“It’s easy to love this duo’s brand of barnstorming blues.”
Larkin Poe are the Lovell sisters from Atlanta, Georgia. “I’m not Larkin, and she’s not Poe,” quipped Rebecca Lovell during their sold-out gig at Inchyra Arts Club near Perth, Scotland. Larkin Poe, rather, is an ancestor of the sisters and relative of the famed author Edgar Allan Poe. Rebecca and Megan, formally trained musically, got into bluegrass in their teens and, after forming the band, have developed their own distinctive sound which is a unique blues-based Americana rock. Adept at taking traditional blues and bringing them bang up-to-date at the same time, the pair are exceptional musicians, wonderful singers and high-powered performers. And, as we discovered in an interview with Larkin Poe before the gig – thoroughly nice people, who give thoughtful consideration to the roots tradition that underpins their music.
Photo: Robbie Klein
The band played at a most unusual venue – a refurbished cattle byre in a sprawling country estate in Scotland, Inchyra Arts Club. With a vaulted timber roof, hard wood floors and original wood used wherever possible, it’s got great acoustics and can pack in around 600 people. It’s a unique, welcoming space and made for a great atmosphere to welcome the Lovell sisters and their band.
Broadcaster Lins Honeyman, from The Gospel Blues Train radio show and I had the opportunity to interview Larkin Poe and then attend the gig. Here’s what we learned:
This was a performance full of energy, passion and joy from the opening Trouble in Mind (not the traditional version, by any means!) to the glorious Robert Johnson Come On In My Kitchen The Lovell sisters and the two other members of their band didn’t hold back throughout the whole captivating set. They seemed to be enjoying it just as much as the packed crowd, with smiles aplenty from the duo and plenty of chit-chat to engage the audience from live-wire Rebecca.
Walking through the audience while playing scorching lap steel slide guitar is quite a trick and one which Megan Lovell pulled off with some aplomb, much to the delight of the Inchrya fans, who quickly whipped out their mobile phones to record and photograph. I’ve only seen this done a few times, most notably Buddy Guy – and it sure is a crowd pleaser.
As I listened to Venom and Faith (the band’s latest acclaimed album) in the safe confines of my car, I tried to categorize it – is it blues, Americana, rock or even at times pop? In the full throttle, ear-bending cauldron of Inchyra Arts Club, with the hair-flinging, guitar-slinging, leather-jacketed Rebecca, and the searing sounds of Meghan’s slide guitar, there was no doubt that this was rock music. Blues-infused, genuine, old-fashioned, full-bodied, head-banging, modern rock. Glorious.
The banjo can hold its head up in a rock concert. Yes, really. It featured in two songs, fully amped up, California King and John the Revelator, with a banjo solo taking pride of place in the latter. In the middle of all this high-energy, full-throated rock concert, we get a banjo solo!
Megan Lovell is a terrific slide guitarist. A classically-trained violinist, she took up playing slide guitar as a teenager and, boy, she can make that thing sing. Nothing like some lap steel slide to conjure up the ghosts of the old Delta blues masters.
You can successfully talk about something serious in a rock concert. Before launching in to Mad as Hatter, Rebecca Lovell appealed for a more sympathetic attitude toward mental illness, and dementia in particular, talking about her own family experience. For those of us who have seen the devastating effects of dementia in their family, it was really something to hear:
Time is a thief It’ll steal into bed and rob you while you sleep You’ll never feel it It pulls off the covers, and rifles through your head Then you’ll wait to find you can’t remember what you just said.
Larkin Poe is firmly underpinned by the blues. They played Leadbelly’s Black Betty, Son House’s Preachin’ Blues, Willie Johnson’s John the Revelator and the superbly reworked Hard Time Killing Floor Blues from Skip James. The band is respectful of the tradition, but not bound by it and their versions of these classic songs are some of the very best I’ve heard.
If you can ever get to Scotland, be sure and make you way to the Inchyra Arts Club. More importantly, check out the incredibly talented Larkin Poe.
A Satisfied Mind was written by Joe “Red” Hayes and Jack Rhodes and first recorded by Porter Wagoner in 1955, scoring him a #1 Country hit. Hayes explained the origin of the song in an interview: “The song came from my mother. Everything in the song are things I heard her say over the years. I put a lot of thought into the song before I came up with the title. One day my father-in-law asked me who I thought the richest man in the world was, and I mentioned some names. He said, ‘You’re wrong; it is the man with a satisfied mind.’”
The song has been recorded by a great many artists over the years, notable by Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan. Cash’s first version was released in 2004 on the Kill Bill: Volume 2 soundtrack, but it later appeared on his posthumous 2010 album American VI: Ain’t No Grave. It was a song Cash had been singing since the 1950s from the time when he didn’t have enough of his own songs and needed covers, but he liked it very much. Like the rest of the songs on American VI, the song is poignant, and sounds like the wisdom of a man who is near to the end and has an urgent message to convey.
Money can’t buy back
Your youth when you’re old
Or a friend when you’re lonely
Or a love that’s grown cold
The wealthiest person
Is a pauper at times
Compared to the man
With a satisfied mind.
Cash doubtless knew his time had “run out,” but the song lyrics seem to very aptly fit the faith that sustained him:
But one thing’s for certain
When it comes my time
I’ll leave this old world
With a satisfied mind.
Bob Dylan recorded A Satisfied Mind twice, first in 1967 on a version that wasn’t released until 2014 on The Bootleg Series Vol. 11: The Basement Tapes Complete, and again for his 1980 Saved. Dylan’s version on this much pilloried album is masterful, all bluesy and gospel at the same time. He begins virtually unaccompanied, with his wonderful gospel singers harmonizing and some sparse piano. The stripped back, emotion-laden approach highlights beautifully the potency of the song’s message in a way that most other versions I’ve heard fail to do. Throughout the song Dylan moans in the manner of an old gospel blues artist, giving us ample time to ponder the question of what really satisfies in life.
On Saved,A Satisfied Mind bleeds into the excitement of the title track, a rocker which provides Dylan’s answer to the opening song’s question. “I was blinded by the devil, born already ruined,” Dylan sings, urgently pointing to his discovery of the reality of a mind unsatisfied by fortune or fame. But now, “by his grace I have been touched, by his word I’ve been healed,” that unsatisfied life saved by his new-found faith.
I got to thinking about this song after reading Charles Duhigg’s article in the New York Times Magazine, Wealthy, Successful and Miserable. Duhigg says that “The upper echelon is hoarding money and privilege to a degree not seen in decades. But that doesn’t make them happy at work.” He recounts attending his 15th anniversary reunion with his Harvard MBA class and being shocked at how many were just plain miserable. These were people all earning huge salaries and working in prestigious companies, and yet who felt like they were wasting their lives. One person was earning $1.2m a year, hated his work, and yet felt he could not afford to take a pay cut to a mere $600,000 in order to take up an opportunity he really fancied.
As Hayes and Rhodes’s song says,
But little they know
That it’s so hard to find
One rich man in ten
With a satisfied mind.
Upon further research, Duhigg discovered that around 50% of American workers are professionally miserable – and this in a boom economy. There is an underlying sense that what they are doing day by day just isn’t worth the huge effort many of them have to put into it.
Our economics-driven market drives ever greater production and consumption. It’s hard not to buy into it, so pervasive is the advertising industry assailing us at every turn, online or off. You need this, you have to have it, you’re not complete without this. So it goes, relentlessly, every day. We work ceaselessly, we consume, we sleep, we get up and do it again. But, as the old saying goes, who says on their death bed – “I wish I’d spent more time in the office.”
Money can’t buy back Your youth when you’re old Or a friend when you’re lonely Or a love that’s grown cold.
Or as the ancient Psalmist of Israel said, “Do not be overawed when someone gets rich, and lives in ever greater splendour; for they will take nothing with them when they die, their splendour will not descend with them. (Psalm 49:16-17)
Joe Hayes said of his song, “It has been done a lot in churches. I came out of the Opry one night and a church service was going on nearby. The first thing I hear was the congregation singing ‘Satisfied Mind.’ I got down on my knees.”
Good place to start, maybe, to get some perspective and maybe, a satisfied mind.
[Some other fine versions of the song include:
Ben Harper and the Blind Boys of Alabama on There Will Be A Light
Allison Russell is one half of the acclaimed Americana band, Birds of Chicago, along with her husband, JT Nero. Formerly a member of the Canadian roots act, Po’ Girl, Allison is a talented multi-instrumentalist, singer and song-writer. Birds of Chicago has released three top notch studio albums, including last year’s Love in Wartime, produced by Luther Dickinson and JT.
Paste Magazine called the band an “Americana gospel dream team” after hearing their 2016 Real Midnight album, NPR’s Folk Alley included the album in their top 10 favourite albums of the year. Here at Down at the Crossroads, we had both Real Midnight and Love in Wartime in our top 10 Americana albums of 2016 and 2018 respectively. We said of Love in Wartime, “JT Nero’s and Allison Russell’s vocals and rich harmonies meld wondrously, and the song arrangements are innovative and imaginative while, at the same time, warm and inviting.”
Allison Russell has recently been involved in another project, along with Rhiannon Giddens, Amythyst Kiah and Leyla McCalla, with an album about to be released. Entitled Songs of Our Native Daughters, the thirteen-track album explores the history of slavery and its legacy, especially from the point of view of black women. It’s a stunning piece of work, a tour de force, musically, lyrically and thematically. Rhiannon Giddens, the driving force behind the album, has said that she sees this album “as a part of a larger movement to reclaim the black female history of this country.”
Gemma and Gary from Down at the Crossroads had a long chat with Allison Russell about Songs of Our Native Daughters. We asked her, first of all, who the major artists involved in the project are and what the album is about.
Allison Russell: Well, it’s a project that was envisioned and produced by Rhiannon Giddens and she invited myself, Layla McCalla, an absolutely fabulous cellist and writer, multi-instrumentalist as well, and Amythyst Kiah, a fabulous writer and multi-instrumentalist to join her for twelve days just outside of Lafayette, Louisiana in the bayou country. We went down to Dirk Powell’s studio there and it began with exploring some reclaimed minstrel tunes and slave songs that Rhiannon had. She really wanted to have modern women of black heritage, writers, to kind of delve into that material and see what came up. And it was really quite brave of her, because we all sort of took a leap of faith, in that we had none of the material for the original songs we wrote for the project. You know, we’d all had some ideas but everything was written in those 12 days, so we would be, you know, literally writing everything with the exception of Momma’s Crying Long. That’s a piece that Rhiannon had written previously but had not found a home for yet. And Amythyst had a couple of verses that were floating around to Blood and Bones but it hadn’t fully formed yet. And so, we had this kind of amazing experience of living together, working together, for twelve days and it was just kind of a creative explosion for each of us. And there are a lot of threads within each of our lives.
We’re all obviously very different musicians and writers with very different backgrounds, but we do have in common the experience of being, you know, visible minorities within a country that is still really struggling with the legacy of racial fear and a reactionary kind of backlash of hatred. Of course, the last couple of years especially, it’s become clear that that’s not laid to rest. That the legacy of slavery is not resting easily by any means yet, in America particularly.
And so, all kinds of things came up. All of us are artists who are working more within a kind of a folk or Americana framework, where we are not the majority within that framework. And so, we’ve each experienced people – usually, I think, meaning well and just not realizing – you know, like being taken for another artist of color, or, the assumption that, oh well we’ve already got one banjo-playing black so we don’t need another one at this festival – that kind of thing. And you think, oh my goodness, can you imagine if that same metric were applied to, you know, white gentlemen that play guitars – it would be ridiculous! You know, we don’t need Bob Dylan, we’ve already got Neil Young. It’s just so silly. It’s just so absurd when you extrapolate it to something that’s more commonly accepted.
So, it was really interesting, where we were all kind of delving into our own histories…I did a lot of reading leading up to it. The name of the project is Songs of Our Native Daughters. It’s a reference to James Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son which was his first non-fiction book that was published in 1955 and was, I mean, just groundbreaking. What he was writing was unimaginable back in 1955. Obviously, James Baldwin is a writer and a thinker, a vast influence, not just in America, but internationally. He was a sage of our times and he was so erudite and had this academic approach that made it digestible and understandable for people outside of the black community as well. And so, we were kind of rereading that and wanting to have a similar kind of discourse, if you will, or an exploration of that uncomfortable history within our times. But from a more kind of woman-centered and obviously musical perspective.
Gemma:Yeah, well I love the album, Allison, and it was really powerful. But I appreciated about hearing women’s voices and writing women back into history.
Allison Russell: Yes, exactly.
Gemma: I was listening to Polly Ann’s Hammer for the first time when I was walking into work and I just burst into tears in the streets, literally. It was so emotional just thinking about women’s strength in the way that they have been written out of history, and for black women especially. It was very powerful. It just moved me.
Allison Russell: Oh, I’m so glad you brought up that song. That’s an example of what I’m talking about. So here we’re in this process and we’re all kind of bouncing ideas off each other and we’re all writing madly. You know the night before we’d be madly finishing three songs and then recording the next day! We finished all the recordings in about ten days and then just did a few harmonies and things like that, overdubs, but most of it was done live and in real time with the Smithsonian videographer there capturing some of the process – it was just everything happening at once! And that morning, it was our last day in the studio with some of the other musicians that were involved – Jason Sypher who was playing bass and Jamie Dick who’s playing drums. And we were doing interviews with the Smithsonian as well. Rhiannon was on her way out the door from our shared Airbnb, and she said, “Oh you know it occurred to me maybe we should write a song from Polly Ann’s perspective.”
And it was like a bolt from the sky! Amythyst was in the middle of doing her interviews and I started madly scribbling lyrics because I just thought, that’s brilliant!
She’s been there all along, hasn’t she? In those John Henry legends and songs there’s this castoff line – he had this woman Polly Ann who, you know, picked up a hammer and drove steel – and you never hear about her again!
And John Henry dies. He’s killed by this backbreaking labor. And I just started thinking, well Polly Ann didn’t die. As usual, the woman did the job of the man, and then got on with raising the kids! Kept the family together after he died. And so, I was sort of envisioning – here’s this heroine that has been hiding in plain sight all along. She kept the family going and somebody had to to keep the legend going, you know. And it’s Polly Ann! She survived. She did the work, and she helped the kids to go beyond the life of labor they had had. Yeah. Oh, I’m so glad you brought up that song.
Gemma: Yeah, it’s just phenomenal. But there’s another strong woman, of course, in the song Quasheba, Quasheba which is which is really moving and I knew that you wrote that one. Can you tell us a bit about it?
Allison Russell:] I can. I was born and raised in Montreal, Quebec in Canada and I didn’t know my biological father, growing up. I had a French foster family for several years, and then I was raised by my mom and her husband. My mom is a Scottish Canadian. It’s a troubled family and she married a very abusive man, and so the father who raised me, my adopted father, was this very abusive, racist character, and, you know, I just didn’t know what it was to have a real father.
And then when I was 30, I got very curious about my other side – because I was always not like the others. I was always having to explain, yes that’s my mother, yes, she’s my biological mother. In a branch of the family who weren’t particularly accepting of her, you know, born-out-of-wedlock brown child. But my uncle, my mom’s older brother, helped me find my biological father because my mother and he were in high school when she got pregnant. My father had been finishing high school in Montreal from Grenada. Grenada is a tiny little island nation – three little islands very close to Trinidad and Tobago and the West Indies. My father finished his education in Canada, but he and my mom had already broken up and he’d gone back to Granada by the time my mother realized she was pregnant. So, I never met him. Grenadians, it’s such a tiny, tight knit community and there’s only about 350,000 Grenadians in the whole world. And two thirds of them are abroad making their livings. So, my uncle had a girlfriend in high school who was Grenadian and he was able to track her down through Facebook and ask about my father.
And lo and behold, this old girlfriend’s aunt went to church with my father’s sister-in-law. So, within 24 hours of me saying, “I’m interested in meeting my biological father,” I got a phone call and it was my father!
Yeah, it was quite amazing. And so that was, gosh, that’s eight years ago now. And we have had a wonderful relationship. Now it turns out that he had quite an intense early adulthood, because he was sort of on the wrong side of the Cold War. There’s a lot of people don’t know that history, but in ‘82 Grenada was invaded by the U.S. because they had received money from Fidel Castro to build a commercial airport – not a military airport, but the cold war was so intense in the early ‘80s that that was seen as sort of a provocation, and Grenada was invaded. And my dad was a young idealistic socialist and was on the wrong side of that line and lost his job. His wife also lost her job and they ended up having to move to make a better life for themselves elsewhere and they wound up in Toronto, Ontario. And I have two siblings on that side, a little sister and a brother.
And so that’s where I got to meet them when I was 30 years old. They were in Toronto while I was in Montreal. They were only a few hours away for all those years. But I didn’t know!
Anyway, my father’s eldest sister, Denise, decided to hire a historian to help her put together a history of the family. And they were able to discover records of Quasheba, sold off the coast of Ghana and traded hands many times. She eventually wound up in Tobago, and then Grenada and then had – we don’t know how many children she had. But there’s a record of a daughter also named Quasheba, who was actually kidnapped by a plantation owner in Grenada, but she had somehow or other learned midwifery skills and she was able to make somewhat of a life for herself that way – I guess the owner would sell her to other plantations, would sort of rent out her services to other plantations, and so the story of this woman Quasheba…there was this oral kind of thread as well within our family. There was, like, the mystery of this woman.
But the historian my aunt Denise hired was able to track down more information about her, and it was so powerful to learn her name and a little bit about her story. And I am grateful to have that knowledge and I’m grateful for her resilience because literally our entire family and this huge George clan (that’s the last name of my father’s people) wouldn’t exist without her. There’s so much of the narrative around slavery understandably focuses on how horrific it was, and it was obviously. But it’s kind of like taking away a little bit of the everyday heroism of surviving that.
You know we don’t talk about that. We don’t talk about the strength and the resilience. And that’s a gift that gets passed on to subsequent generations. That’s part of it too. But that’s not a story unique to slavery in North America. I mean, on my mom’s side you know, they were Scottish crofters and were turfed out by the Lairds when the clan system fell. On my mom’s side, my great grandfather came over and lied about his age – he was 16 and his brother was 14 and they were basically begging in the streets in Edinburgh, and then they got on a ship. Lied about their ages and got on the ship and wound up in Saskatchewan. Which I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Saskatchewan, but I can’t imagine surviving the winter there when you’re a child from Scotland! But somehow, they did. He and his brother got a land grant and they somehow survived and made the farm thrive enough to make a living. But his little brother wound up dying at the Somme.
Gemma: Well I’m glad you brought up resilience because that was something I wanted to ask you about. Because that’s a very strong theme in the album as well, despite all the harrowing stories. That theme of resilience…and joy is there as well. And it struck me that joy is a form of resistance.
Allison Russell: Yes, it is. It is a form of resistance and love in a time of war or hatred is a form of resistance.
Gemma:And it’s necessary right now.
Photo: Terri Fensel
Allison Russell: Yes. Yes, I feel it is. And my adopted country of America – I am Canadian but my husband is American – I’ve married into this country, my child has been born here. It’s a very, very intense time here, a lot of hidden turmoil and pressures that have come to the surface.
You know, with this character in charge, he’s kind of doing the whole reactionary fear-mongering, us and them nonsense that tries to divide people, and so I feel like it wasn’t an intentional reaction to that, but you can’t help but kind of dig in. All that we know how to do is write songs, you know, and commune with people, but more and more I’m realizing it’s so important, there are so few avenues left where people with differing political views, or religious views, or social views, or socio-economic backgrounds, or cultural backgrounds can get together in a room and be decent to each other.
And music, live music, is one of the few avenues where that still happens. And it can change people’s ideas about things and it can lessen their fear and make them feel more connected. And when you feel connected and empathetic, then you’re not going to lock children up at the border. You know you’re not going to do it.
So, I do feel like, you know, singing songs and writing songs that hopefully people can connect to and with and feel our common humanity – that’s not nothing, that’s something I cling to.
Gemma: And it’s a very intimate experience.
Allison Russell: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
Gary: Yes, the album certainly felt to this non-American very important, right at this particular point in time in history with all this going on, Allison.
Allison Russell: Yes. We all felt a kind of urgency, I think. Aside from we were under the clock timeline – we only had 12 days together. But there was a feeling of urgency. We have to respond to some of the poison in the atmosphere here. If just to dig in on the beauty and the connection. You know, another theme in the album that really emerged, I noticed, was this idea that the separation based on a superficial visual trigger like someone has darker skin and someone has pale skin is so false.
And, you know, you just have to scratch the surface of America. Thomas Jefferson, one of the founding fathers, he had an entire black family. And a black mistress, by all accounts. This was probably the half-sister of his white wife. I mean it just goes on and on, and he ends up emancipating the children from that union later, and eventually, finally, Sally, his, you know, well if someone can be called a mistress when they’re an enslaved person – yes, the black mother. You know, this is at the heart of America. And nobody talks about it. One side had darker skin, one side had paler skin and one side was exploiting the other. But it’s the same family. It’s not a different family; it’s one big dysfunctional family and that is something that gets hidden and glossed over too often. I mean that was that’s why I was so thrilled when the Hamilton musical came out because you know finally someone is talking about – this is a mixed-race person. This was not a white person.
Gary: So, tell us about when you were making the album. When you were collaborating, the four of you together, how did you decide on who was going to sing on what songs and what the arrangements were going to be?
Amythyst Kiah
Allison Russell: You know it all kind of happened very organically. I’d say that the obvious delineations of leads were, if you wrote the song, generally you sang it. But for the co-writes, on a couple of them, we were sort of trading verses. Or in the case of Blood and Bone, that was just so clearly Amythyst had that chorus – I just want to hear her voice on that song! It’s strong in the sense that we co-wrote it, but it was just very clear to me that she should be the one to sing it, and it ended up just very natural. It wasn’t an orchestrated, “OK, now you sing this and I’ll sing that” – it just kind of happened naturally, very organically, as we just sort of worked on things. And we’d try things a couple of different ways sometimes and then it would feel really good one way and less good the other, so we’d do it the way it felt really good!
Gary: But of course, you were four very talented musicians and artists. And one thing I noticed is that the banjo features quite a bit on the album. All four of you are banjo players?
Allison Russell: Yes, we are! And we all play different banjos which is amazing actually. That was all Rhiannon. One of the things that she wanted to do is really feature the banjo. And part of that goes back to the unfortunate kind of tokenism that sometimes happens or novelty, like, oh it’s a black girl playing the banjo. How sweet! But it’s a deeply American instrument which could not have existed without Africans being brought to this land. And so, it’s a unique union between African and European and enslaved traditions. And it’s just beautiful. It rises above, sort of tapping into that idea of joy and resilience and beauty coming out of horrific things. And the banjo is a shining example of that. So, it felt powerful and emblematic to all of us and we’ve all used it a lot.
Photo: Terri Fensel
It’s my second instrument that I primarily write on. I am by far the poorest banjoist of the group. But I write a lot on the banjo. But I’m not the shredder! That’s Amythyst. She can rip a beautiful solo and I’m more of a rhythm and textural player and I use it for writing predominantly. I’m more of like a songwriter who also happens to play the banjo and write songs on the banjo.
I loved the way our banjo voices sounded because they’re all quite different. Rhiannon plays this incredible minstrel banjo from the eighteen hundreds, which is a fretless, gut string banjo with a very deep voice. Amythyst plays a steel string, a five-string, smaller sort of sharper-voiced banjo which is gorgeous. Layla plays a four-string tenor banjo which has totally different voicings and sounds. And then I play a kind of a hybrid. Sort of an open G kind of claw hammer style banjo. But I converted mine to be closer to a gut string. It’s called Nylgut and it won’t be as affected by temperature and altitude and things. And it has a kind of fiber skin as close as a synthetic skin can be to the original goat skin. And so, these four banjos have such different voices and it was really lovely. There were a couple of pieces where we were all playing the banjo at the same time. Just something about the harmonics of it. and it just felt like the spirits were gathering or something. It was really affecting and beautiful.
Gary: Who knew there were so many types of banjo!
Allison Russell: Oh, there are so many!
Gary: And we detected your clarinet coming through a time or two as well!
Allison Russell: Yes, I was the one woodwind player in the group and they let me play the clarinet a couple of times.
Gary: We like the clarinet and it’s lovely to hear it coming in now and again!
Allison Russell: Oh, I’m so glad. I love the clarinet! You know if I’m at a jam session or something that’s my axe to jam on! Yeah. To me it feels like an extension of voice. I always have loved the sound of it. I didn’t come to playing instruments until later in my early 20s. I was sort of trapped in what I call the singers’ ghetto before that, where people say, oh you’re a musician and you say, yes I sing, and they’re like, oh you’re a singer, you’re not a musician! So, I decided I’ve got to get out of the singers’ ghetto, I’ve got to learn some instruments. I started actually with guitar which I don’t even really play anymore, and then found the clarinet and then the banjo.
Gary: Fabulous. NowSongs of Our Native Daughters is on the Smithsonian Folkways label. What’s the background to that?
Allison Russell: Well, that was already in place before Rhiannon invited us. I mean that was part of why she was able to invite us all to do it, because the Smithsonian very generously supported and funded the project for us.
And I think it was very important for her to have been involved with the Smithsonian, because so much of the source material that she has researched and delved into has come from the Smithsonian archives. Rhiannon’s like a musicologist, you know; she’s really gone in deep with the archival material in a way that I’ve just scratched the surface. And in fact, most everything that I’ve learned about early American and African-American music has come from Rhiannon. She has really gone in deep with the archives and the research and piecing things together. The inspiration for this project came when she was walking through the new museum of African-American History and Culture. And she was struck by a quotation of William Cowper’s, which was a kind of a satirical poem about the slave trade. He was a great abolitionist, of course, and was horrified by the slave trade and was doing everything he could to get it banned. But Rhiannon was so struck by this poem and how it correlated to our modern times and the kind of hidden slavery that occurs off our shores. You know – people in factories in Sri Lanka being paid nothing and having the factory collapse on their heads so that we can have clothes or cheap watches or phones or whatever it is.
So, she was really drawing that line from the past to the present, so that just kind of got the whole idea percolating to do something like Songs of Our Native Daughters. So, she wrote the Smithsonian a proposal and they got on board. I think they’re really making a point of not just having the archival source material and recordings – they really want to support modern artists who are continuing these traditions. And I think it’s so wonderful because very few places are left that that do that. We’re very grateful to them.
Gary: So, have you any plans to tour this album Allison?
Allison Russell: Well, it’s funny, Rhiannon and I were just talking about that this morning. We were talking about how tricky it is, because of course everybody’s juggling their individual projects as well. But we all want to very much. We did kind of a little preview of Songs of Our Native Daughters. Rhiannon had a residency at Symphony Space in New York City for four weeks and we did two shows where we previewed a lot of the material and it was so well received. People there gave us such great feedback about it. And there’s been such a lovely response from some journalists and wonderful music sites like yours. So, we all want to do some sort of touring around it. It’s just going to be tricky to figure out the timing. But certainly, this summer I think we’ll be doing some festivals together and we’re trying to figure out a time perhaps in the Fall to do a little run.
Gary: You definitely need to do that because it’s a fantastic album! The music’s great and of course the themes are so very important. So, you definitely gotta do that. Now, I know that you’ve been touring hard with The Birds of Chicago, Allison but you’ve another project coming up in March, playing a number of venues with Luther Dickinson and Amy Helm. Now that is some line up!
Allison Russell: Luther and Amy have become like family to us. Luther and his wife and their daughters are here in Nashville and we’ve relocated here within the last year. Our little girls have a band together and they all love each other and they go to the same school, and it’s just become, you know, it’s become quite a family affair! And Amy as well. The record we’re supporting with that tour in March is coming out on New West on March 22nd, Sisters of the Strawberry Moon. But we actually recorded it three years ago! And that’s how we really got to meet. Got to know Luther and got to know Amy and the last few years we’ve become friends and all of these projects have grown out of it. And JT and Amy have started writing a lot together and there is this kind of happy collaboration and deep friendship has ensued. But we all sort of thought about the record, it’s not going to come out. But then, lo and behold, there they’re releasing it in March. So, we were all so pleased to have an excuse to tour together you know!
Gary: And your Birds of Chicago Love in Wartime is a fantastic album which gone down really, really well. You must be delighted with the way that’s been received.
Allison Russell: Oh, we were thrilled about it. We feel so grateful. And we’ll be coming up on a year since it was released at the end of May, and it’s just been such an inspiring year of getting to connect with people all over the world. We came to Ireland and Scotland and England and the Netherlands, and a little bit in Germany, and Canada, and of course in the U.S. It’s been really lovely and we’re so grateful for people listening and coming out to support the shows and, you know, we definitely don’t take that for granted and we’re so grateful for it.
Gary:Allison, thank you so much, you’ve been very generous with your time. Thank you for being so open with us.
Allison Russell: Yes, thank you. It’s been a pleasure!
Songs of Our Native Daughters is released on February 22nd.
What a year it’s been for roots music. So much wonderful, high quality work by a host of artists in a diversity of styles – variously with country, blues or folk to the fore. That being the case, it’s hard to suggest a best of list. But here goes. We’ve grouped them into two sets of ten and then a group of six. Each set is in alphabetical order.
Here’s our Top 10
Amy Helm This Too Shall Light
In an album produced by Joe Henry, Amy Helm, daughter of late Band drummer Levon gives us ten songs tinged with soul and gospel, featuring uplifting lyrics and beautiful nuanced singing. A wonderful set of interesting, sometimes obscure covers and lovely originals.
Birds of Chicago: Love in Wartime
This is simply an outstanding album of classic Americana. JT Nero and Allison Russell’s vocals and rich harmonies, as usual, meld wondrously, and the song arrangements are innovative and imaginative while, at the same time, warm and inviting.
Eric Bibb: Global Griot
Double album of wonderful songs, brilliantly presented by the blues troubadour. As much world-music as Americana or blues, this is surely one of Bibb’s best accomplishments. There’s joy, love and hope inhabiting these songs, as well as a dose of righteous protest – whether it’s at the materialism of the age or the frightful tweeting of number 45.
Jayhawks: Back Roads and Abandoned Hotels
Reworking of some of the songs Gary Louris, has co-written with other artists, including the Dixie Chicks and two new songs. It’s a great Jayhawks album, with the band in great form over the course of 11 songs of magnificent alt-country.
John Hiatt: The Eclipse Sessions
In his first album in four years, Hiatt is in fine form, his crusty vocals accompanying a largely pared back band. This is an album that draws you in and enchants you the more you listen to it.
Larkin Poe: Venom and Faith
Quite simply this is an extraordinary album from the very talented Lovell sisters in their 4th studio album. The two sisters play every instrument, aside from some wonderful slide guitar in one song by Tyler Bryant, creating a wonderful variety of sounds and textures. Classic but innovative, with traditional, primal sounds mixed with electronic beats.
Lori McKenna: The Tree
Lori McKenna is a brilliant song writer. Here she gives us 10 songs about family life and the tensions of everyday existence in a fabulous, understated record, produced by Dave Cobb. Outstanding.
Parker Millsap: Other Arrangements
Melodic and bluesy, rock and roll-ish outing from Oklahoma born singer, songwriter and bandleader, Parker Millsap. The depth and range in Millsaps vocals are terrific, across twelve rollicking, pulsating songs.
Paul Thorn: Don’t Let the Devil Ride
Unabashed album of gospel music, with Paul and his band, and a group of top notch collaborators including the Blind Boys of Alabama, the McCrary Sisters, Bonnie Bishop and New Orleans’ Preservation Hall Jazz Horns, all in scintillating form. Check out our interview with Paul Thorn here.
Ry Cooder: The Prodigal Son
An album of wonderfully reinterpreted old gospel songs and hymns, from the guitar virtuoso. Cooder’s first album for six years has been hailed as “destined to become an instant classic” the produce of a “musical mastermind” and “completely fresh and contemporary.” These are songs that will speak to anyone, believer or unbeliever. There’s humanity, decency, inspiration, hope in these songs, that anyone can feel. You can find more comment on this album here:
Here are our picks for 11-20, again in alphabetical order:
“Shemekia Copeland is one of the great blues voices of our time” Chicago Tribune
Photo: Mike White / Alligator Records
Shemekia Copeland is a blues powerhouse, with a stack of blues music awards to her name (Blues Music Awards, Living Blues Awards) and several Grammy nominations. She burst on to the scene in 1998 with Turn the Heat Up and has been lighting up stages and recording studios with the force of her personality, her incredible vocals and song-writing ever since. She’s opened for the Rolling Stones, and graced stages with B B King, Buddy Guy, Bonnie Raitt, Eric Clapton and Carlos Santana, and played for President and Mrs. Obama at the White House.
Her new album, America’s Child, produced by Nashville’s Will Kimbrough, is a compelling piece of work that sees Ms. Copeland branch out beyond the blues in which she’s made her name. To be sure there are great blues numbers here, but there’s rock and country too – overall it’s a great piece of Americana.
When Down at the Crossroads asked Shemekia how she would describe the album musically, she replied, “It’s rootsy. All American music is based on the blues, so I felt free to borrow from other genres like country and bluegrass.”
The album has a stellar cast of collaborators on the album – John Prine, Mary Gauthier, Emmylou Harris, Rhiannon Giddens, Steve Cropper and others. Shemekia clearly enjoyed working with each of them and told us, “Each one was incredibly generous. John Prine was so much fun to duet with, and Mary Gauthier is a wonderful person who happens to be one of the best writers in America.”
Gauthier has returned the compliment by saying, “America’s Child is a ground-breaking, genre-bending work of beauty. Shemekia is one of the great singers of our time…Her voice on these songs is nothing short of magic.”
Shemekia told us: “Rhiannon’s banjo took our song to a whole other level. Emmylou has the voice of an angel. I was so honoured. And Steve Cropper is my old friend and happens to be one of the greatest, most soulful guitarists in the history of music. I was blessed to have each of them.”
When asked about the background to the album – why this set of songs and what she was setting out to achieve with it, Shemekia said that last year she had given birth to Johnny Lee Copeland and that the album is her vision of the world she is bringing him into – “my vision of life in America today, and my hopes for the future.”
Shemekia Copeland is no stranger to biting social commentary in her work – in her 2015 album, Outskirts of Love, she addressed victims of date rape in Crossbone Beach and of domestic violence in Drivin’ Out of Nashville, the homeless, in Cardboard Box, and those living in poverty in Lord Help the Poor And Needy. And no less in American Child, she offers a social commentary and critique of the way things are in the United States at the moment in the songs I Ain’t Got Time for Hate, Americans and Would You Take My Blood. When asked how much it matters for artists and musicians to comment and make people think about what is going on, Shemekia said that for her it was important. “Music,” she said, “reaches people in ways that speeches and politics cannot. It’s emotional.”
There’s no shortage of emotion on this album, driven by the conviction and clarity of Ms. Copeland’s vocals, which range from tender in the closing lullaby to playful in One I Love to sassy on The Wrong Idea to earnest in In the Blood of the Blues, and everything in between. Although it’s not an out and out blues album, there’s a fine bluesy feel throughout, driven by the excellent guitar skills of Will Kimbrough and Steve Cropper. The song arrangements and tight band work combine with Ms. Copeland’s voice to make this an authentic and memorable album.
Would You Take My Blood written by John Hahn and Will Kimbrough directly addresses the problem of racism. “All I want is some respect,” sings Shemekia, and then pointedly asks someone who’s a racist if they’d be willing to take your blood if they were dying and needed it? It is appalling that these sorts of attitudes still seem to be so ingrained in the fabric of American life, and it’s sometimes hard to see how the problem be addressed. “An incredibly difficult question,” replied Shemekia. “A good start might be if people actually lived according to beliefs espoused by their religion. The golden rule would be a good place to start.” Ain’t that the truth?
Terry Abrahamson’s and Derrick Proce’s In the Blood of the Blues, is an outstanding blues song, with great guitar work from Kimbrough, who has played guitar with Emmylou Harris in recent years. It’s a stark reminder of the way the blues is rooted in the suffering of the black community – in slavery, sharecropping and Jim Crow injustice.
“I’m the twist in the wire tying every bale of cotton
I’m the shout in the field that echoes across the sea
I’m the newsprint walls in a one-room shack in Stovall
And the blade on the knife that cut my brother from the tree.”
Despite every week’s dispiriting news cycle seeming to confirm the need for the United States to properly come to terms with its past with respect to African Americans, when we asked Shemekia if, as she looks around at America today, does she have cause to be hopeful, she replied, “Totally, it’s still the greatest country on earth. I love it and it will always be my home.”
As well as the serious side to the record, there’s a sense of playfulness and joy here too. Shemekia told us, “Now with the birth of my son (born just two years ago), I’m a more joyful person than ever. And grateful.” She said in a previous interview with Forbes that, in fact, America’s Child is completely about Johnny Lee, who had changed her life. “You immediately become frustrated with the world you live in but you’re also hopeful for your child and hopeful that things will get better for him. That’s kind of what America’s Child is about.”
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]
“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 18th 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.
RT @BluesFoundation: "It ain't how many notes you play, it's how you play them.”
Happy birthday to Blues Hall of Fame guitar pioneer, Albe… 13 hours ago
Megan Lovell is a terrific slide guitarist. A classically-trained violinist, she took up playing slide guitar as a teenager and, boy, she can make that thing sing. Nothing like some lap steel slide to conjure up the ghosts of the old Delta blues masters.
