share the faith of the songs’ composers, but their enthusiasm and appreciation was no less than for the other songs performed. These are songs that will speak to anyone, believer or unbeliever. The arrangements, musicianship and feeling are spiritually powerful. There’s humanity, decency, inspiration, hope in these songs, that anyone can feel. And in songs like Harbour of Love and Nobody’s Fault But Mine, we all felt it for sure.

[Find Down at the Crossroads’ take on The Prodigal Son here]

 

Ana Popovic on empowering women – “There’s nothing crazy about it. It’s just the new world.”

Ana Popovic, virtuoso guitarist, singer and song-writer has just recorded her 11^th studio album, Like It On Top. Recorded in Nashville, and produced by four-time Grammy winner Keb’ Mo’, it features guest appearances from Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Robben Ford and Keb’ Mo’.

Popovic, born in Belgrade, now living with her family in the United States, was called by Bruce Springsteen “one helluva a guitar-player” and has been nominated for six Blues Music Awards. She was the only continental European artist to be nominated for the WC Handy Award (now Blues Music Awards) for “Best New Artist.” Her albums typically reach the top of the Billboard Blues Charts and along the way she and her six-piece band have shared stages with B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Jeff Beck, Joe Bonamassa and many others.

A child prodigy on guitar and a student of jazz guitar, Ana Popovic is widely acclaimed as an outstanding guitar player, evidenced by her being the only female to star on the Jimi Hendrix tribute tours, and NPR hailing her “fiery technique on the Stratocaster.”

Her new album is terrific piece of work, featuring some beautiful and truly exceptional guitar work, and funky, bluesy arrangements. Popovic not only excels in the instrumental department – her vocal performance on the album is very strong. And thematically, the album is important. Down at the Crossroads was pleased to chat to Ana about the record:

DATC: So, Ana, congratulations on the new album. It’s terrific, a really great piece of work, catchy tunes, sophisticated music, the sort of outstanding guitar work we’ve come to expect from an Ana Popovic album – and it’s had a great reception. We’ll come on to the theme of the album in a minute. But maybe you could tell us a bit about the making of the album and working with Keb’ Mo’, who appears on a couple of songs and whose presence you can feel on the album.

Ana Popovic: I’ve been a fan of Kevin’s for many years and obviously know his songs, and we’ve been talking about doing something together for many years. Finally, we met on a cruise and I said, I’m ready, I’ve got songs that I’ve started, so we said, let’s just get together and write some songs. And he came over to my home in Los Angeles and we spent a whole week – we would start at 9 o’clock and finish around 6 or 7pm. We would cook dinner with my family, and he was just like part of the family. And it was really a wonderful process, and maybe my favourite part of the process was that writing. I had some songs that I’d started and he would come up with something, and really, we were both very open minded. And that song,

Lasting Kind of Love was the first song we wrote and I think it was done in a matter of an hour or two. It went so smooth.

And then I went to his home studio in Nashville and we recorded there for two sessions of about ten days each and we recorded with Nashville musicians. It was wonderful to work with him and see how he works, which is very different from how I work, but we would meet somewhere in the middle. It’s a very dear record to me. It’s a really good subject, it’s got good stories. It’s very different from what I did before, which has always been the number one thing I go after – because I’ve been around for 15 years, and my fans need a reason to go out there and get a record. One of the reasons is a high-quality record, which I think I’ve done so far, and the second reason is it’s different from what they’ve heard before.

DATC: How would you describe the musical direction on this record?

Ana Popovic: I try to put out a new sound to Ana Popovic with every record. Obviously Trilogy had a lot of that, also the previous one, Can You Stand the Heat? And this one is following the same path, which is, pick out a little different sound and surprise people, and have them hear another sound, another style of Ana Popovic.

DATC: And you have guest appearances from Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Robben Ford. Tell us about working with those guys.

Keb’ Mo’

Ana Popovic: Well, it was wonderful, Of course, I have known both of them for many years, and I see Robben from time to time on the tour. I really love his style – I was sitting for hours, when I was learning to play the guitar, back in the day, with his guitar solos and I absolutely love his style of playing, he is one of a kind. So, it was wonderful to see him and have him play on a few of the songs. Kenny Wayne as well – he lives close by, so it was easy to schedule that. Kenny, of course, is a fantastic guitar player, and a different style to Keb’ Mo’ and myself and Robben Ford. He’s on the rock side, and it really fits the record and the song. He wrote that song, Sexy Tonight, so it was a nice addition to have him play.

DATC: Tell us a bit about what this album is all about and what you are trying to do with it.

Ana Popovic: The theme of the record is female empowerment. More females in the corner offices, more females in politics, in business – that’s the overall theme. I’m one of the women who does sort of a male job, right? Back when I started to play guitar, there were just a few female guitar players out there – Bonnie Raitt…but just a few – and I was wondering how other ladies juggle their work, how they convince their male colleagues that doing a male job is OK for a woman!

And obviously this comes from the whole movement right now, where women should have equal pay and equal benefits, so it would be a fair choice over who’s gonna stay home with the kids and who’s gonna go out and support the family. So that’s what I stand behind. And of course, I’ve got a band to take care of and an agency and management, but some of these ladies are in huge corporate offices with hundreds of employees, and how do they tackle  family life and kids. Obviously, you need a strong partner who supports that or otherwise you have no choice. So, it’s more of a shout out to those kinds of situations, and more and more you see and hear about those families where the husband stays home and the woman goes out and makes money, and that’s just the reality, there’s nothing crazy about it. It’s just the new world.

Yeah, this is the overall theme, but there are different stories – about passions, about longing, about doubts, even about domestic violence in one of the songs and how a woman can actually overcome that, how some of them are strong enough to put a stop to that, which I think must be extremely difficult.

DATC: Some of the songs are quite hard-hitting, aren’t they? I’m thinking of the one you’ve just mentioned, Matter of Time, which is a terrific traditional sounding acoustic blues song with resonator/slide guitar. But it deals squarely with domestic violence. Which is a huge on-going problem for women all over the world, whether it’s the US & Europe or the developing world. I was reading recently that the UN says that 35% of women worldwide have experienced either physical and/or sexual violence.

Ana Popovic: Yes, it’s a problem everywhere. And when I write a song, I really have to find lyrics for dramatics. And blues is all about something dramatic, it’s got to feel real. And that song is very real, and putting it in that old school blues form felt right. Yeah, that’s one that I’m proud of.

DATC: And there’s a nice balance with this song, because some of the very old blues songs – you know, you go back to Robert Johnson and others, where the songs have terrible misogynistic lyrics – “I’m going to beat my woman until I’m satisfied” and so on – I mean it’s just awful. So, to get a song in that genre and style that is completely the opposite is really good.

Ana Popovic: Thank you! And we have Slow Dance, of course – I always try to get some sort of slow blues in there. I had Johnny Ray on Trilogy which is sort of a B B King style, but this is more soul-blues, something I haven’t done before. Slow Dance is a wonderful song and fun song to play live as well.

DATC: Yeah, I really enjoyed that one. But with it and Funkin’ Attitude where you highlight men who don’t keep their hands where they’re supposed to be and get “nasty, evil, mean” if they don’t get what they want – it struck me that you’re tapping in there to the problems that have been highlighted by the #metoo movement and the move to making life safer for women.

Ana Popovic: I guess so! But both songs are also really fun. Funkin’ Attitude is really about some huge, macho egos that I came across, and I’m thinking, how many other women come across this?

But the record is not about men hating, I adore men. And we need men to be on our side – so that’s why I chose my male colleagues to come and play. They all have strong women at home and they very much respect women, which is a wonderful thing. So, it’s really just about equality on this record. It’s that we both need to have the same chances – equal pay and equal benefits. Just the mindset that any job can be done successfully by a female or a male.

I adore working with men – I have a great band and wonderful fans that really support me, I have an incredible partner at home. I think it was just the right time, with the #metoo campaign and all the rest, with the actresses pushing for the equal pay, which I think is really fantastic. So, it was just the right moment to address that, in a nice way, musically.

DATC: And you’ve got that lovely song, Honey I’m Home which reverses the traditional man-woman roles and has the man welcoming the woman home after her day at work.

Ana Popovic: It’s a nice closure to the album. Kevin wrote that for me, for the record, and I thought it was wonderful. And it says to everybody that it’s OK to have things reversed like that, and it’s more and more happening. It’s progress, it’s the natural thing, and more and more people are OK with that. So yeah, I think it’s a good closure of the record.

DATC: And you’re touring the album at the moment – the US and then Europe?

Ana Popovic: Yes. We are touring here in the US in October and then November in Europe, and part of December. So, we have new songs to play. And we don’t even get to play all of Trilogy, because Trilogy gave us 23 songs in different genres – blues, funk and jazz. So, we got plenty of material, and it’s just fun to work the songs on stage and make them alive.

DATC: Fantastic! Ana, thank you so much.

 

Chris Smither on getting older, getting wiser and where in the world he feels happiest.

“Smither is an American original – a product of the musical melting pot and one of the absolute best singer-songwriters in the world.” (Associated Press)

Chris Smither has had a performing and recording career for nigh on fifty years and has just released his 18^th album, Call Me Lucky. It’s a terrific piece of work showcasing his skill and experience as a bluesman, guitarist and songwriter.

His songs have been covered along the way by artists like Bonnie Raitt, Diana Krall, Emmylou Harris and John Mayall, and he’s renowned for his rhythmic acoustic fingerpicking guitar. Long-time producer David Goodrich worked on the album with Smither, along with Billy Conway, Matt Lorenz, Keith Gary and Mike Meadows, to create a fine, bluesy album of Americana that features eight Chris Smither originals and a three nicely conceived, but surprising covers. It’s effectively a double album, the second CD consisting of a cover of the Beatles’ She Said, She Said and a reworking of five of the songs on the first.

As you’d expect on a Chris Smither album, the lyrics are sharp and laced with wry humour, without ever being cynical, the new songs demonstrating once again the importance of Chris Smither as a songwriter and artist.

Chris is touring with this album throughout the US and UK through until the Spring of next year. Be sure and catch a show! Down at the Crossroads chatted to him about the album:

DATC: Chris, Tell us about the idea behind the album, is there an overall thrust or theme of the album? And maybe a bit about making the album.

CS: At some point along the line I decided it’s time to make a new record and that means I need to write some new songs. Because I don’t write all the time, I write for specific projects. Having said that, of course, most of the songs are written within a nine months period and that usually means that they are thematically related, because they’re about what I’ve been thinking about lately. They tend to resemble themselves in some respects, but there’s no intentional feeling to the entire thing. If you’re looking for a theme, I’d say the idea behind the record is to get a new record out! [laughs]

The making of the record itself was what has become very standard for me…my producer makes suggestions…he has insights into what’s going on with me that I don’t even have yet. And at one of our meetings – we’d usually get together for a couple of days at a time – we started talking about covers, and he wanted to know if I wanted to do any covers of other people’s songs on this record. And I said well, I haven’t thought about it.

But then we were also having a conversation about Chuck Berry, who at the time was still alive – not for long unfortunately – and he had just turned 90 and made a new record. And we were wondering what Chuck Berry sounded like at 90! And then Goody [David Goodrich] says, hey, play Maybelline in a minor key – see if that sounds like a 90 year old! [laughs] So we started fooling around with it and we said, oh man we gotta do this. Because it changed the song so dramatically.

DATC: Yes, it’s fantastic. It’s like a new song…it’s like a Chris Smither song!

CS: Yes I know! And that kind of sums up this whole subject of covers. We had this on-going conversation about cover songs, and when we were down in Texas working on the record – those guys I was working with, well they stayed up a lot later than I do! I’m an old man, I go to bed at like, 11 or 12 o’clock, but they’re studio rats, they stay up until 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning. And they started playing around with stuff that we had just recorded. They’d take a song we had just recorded and totally re-imagine it, the whole arrangement. I remember the first one they did, it was the punk version of Down to the South and I walked in the next morning and they said, hey listen to this, do you think you could sing to this?! And I said, yeah, I’ll give it a shot. And it was just a goof, just playing around. And so I did it, and the next night they did another one. And I walked in the next morning and they said, sing this, this is a slow version of a fast song. So we started playing around with it and by the time we had about three of them, we thought, you know this sounds pretty good, we should just include this with the record.

DATC: So these are the alternative versions on the second CD?

CS: Yeah, those are all the alternative versions. It was just sort of playing around in the studio and then saying, hey this is interesting, we should let people hear this.. And then the only song on that disk that isn’t mine is the Beatles’ She said, She said. I had learned the song when I was asked to participate in a John Lennon tribute concert about 3 years ago, and I started working on that arrangement of the song. But then I had to cancel, because I had to have a heart operation, so I never got a chance to play it! And I was fooling around with it one afternoon in the studio and Goody said, What is that? And I said, She Said, She Said, and then Matt Lorenz [The Suitcase Junkett] started in on some harmonies, and we said, yes, we should do this, we should record this.

DATC: That’s interesting, Chris. Of course, you’ve a long history as an interpreter of songs. You’re not afraid to take on classic songs that are very familiar to people. When you decide on a song you’re going to cover, how do you go about that process of re-interpretation, of putting your own stamp on it?

CS: You know, I don’t really think about it that much. First of all, I don’t really think about covering a song unless I’m really familiar with it, where I’ve listened to it a hundred times at least. So basically, I just sit down and start playing around on the guitar, and I don’t ever go back to the original. I want to depend on my own memory of what it was like, because that’ll tell me what it was about the song that impressed me the most.

DATC: With something like Dylan’s Desolation Row, of course, it was probably very difficult to get the original out of your head!

CS: It was, but, you know, even on Dylan songs, when I hear them, I tend to sing harmonies along with them, and more or less the way I think it should go [laughs], and so basically, what happens is what I remember is my own harmony of it, as opposed to the way he does it.

And when you talk about covering Dylan, when I did Visions of Johanna, that whole tune – I do it in 3/4, instead of 4/4 – because that’s just the way I hear it. All the significant lines in that song make for a perfect waltz time – it’s actually 6/8.

DATC: I read in Acoustic Guitar Magazine that they said the album was about the big things – life, love, loss. And I’ve listened to it a lot over the past week or so, and as I’ve listened to it, I get the sense that a lot of it is about just getting older, considering the ups and downs of life, distilling a bit of wisdom that comes with age. Is that about right?

CS: I think you’re right! [laughs] Yeah, I would agree with that! I can’t help it – I’m almost 74, and you start thinking about things, you know? You’re starting to get towards the end and it occupies an increasingly large share of your thoughts. So it’s maybe not surprising that that is what comes out.

DATC: Yes, in Too Bad So Sad, there are a number of lines about this process of getting older, but I love the bit where you’re kind of complaining – “yes I have taken all my meds!” I can relate to that!

I read your essay on turning 60 that you wrote a few years ago for a book on that subject. I’ve not long passed that milestone myself and it seemed like a terrible thing to happen to me, so I thought there might be a bit of wisdom in there! I’m trying to be a bit more philosophical about it now! And one of the things you said was, “I’ve got less energy than I once did, but more than a lot of people half my age” – which I thought was a good attitude. Is that still the case for you, Chris?

CS: Yeah, I think so. People find it hard to believe I’m as old as I am. Of course, when they get close, they realize! But for some reason I haven’t turned grey yet. And that’s the thing that fools people the most! They think, he can’t be that old! And you know, I keep moving – I take good care of myself, I get a lot of exercise and I’m doing well.

DATC: Chris, you’ve had a 50-year career – what keeps you going as an artist, especially the touring, which presumably doesn’t get any easier?

CS: In some ways it doesn’t get easier, but in some ways it is easier, because I can afford nicer accommodation! It’s not too bad. I have slowed down some – I’m doing just under 100 shows a year these days, which is half what I was doing at my peak. But to tell you the truth, I would go crazy if I weren’t doing this. The last few years, we’ve not booked too many dates in January or February, just because it’s too hard to get around – we live in New England and you never know whether you’re going to be able to fly out or get back home at that time of year. But – at the end of those two months, I’m going crazy! I can’t wait to get out there and play! And then sometimes I’m at home for a week and I think, oh no I’ve got to get out again, but as soon as I get on stage I realize, this is what I do, this is what makes me happy.

DATC: Is it just that interaction, that feedback, that dynamic with the audience that does it?

CS: It’s not just that. It’s a place that I go to in my head when I play. I sort of dissociate from myself and I become…not another person, but a different avatar of myself. And if I’m out of touch with it for too long, I start to miss it. And I have countless people who come up to me after shows and say, please don’t stop what you’re doing – and it’s very hard to resist that kind of response!

DATC: Going back to the album, Chris, one of my favourite songs on the album is Nobody Home, which is a kind of wry, slightly caustic take on the current state of the world. You’ve got a few things in your sights here, including social media & disconnectedness. And in one of the verses, you have a preacher  just staring at his phone – getting the news or on FB or twitter, I guess – but his mouth is shut – “there’s nobody home.” And it made me think that the very people who ought to be saying something meaningful or critical of the way things are, are just silent.

CS: You got it! I got through to you! But it’s basically a song about a person looking for help, and he’s looking at all these places and he isn’t able to find it. But I’m not too cynical. But if the mid-term elections here in the United State don’t remedy things, I might get more cynical, because I find what’s going on politically almost unbelievable.

DATC: Yes, on this side of the Atlantic, we kind of watch, with jaws on the floor, each day’s new developments. And you mention quite explicitly in that song the big White House. And the “clown with a comb over, tweeting on his phone.” Again, there’s nobody home. How does this go down with audiences?

CS: You gotta understand about my audiences – nobody would come to my show being totally ignorant of where I stand on some issues. That verse is usually greeted with a huge roar of approval!

DATC: You’re busy touring the US for the rest of the year. And then you’re coming to the UK and Ireland in January. And you’ve been coming over here for a long time. You find get good responses in Ireland?

CS: Oh yeah. It’s a joy. People ask me, what’s your favourite place to play, and I always say Ireland – people there know how to get the best out of you.

DATC: Thank you Chris!

(Photograph credit: Jeff Fasano)

 

Ry Cooder’s searing critique of false religion

Ry Cooder has been making music and recording for the past 50 years and his latest album, The Prodigal Son, his first for six years, has been hailed as “destined to become an instant classic” (Daily Telegraph), the produce of a “musical mastermind” (Rolling Stone) and “completely fresh and contemporary” (NPR). MOJO declared it “A career-high.”

It is, indeed, something of a masterpiece – perhaps remarkable, in that it is a collection of gospel songs and the artist himself makes no claim to belief. But this is music that Cooder has always loved. “I’m not religious,” he says, “but I always felt drawn to these songs. There’s some kind of reverence mood that takes hold when you play and sing.” For Cooder reverence means “being a conduit for the feelings and experiences by people from other times, like when you stand in an old church yard and let the lonely tombs talk to you…I think any creative artist has to have a sense of a truth or force beyond the visible.”

These are songs that will speak to anyone, believer or unbeliever. The arrangements, musicianship and feeling – and the songs, what a collection of songs – are spiritually powerful. There’s humanity, decency, inspiration, hope in these songs, that anyone can feel. If you are a person of faith, however, you’ll find an extra dimension of faith, encouragement and challenge here too.

All of this much needed, of course, in these days of political bitterness, disregard for the truth, corporate greed, and desperate social inequality and injustice. So thanks, Ry, for putting the spotlight on the spiritual values that can ground us and help make us human again.

71-year Cooder plays guitar, bass and mandolin in what is mostly a carefully curated selection of blues and gospel from the early 20th Century. There are three Cooder originals, Shrinking Man, Gentrification and Jesus and Woody, the latter bemoaning the current state of the world and imagining Jesus telling Woody Guthrie “Guess I like sinners better than fascists, And I guess that makes me a dreamer too.”

Source: https://rycooder.com

Cooder’s reworking of other songs include Carter Stanley’s Harbour of Love; Blind Roosevelt Graves’ I’ll Be Rested When The Roll Is Called; You Must Unload by Blind Alfred Reed; Straight Street by The Pilgrim Travelers; William L Dawson’s, In His Care; and two songs by Blind Willie Johnson, Nobody’s Fault But Mine and Everybody Ought to Treat  A Stranger Right (“Blind Willie’s music is pure trance, it’s not 12-bar blues or any suchlike…In steel guitar heaven, I felt Willie looked down and saw that was good,” says Cooder. (Mind you I’m not so sure Willie would have been happy about Ry slipping in those couple of lines which adds Buddha to Jesus in Nobody’s Fault But Mine.)).

The choice of songs is masterful, and the treatment of each brings them bang up to date, without losing their original intent or spirit.

One of the most powerful songs on the album us You Must Unload, written by Blind Alfred Reed, who was recorded, along with The Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers, at the famous 1927 Bristol Sessions (The “Big Bang” of modern country music).

The song mercilessly challenges “fashion-loving, money-loving and power-loving” Christians – arguably broad swathes of self-proclaimed believers in North America and Europe – and tells them they must “unload.” Anyone who has read their New Testament scriptures would recognize the voice of John the Baptist here, with his fiery denunciation of religious self-satisfaction, or indeed, Jesus, with his searing critique of acquisitiveness and love of money. The Old Testament prophets, too, from which John and Jesus took their cue, were unflinching in their lambasting of those who were content with religious observance but yet oppressed the poor, sought power and preferred a nice glass of wine with their feet up to helping their neighbour – go and read the eighth century prophet Amos and you’ll see what I mean.

The song starts with an amusing dig at the fashion conscious whose obsession with “jewellry encrusted high heel shoes” bars them from the joys of heaven. They sure give Ry the blues. And Jesus too.

Then there’s the money loving Christians who don’t pay their way, who think making it in the kingdom of God is easy. Pretty damning of the way a lot of us Western Christians live, isn’t it, indistinguishable from the pushing and shoving and acquisitiveness that is the hallmark of life these days. The urge for more, bigger, better, more choice. And we want it all for ourselves – cut those taxes, let those poor people stand up on their own two feet.

And then the last verse – taking aim at those power-loving Christians. Power is such a seductive thing. As if political power were somehow linked to the Kingdom of God that Jesus talked so much about. But Jesus said his kingdom wasn’t “of this world,” meaning that it wasn’t like the kingdom of Caesar or America or wherever – it isn’t based on violence, the threat of violence, money, or influence. It’s based on love, compassion, generosity. That’s why Christianity was so successful in the first three centuries before it got entangled with government and the trappings of power. Christians lived out the counter-cultural values of love and self-giving service, devoid of political power, and yet ended up attracting huge swathes of the Empire to follow Jesus. Which is what gives the lie to the support for the 45^th President of the United States by so many so-called evangelical Christians. Do they understand the message of the person they purport to follow, if they are prepared to sacrifice values of compassion, love for the stranger, truth, and human decency for the passing gratification of temporary political power? What happened to taking up the cross and following the compassionate, justice-announcing Jesus? Wherein, paradoxically, is to be found the real joy of life.

All of which makes Blind Alfred Reed’s song and Ry Cooder’s fresh interpretation so relevant and compelling right now. It strikes at the heart of a false religion that somehow feels that money and power are compatible with the gospel. They’re not. Thank you Ry for this timely reminder.

The Devil’s Music: How Christians Inspired, Condemned, and Embraced Rock’n’Roll

Randall J. Stephens, The Devil’s Music: How Christians Inspired, Condemned, and Embraced Rock’n’Roll, (Harvard, 2018)

Randall Stephens has given us a riveting account of the way in which rock music impacted the Christian world in the United States, since its emergence in the 1950s. It’s well researched and detailed, and is expansive in its scope, covering the relationship between early rock ’n’ roll and Pentecostalism, the racism inherent in early Christian reactions to the new music, the resistance of conservative religion to the Beatles and other 60s developments, and then the emergence of Jesus rock, morphing into Contemporary Christian Music and the various reactions to that.

The book is well written and never dull, deftly exploring what has been a complicated relationship between rock and fundamentalist and evangelical religion. Along the way we get something of a history of evangelical Christianity in America over the past 60 years, including the distinction between fundamentalists, evangelicals and charismatic/neo-Pentecostals, and the way in which these groups saw themselves over against the prevailing culture in the United States. I liked the quotation from Duke and Notre Dame historian, George Marsden, which Stephens mentions (albeit noting that it doesn’t tell the whole story): “a fundamentalist is an evangelical who is angry about something.”

When rock ’n’ roll first emerged, fusing blues, gospel, rhythm and blues, and country in the 1950s, American Christians viewed it as sinful, deranged, demonic, the “devil’s music.” Yet by the late 60s and early 70s, large numbers of conservative Christians had embraced rock music as a means of evangelism and praise to God. Stephens skilfully tracks this trajectory and is able to demonstrate that “much of what animates evangelical churches in the twenty-first century comes directly from the unlikely fusion of Pentecostal religion, conservative politics, and rock and pop music.”

Sister Rosetta Tharpe

Randall begins by tracing the development of rock ‘n roll from its roots in southern Pentecostalism. The hard-driving, powerful music in the worship of holiness and Pentecostal services gave rise to such popular performers as Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the Godmother of Rock and Roll, with her guitar-fuelled gospel. From a background in Pentecostal religion came major figures like Johnny Cash, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, and, of course, most importantly of all, Elvis Presley. Presley not only appropriated the rhythms and beat of his white Pentecostal background, but integrated black gospel into his style of singing and performing. Such integration was anathema to white southern evangelicals in the 50s who objected to the “jungle music” and “voodoo rhythms” of rock ‘n roll.

We then have a fascinating chapter entitled “Race, Religion, and Rock ‘n’ Roll,” where Randall explores the racist nature of white southern Christian reactions to the new music that was capturing the hearts of the nation’s youth. Fears about vulgarity, sexual licence, communist plots, and drinking and dancing combined with the worst of racial prejudice to fuel a fundamentalist loathing of rock ‘n’ roll.

The arrival on the scene of the Beatles in the 1960s is the subject of Randall’s next chapter. Long hair, an emergent youth culture, drugs and androgynous clothing, along with the youth hysteria that greeted the Beatles in America drew the ire and condemnation of church leaders. Billy Graham, in 1968, bemoaned the worldwide “moral deterioration,” which was a clear sign of the approaching apocalypse. Randall takes us through the fall-out in the Christian world of John Lennon’s “We’re more popular than Jesus now” remark through to the beginnings of some soul-searching amongst evangelicals about how they needed to relate to a younger generation.

The next phase of the story is the emergence of Jesus rock and its morphing into Contemporary Christian Music, and the various reactions to it. Randall does an excellent job of catching the spirit of the time in the early 70s when some Christians, led by people like Larry Norman, began to express their faith in the medium of rock music. “Why should the devil have all the good music?” Norman asked. Or indeed, long hair and hippie attire. Even Billy Graham began to wear his hair longer, as folk and rock music were increasingly incorporated into church youth events. Professional rock and pop performers flourished, including Norman, Barry Maguire, Phil Keaggy, Chuck Girard and Cliff Richard, and mainstream performers like Johnny Cash, Pat Boone and eventually, at the end of the 70s, Bob Dylan proclaimed the gospel in their songs.

All of this provoked a furious fundamentalist reaction with figures liked Jerry Falwell, Tim LaHaye and Jimmy Swaggert fulminating against “a musical revolution that integrated aggressive music and aggressive sex” which ought never to be mixed with the gospel. Notwithstanding this, by the 1990s, Christian pop music and rock-infused worship music had broadly infiltrated the evangelical church and Contemporary Christian Music made up a respectable share of the total recording market, returning huge revenues to successful bands through sales of recordings and merchandise.

Randall closes this fascinating study with a short review of bands and artists with a Christian outlook which have gained critical and popular acclaim, including some that attempted to crossover from a Christian market to a more general one. He notes the Christian background and motivation of U2, and amusingly recounts the late 1990s foray of crooner Pat Boone into the heavy metal arena.

The Devil’s Music is a highly engaging examination of the struggles of American evangelicalism with the emergence and mainstreaming of rock music that gives us an important insight into the nature of the modern form of this type of Christianity, its values and fears. It’s a remarkable story of shock, opposition, accommodation and finally embrace which anyone interested in both the recent history of the church or that of rock ‘n’ roll will thoroughly enjoy.

[Randall Stephens has included a great Spotify playlist based on the book here]