David Honeyboy Edwards “I’m Gonna Tell You Somethin’ That I Know”

David Honeyboy Edwards  I’m Gonna Tell You Somethin’ That I Know (CD/DVD), Pro Sho Bidness

David “Honeyboy” Edwards was born in Mississippi in 1915 and lived a long life in the blues, which he called “a leading thing.” Son of a share cropper (“Papa didn’t make no money,” he says in his 1997 autobiography), and working in the fields from he was nine years old, Edwards became an itinerant bluesman, playing all over the Delta in juke joints, river boats and good-time houses, first recording in 1942, and eventually settling in Chicago as the blues went electric.

His friend and acquaintances in those early days read like a who’s who of the blues – Charlie Patton, Tommy Johnson, Big Joe Williams, Sonny Boy Williamson, Son House, Memphis Minnie and Robert Johnson. He experienced first hand the 1927 Mississippi River Flood, the Depression, Southern vagrancy laws (Honeyboy was imprisoned for a time working on a cotton farm for hitching a ride on a freight train), and the racial and economic problems of the Black community due to Jim Crow. Honeyboy Edwards really was the last living link to the early blues.

He recorded extensively, was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1996, and won a Grammy in 2007 for Best Traditional Blues Album. This CD and DVD set, entitled I’m Gonna Tell You Somethin’ That I Know, was recorded in September 2010, just eleven months before Edwards passed away. It’s a remarkable piece of blues history.

The disks capture around an hour of a performance by the bluesman, accompanied by Jeff Dale and the South Woodlawners, and Michael Frank in the G Spot in Los Angeles. The CD has 9 songs, the DVD 10, plus about 20 minutes of Edwards reminiscing about his early experience of the blues in the Mississippi Delta. This is priceless. He talks about playing with Robert Johnson when he was 21 and goes into Robert’s life and death in some detail. Johnson “was crazy ‘bout two things,” says Honeyboy, “women and whiskey.” His narrative about Johnson’s sad death speaks volumes about the situation of African Americans in the deep South at that time. “Same doctor that would come to a mule would come to you then.” Anyone who got seriously ill would likely die, for want of decent healthcare. Honeyboy’s own mother died at 32 of “dropsy” – or edema, often associated with malnutrition, and both preventable and curable.

We get details, too, about Charlie Patton (“a hell raiser”) and about Honeyboy’s own career –  “been all over the world, Japan, Paris France…Turkey…can’t recall all the places I’ve been.” At 95 Edwards was both lucid and showed a remarkable memory for people, places and incidents long past.

His performance in the gig is quite something as well. He launches into each song with a guitar introduction, whereupon the band joins in, sings with feeling and gives a short guitar solo on his Gibson Les Paul each time. Quite something for a nonagenarian. The DVD is nicely shot, with a kind of sepia tinge and the sound quality good. There are songs by Robert Lockwood Jr., Robert Johnson, Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters and St. Louis Jimmy – a fine collection of classic blues. Sweet Home Chicago is part of the mix, usually attributed to Robert Johnson, but claimed by Honeyboy himself.

“The guitar kept me rolling a whole lot,” says Honeyboy. And it kept him rolling for over nine decades. “God learned me music. He gave me that gift…There ain’t no harm in playing blues, that’s a gift God gave me.” If you’re a blues fan, you don’t want to miss this performance of Honey Boy Edwards’ gift right at the end of his life.

 

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Prescription Blues

I listened to a great version of a song recorded in 1924 by Clara Smith called Prescription for the Blues recently on the Watkins Family Hour album. It struck a chord, having suffered some ill health recently myself – doctor’s prescriptions have been all too frequently part of life of late!

Of course the song isn’t really about treating physical health – it’s about the blues, what Robert Johnson called “an achin’ old heart disease,” the “worried blues.” W.C. Handy said that the “blues were conceived in aching hearts.” Prescription Blues is a clever, light-hearted, playful little song about being love sick, having a “heart disease” and asking the doctor  for a cure:

All day long I worry all night I’m blue
I feel so awfully lonesome I don’t know what to do
And so I ask you doctor to see if you can find
Something in your sachet to pacify my mind
Oh doctor doctor write me a prescription for the blues

Let me tell you doctor why I’m in misery
Once I had a lover, but she went away from me
…Oh doctor doctor write me a prescription for the blues

And that’s what most of the blues are about, isn’t it – lost love, love gone wrong, unfaithful lovers, unrequited love, yearning and heart break. As Son House said, “Ain’t but one kind of blues – and that consisted in male and female that’s in love.”

Well, for sure that’s mainly the subject matter of most blues songs. But there’s more to it than that, and I think this is why the blues continue to resonate for us. The blues arose in black communities a century ago, in the hardship, toil, injustice and bondage of African Americans. B. B. King said, “The blues is an expression of anger against shame and humiliation.” And, as well as love, many of the songs address real life problems – not having enough money, illness, homelessness, bereavement, abandonment. You can easily think of songs like Victoria Spivey’s T.B. Blues (“I got a tuberculosis; consumption is killing me, It’s too late, too late…too late”), about a disease that is particularly associated with poverty, or Blind Lemon Jefferson’s Broke and Hungry, or Big Bill Broonzy’s Starvation Blues, where he sings about having no job, no place to stay and “starvation everywhere I go.”

Well, of course, there is a prescription for all this – we don’t have to tolerate injustice, racism, exploitation. They are all problems that can be addressed, if we have the will. The blues can keep on jolting us out of our safe, comfortable lives and alert us to the pain and ills of the world around. Will we be part of the problem or part of the solution? Which starts with the words of someone from a couple of thousand years ago: “do unto others as you’d have them do unto you.”

In Appreciation of: Eric Clapton

Last month, Eric Clapton suggested that his days of touring are over. “The road has become unbearable,” he said. “It’s become unapproachable, because it takes so long to get anywhere. It’s hostile – everywhere: getting in and out of airports, traveling on planes and in cars.”

Understandable, when you’re nearly 70, I guess, but the good news is that it sounds like he doesn’t intend to stop doing studio work or one-off performances. Clapton has been entertaining us and enthralling us with his blues-based guitar work for nearly 50 years. Ranked by Rolling Stone magazine number 2 in their “Greatest Guitarists of All Time” (surpassed only by Jimi Hendrix – fair enough!), Clapton was once hailed “god” by an adoring fanbase. He’s had 17 Grammys, was awarded the CBE by the Queen, and songs like Layla or Tears in Heaven will be enjoyed and played long after Clapton is gone.

But Clapton is essentially a blues artist who has hailed Robert Johnson as the biggest influence on his guitar playing. He said of Johnson, “His music remains the most powerful cry that I think you can find in the human voice.” Clapton’s tribute to Johnson, on his 2004 album, Me and Mr. Johnson, is one terrific blues album, with excellent arrangements which really showcase Johnson’s genius and some outstanding playing and singing from Clapton. Clapton had previously said that Robert Johnson’s best songs had “never been covered by anyone else, at least not very successfully — because how are you going to do them?” This album and the follow-up Sessions for Robert really do Johnson’s songs justice.

B B King has said of Clapton, “I admire the man. I think he’s No. 1 in rock ‘n’ roll as a guitarist and No. 1 as a great person.” He credited Clapton, with other British artists, with breathing new life into the blues in the late 1960s. The collaborative album between King and Clapton, Riding with the King, won the 2000 Grammy for Best Traditional Blues Album, and although some felt it was just too polished for a blues album, it is a thoroughly enjoyable record that shows off both men at their very best.

Clapton’s struggles with drugs are well documented, not least in his autobiography, making for painful reading.  “In the lowest moments of my life, the only reason I didn’t commit suicide was that I knew I wouldn’t be able to drink any more if I was dead. It was the only thing I thought was worth living for…they had to practically carry me into the clinic.” In 1987, he checked into Hazeldene Treatment Center in Minnesota for the second and last time, and recounts how, after a month there, just going through the motions, he had a quite profound experience.

He says, “At that moment, almost of their own accord, my legs gave way and I fell to my knees. In the privacy of my room I begged for help. I had no notion of who I was talking to, I just knew that I had come to the end of my tether…I knew that on my own, I wasn’t going to make it, so I asked for help and, getting down on my knees, I surrendered.”

He goes on to say, “From that day until this, I have never failed to pray in the morning, on my knees, asking for help, and at night, to express gratitude for my life and most of all, for my sobriety. I choose to kneel because I feel I need to humble myself when I pray…If you were to ask why I do all this, I will tell you…because it works, as simple as that.”

Clapton’s been sober for nearly thirty years, and worked with a number of addiction treatment organizations before establishing the Crossroads Centre in Antigua in 1998 which helps people recover from the devastating effects of addictions to drugs and alcohol. Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival, which has featured a who’s who of top guitar talent in on four occasions since 2004, raises funds for this centre.

I saw Clapton play on a couple of occasions, most notably in the tour which supported the Robert Johnson album.  He didn’t engage with the audience much, but it was enough to be treated to a lengthy set of blues songs and classic Clapton numbers and to admire his fret-work on the big screen – the video-team clearly knew their audience, spending the majority of time on Eric’s guitar playing as opposed to shots of the band as a whole. It was a great night’s entertainment. If he’s decided to retire at this stage, then – thanks for your massive contribution to music and the blues and thanks for the memories.

But for the immediate future, we all can look forward to The Breeze: An Appreciation of JJ Cale, in tribute to JJ Cale who died last year, which will be released at the end of 29 July 2014. It features 16 Cale songs performed by Clapton, Christine Lakeland, Mark Knopfler, John Mayer, Willie Nelson, Tom Petty and Derek Trucks.

Poet Billy Collins – noticing the pain of others

Billy Collins

Billy Collins, former Poet Laureate of the United States (2001 to 2003) is a Distinguished Professor at colleges in New York and Florida. The New York Times has called him “the most popular poet in America”, with his poetry books selling far beyond most volumes of poetry. His poem, The Blues, laced with humor, captures the essence of the blues. Here it is:

Much of what is said here
must be said twice,
a reminder that no one
takes an immediate interest in the pain of others.

Nobody will listen, it would seem,
if you simply admit
your baby left you early this morning
she didn’t even stop to say good-bye.

But if you sing it again
with the help of the band
which will now lift you to a higher,
more ardent, and beseeching key,

People will not only listen,
they will shift to the sympathetic
edges of their chairs,
moved to such acute anticipation

By that chord and the delay that follows,
they will not be able to sleep
unless you release with one finger
a scream from the throat of your guitar

And turn your head back to the microphone
to let them know
you’re a hard-hearted man
but that woman’s sure going to make you cry.

Brilliant, isn’t it? I love the first couple of verses in particular, which point to the repeated first line of the typical blues verse. Take Robert Johnson’s Kind-Hearted Woman Blues, for example: “I love my baby, my baby she don’t love me” – repeated before the resolution of the verse “Really love that woman, can’t stand to leave her be.” Collins suggests that such is the disinterest in other’s pain, that the line needs to be repeated twice.

The point is made with good humor, but the “no one takes an immediate interest in the pain of others” strikes home. Too often we’re too caught up in our own worlds of self-interest, or maybe just the busyness of everyday life to be too worried about the pain of those around us. The blues always have been and always will be a stark reminder of the pain and suffering in the world – it may be at the level of the personal relationship where “your baby left you early this morning” or at the level of injustice in the world (B B King’s That’s Why I Sing the Blues catalogues the injustice suffered by his own community – “It seems like everybody got the blues”).

Ross Douthat in the New York Times recently reported on a Pew Survey on young adults in the United States which indicated that the Millennial Generation is marked by increased individualism – an “increasing absence of local, personal forms of fellowship and solidarity.” It would be unfair to lay this charge only at the door of Millennials, however – our entire society has been characterised by a consuming, self-orientated individualism for a very long time. In fact, the economic basis of our society in many ways is dependent upon this very thing and so the media and advertising industries urge us to keep acquiring, keep consuming, all predicated on our own personal comfort, convenience, development and well-being. Our dedicated self-interest numbs us from neighborly concern with the grief, pain and discomfort of others.

The Christian story, like the twice sung blues line, calls our attention to something beyond ourselves and our own interests. for this is a story of a God who entered in to the poverty, the squalor and messiness of human life so that we might be set free from our self-absorption in order to participate in God’s project of world-transformation, of love and peace, ears attuned keenly to the  insistent cry of injustice all around us – the “pain of others.”

Keb Mo with Robert Johnson’s Kind Hearted Woman Blues

Key to the Highway – Walkin’s Much Too Slow!

Key to the Highway is a Big Bill Broonzy song which has been covered by everybody from Sonny Terry to the Band to B B King to Eric Clapton. It’s a classic, “I’m outta here!” song:

I got the key to the highway,
Billed out and bound to go
I’m gonna leave here running

Because walking’s much too slow

It’s typical of a lot of the early blues songs – the ramblin’ bluesman who can’t stay in one place too long, needs to be on the road again and can’t commit to any relationships.”You ain’t done nothing babe, Except drive a good man from home,” says the singer, putting all the blame on his woman. When in reality, it’s his own itchy feet that are making him want to pack up and hit the road again – “I’m gonna roam this old highway, Until the day I die.”

There were lots of reasons for blues artist moving around – it may have been the threat of lynching in the Jim Crow South; it may have been the need to make a little money – then as now, the professional musician can’t just keep playing his material to the same group of people over and over again; it may have been failed romances; or just a restlessness, a need to get up and go, see a few different places. Whatever the reason, many of these guys didn’t have much of a home, not one they could feel contented in anyway.

Robert Johnson said he had “ramblin’ on my mind,” again, blaming his “baby,” because she treated him so “unkind.” Muddy Waters sang “I’m a rambling kid, I’ve been rambling all my days,” but his baby, “she want me to stop rambling.” Johnny Shines’ version goes, “Woke up this morning, reached down for my shoes, Reason was, baby, I got them old ramblin’ blues.”

But, hey, we love listening to these songs, don’t we, because there’s something just a bit rebellious in them, something that makes us feel alive in our soft, comfortable lifestyles. Problem is, though, home comforts are pretty good, and we don’t really want to change anything, because change can be unsettling, and, quite frankly, “leavin’ here runnin” is way too much effort. We get settled pretty easily these days, don’t we?

Interesting, isn’t it, that Jesus might be termed a “ramblin’ man?” Once his ministry got going, he never stayed in one place too long. He moved about the countryside with a bunch of followers, men and women, had little in the way of possessions, and said at one point that animals like foxes and birds had dens and nests, but he had no place to call home. He was, and is, an unsettling character – even though the Christian church tames and domesticates him.

Jesus never really fitted in with his contemporaries. The people to whom he preached got excited and saw in him a new political leader who might take on the occupying Romans (John 6.15); many of the Jewish leaders were deeply troubled about his version of God’s coming kingdom; his disciples seriously misunderstood the nature of his leadership, bickering about who would be top dog beside him. He made people who came to him terribly uncomfortable about his attitude to wealth (he told a “rich, young ruler” to give away his money to the poor) and he was prepared to symbolically attack the very centre of Jewish political, economic and religious life, the Temple in Jerusalem. And, of course, so upsetting and threatening was his vision for all things new, for changing the status quo, he ended up being tortured and executed.

Would be Jesus-followers can’t expect a life of quiet comfort and ease. He promised his followers harassment for pursuing justice and reviling by people who misunderstood them. Problem is, by making this word that Jesus used – justice (Matt 5.10) – into a nice-sounding religious word “righteousness,” we’ve taken the heat from Jesus’s life and message. We’ve probably never heard of people being persecuted for “righteousness” sake; but we’ve certainly heard of people being persecuted for pursuing justice. And there’s where things start to get uncomfortable for us – how far are we prepared to go, as Jesus-followers, to pursue justice? Some of us can’t even be bothered finding out what’s going on the world, or signing that petition against modern day slavery or whatever, never mind taking to the streets to make our voice hear on behalf of the voiceless and the oppressed. Our Christianity has become too domesticated, too calm, too cosy. We need to find ways to get radically connected to the poor, the weak, the oppressed of the word, or else we’re just playing at it.

The followers need to start to look a bit more like the one we’re following. Walkin’s much to slow – we need to shake ourselves down and be prepared to do a bit of running. Only when we’re prepared to change ourselves can we hope to change the world.

Robert Johnson’s Hellhound on My Trail

Robert Johnson (left)

Robert Johnson is an almost mythical figure in the history of the blues. The chronology of his life is somewhat hazy – we are unsure even of when he was born but it was probably around 1911 in Hazelhurst, Mississippi. The circumstances of his death have been much discussed, along with the question of where he was buried, but it is likely he was murdered in 1938  – poisoned – by the jealous husband of a woman Johnson had taken up with. We know the date of some of the recordings he made and we have a legacy of 41 tracks he recorded of just 29 songs. And yet, for all his short life and mediocre recording output, Johnson is probably the most influential of all the Delta bluesmen – undoubtedly because of his inventive, versatile and masterful guitar playing and his energized singing, which included growls, shouts and tuneful falsetto. And, because Johnson was able “to transform the blues into marketable popular music” (Ted Giola).

Johnson was relatively unknown in his own lifetime and for some decades after his death, but after the reissue of his recordings in 1961 on the LP King of the Delta Blues Singers, he became a blues star, admired and popularized by blues and rock performers from the Rolling Stones to Eric Clapton to Jeff Beck to Jimi Hendrix. Clapton said of Johnson, “At first the music almost repelled me, it was so intense, and this man made no attempt to sugarcoat what he was trying to say, or play. It was hard-core, more than anything I had ever heard. After a few listenings I realized that, on some level, I had found the master, and that following this man’s example would be my life’s work.” In his book Chronicles, Bob Dylan said, “When Johnson started singing, he seemed like a guy who could have sprung from the head of Zeus in full armor.”

One of Johnson’s most influential songs has been Hellhound on My Trail, recorded in 1937. It was the first song recorded during Johnson’s last recording session in Dallas, Texas on Sunday, June 20, 1937 and the first single released from that session. Inspired by earlier blues songs, it is considered one of Johnson’s “best known and most admired performances—many would say it is his greatest” (Giola).

The theme of the song is a familiar one for bluesmen of the time – “rambling”, never staying too long in one spot:

I got to keep moving, I got to keep moving
Blues falling down like hail, blues falling down like hail

The theme seems similar at first to another song Johnson recorded, Ramblin’ on My Mind – I got ramblin’, I got ramblin’ on my mind / Hate to leave my baby but you treats me so unkind. Like many of his contemporaries, Johnson was in constant motion, moving from town to town around the Delta and greater Mississippi. And from woman to woman. David “Honeyboy” Edwards said of Johnson, “He loved whiskey and he loved women. That’s two things he was crazy about”. But maybe there’s more to Hellhound than the itinerant bluesman who never likes to stay in one place too long, who is unfaithful to his woman and just wants to catch the next train.

In his book, Seems Like Murder Here, Adam Gussow offers a provocative new understanding of the genesis of the blues. For Gussow, an understanding of the blues starts with the lynchings and violent realities of African American life in the Jim Crow South. Most of us have no appreciation of what it meant to be black, and to be a black man in the early decades of the 20^th century in the southern states of the US. African Americans were relegated to the status of second class citizens. They were routinely referred to in newspapers and magazines as niggers, coons, and darkies. Blacks became oppressed, marginalized and made to suffer indignity, poverty and hopelessness, kept down at the bottom by the threat of violence by the authorities or legitimated by them.

Every black child in this period appreciated “the terrible unfairness and narrowness of that world – the limited options, the need to curb ambition, to contain feelings, and to weigh carefully every word, gesture, and movement when in the presence of whites” (Leon Litwack). The injustice took many forms but was built into the fabric of life. It might simply be a matter of being excluded from buses or railroad coaches. The young James Robinson, born in 1907, attempted to get on a bus in Knoxville, Tennessee and was roughly pulled back by a white person who shouted at him, “You damn little darkey, didn’t anybody learn you to stay in your place? You get the hell back there and wait till the white people get on the bus. Give a nigger an inch and he’ll take a mile” (J H Robinson).

But there was an ever present and real threat of violence and the spectre of lynching hung heavily over the black community during this period. Lynching became a means of terrorism of whites towards blacks, used to defend white domination and to intimidate and control blacks. It was usually done by hanging, but also by burning at the stake. By conservative estimates, 3,500 African Americans were lynched in the United States between 1882 and 1968, mostly from 1882 to 1920. Lynching was widespread and common in the South during the Jim Crow period and blacks lived in terror of their lives because of the capricious nature of lynching. Looking at a white woman the “wrong way” or acting in a way that was perceived “uppity” were sometimes all it took to begin inciting whites to form a lynch mob. Bluesman Skip James said simply, “They’d lynch you in a minute.”

For Gussow, then, it was this threat of violence that helped to generate the blues and accounts for the “ramblin’” of the bluesman. Robert Johnson’s Hellhound, in this context, seems to resonate strongly:

I can tell the wind is risin’, the leaves tremblin’ on the tree
Tremblin’ on the tree
I can tell the wind is risin’, leaves tremblin’ on the tree

Hard to miss the lynching tree in these lyrics, isn’t it? Gussow says that lynching casts “a broad shadow across the blues lyric tradition.” In Johnson’s song, he isn’t just moving around, he’s being pursued – arguably by the blues nightmare, the hellhound, of white violence and lynching.

Mmm, blues falling down like hail, blues falling down like hail
And the day keeps on remindin’ me, there’s a hellhound on my trail
Hellhound on my trail, hellhound on my trail.

The daily confrontation with this threat, argues Gussow, gave rise to the blues which were a means of processing and dealing with that threat – speaking back to it in song. We’re beyond the territory of mere loneliness and restlessness here – we’re in the area of people trying desperately to assert their humanity, their being, in the context of a broader society that wanted to proclaim their non-being.

The other way that black people did that, of course, was through their faith. The Bible, like the blues, proclaims life in the midst of death and humanity in the midst of forces of evil that seek to annihilate that humanity. The book of Psalms howls out the blues of the oppressed:

I am distraught by the noise of the enemy

Because of the oppression of the wicked

For they bring trouble against me. Psalm 55. 2-3

But continues to hope for God’s deliverance:

But God will never forget the needy; the hope of the afflicted will never perish. Psalm 9:18

And then, there’s Paul’s letter to Christians in Rome in the 1^st century, themselves poor, some of them destitute, all under pressure:

And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow– not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. Romans 8:38

The hellhound might quite literally be on our trail, but we can still proclaim our humanity and still be confident in the encompassing love of God.

Carolyn Wonderland: the soul of the blues

“Carolyn Wonderland is the real deal! She’s an amazing guitar player. And damn, can she sing” – Los Angeles Times

Texas singer-songwriter and ace guitarist Carolyn Wonderland, of whom Bob Dylan said, “Hey, have you heard Carolyn Wonderland? She’s something else”, has had a busy 2012. Her new album, Peace Meal, was described by one reviewer as “gritty,  beautiful, smart and seriously cool” and she has toured incessantly, in Europe as well as all over the US. She is an accomplished multi-instrumentalist, proficient on guitar, mandolin, trumpet and piano. But it is her guitar chops that get her noticed – she is quite simply an outstanding blues guitarist. Add to that her fabulous bluesy vocals, which are in turn gritty and then silky smooth – but always with a raw edge – and you really do have the real deal. And then we could start talking about her peace activism and her fund-raising for local Austin charities, food banks, soup kitchens, homeless shelters…

But maybe better to get right to our recent conversation with Carolyn, who was catching her breath before her touring kicks in again later this month:

DATC: Carolyn – thanks for talking to downatthecrossroads. First of all, congratulations on the new album, Peace Meal – it’s terrific and it’s had great reviews. Fantastic guitar work by you and the singing is outstanding. Have you been pleased at the way it’s been received?

Carolyn: Thanks so much! It does a heart good to know after working on a collection of songs and pouring everything you’ve got into it that some folks were turned on to it and hopefully maybe even turned on by it! We had a great time piece-mealing the album (thus, partially, the name of the CD), working with Ray Benson and Mike Nesmith at Bismeaux Studios in Austin, TX and with Larry Campbell at Levon Helm Studios in Woodstock, NY. (plus we got to stay a little longer and play another Ramble with Levon & his amazing band!)

I feel like we got to pay homage to the shoulders upon which we are standing, covering some songs that either friends wrote like Vince Welnick/Robert Hunter’s Golden Stairs (Vince and I were in Jerry Lightfoot’s Band of Wonder a decade ago, before he and Jerry were bugled upstairs to make music with the angels) and songs that friends helped me to when I was starting off, like Little Screaming Kenny’s arrangement of Two Trains & I Can Tell (LSK is one of my favorite people in this world). We get to play for folks and I’m happy to say we just keep chugging along, picking up new songs along the way for the next one.

DATC: You cover songs by some of the greats on the album – Robert Johnson’s Dust my Broom, Janis Joplin’s What Good Can Drinking Do and Bob Dylan’s Meet Me in the Morning. All excellent treatments, by the way – are these some of your blues heroes? Who (else) has been a major influence on you along the way?

Carolyn: Growing up in Texas, young girls learn to only sing Janis’ songs in private. In public would be silly, as no one can do it better and few can do it justice. When I was asked in 2009 to play at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame‘s American Music Masters Tribute to Janis, I was floored, humbled and thrilled to be there. So many great artists doing cool and original twists with her songs. That night I decided that, even though I couldn’t do it better, I’d like to try to do justice to one of the songs she wrote.

So, the next night…in public…with no rehearsal…I pulled it out at our first Ramble at Levon Helm‘s with Guy Forsyth! I suppose I was listening to a lot of finger pickers the night before, as the arrangement has that kind of walking-thumb-bass-line feel. It really brought it around full circle when we got to record it that way at Levon’s for this recording.

Dust My Broom was recorded for Mike Nesmith’s book, The American Gene. We had so much fun recording it, he let us use it on Peace Meal, too!

We could have picked any number of Dylan’s songs we have covered over the years, I just felt this version of Meet Me in the Morning filled a space that was stylistically unoccupied on the CD. Ray just let us go wild in the studio after we had finished tracking for the day, proving to me one should ALWAYS have the record button engaged when in the studio!

Everyone I have mentioned thus far is a huge influence on my life and music. I’d add to that list my band  – Cole El-Saleh (keys and key bass) and Robert Hooper (drums) – and everyone who has come through those doors. My heroes are often musicians and the people who take a chance on new music! (Seriously, without the love and support of an audience, we would still play music… but our cats would not be impressed unless the guitar solo opened a can of food!)

DATC: By the way, I’m a big Dylan fan myself and I loved the bluesy treatment you gave Meet me in the Morning.

Carolyn: I am blushing! I hope the songwriter likes it too, or at least isn’t offended by it!

DATC: What first drew you to the blues? And what do you think it is about the blues that is so engaging for you and your audiences?

Carolyn: When I was thrown out of school, it was the blues clubs that were most open arms – and less emphatic about ID checking! I loved the fact that anyone could get up on that stage and jam with anyone else with a basic understanding of blues forms. I love that it requires more soul and personality than intellect to inject yourself into the music. I love the people who let me stink up the place a few dozen times and am happy to back other folks while they go through that phase as well!

I think it is honest music that can survive many treatments and still feel familiar to folks listening and playing. The discovery is often mutual. I was lucky to be in Houston, too. I got to sit at the feet of (and occasionally jam with) Jerry Lightfoot, Joe “Guitar” Hughes, Little Screaming Kenny, Grady Gaines, Trudy Lynn, Lavelle White, Allison Fisher, Teri Greene, Big Al Betis, Johnny “Clyde” Copeland, Little Joe Washington, the Sheetrockers… lots of great touring bands, too. I’d have to say it’s the soul of the songs and the people who get it that drew me to, and keep me flirting with, the blues.

DATC: You give us some pretty cool guitar playing on the album – who would you say are the major influences on you as a guitar player?

Clarence Gatemouth Brown

Carolyn: All the folks I have mentioned before plus folks who blew my tiny mind at live shows like: Danny Gatton, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, Johnny Winter, Albert Collins, Debbie Davies, Les Paul, the Paladins, Los Lobos, Larry Campbell, Charlie Sexton, Derek Trucks, Redd Volkaert, John X. Reed, Tracey Conover, Charlie Prichard, Sue Foley, Cindy Cashdollar, Alan Haynes, Susan Tedeschi, Bill Kirchen, Rosie Flores, Denny Freeman, Ruthie Foster, Jimmy Vaughan, Eve Monsees, Gary Clark, Jr. (who just seems to get more badass as time marches on). And then there are Chris Whitley, Buddy Guy, Hubert Sumlin, Van Wilkes, David Grissom, Townes Van Zant and one Billy F. Gibbons.  I know that’s just a crazy list, but there’s even more that I have omitted!

Plus there are the folks I never got to witness live, but wore out the recordings of like: Freddie King, Rory Gallagher, Frank Zappa, Mance Lipscomb and Lightnin’ Hopkins.

Oh, and my Mom, for both teaching me my first three chords and for grounding me from using picks after I “Pete Townshended” her Martin! I may not have the style (or lack thereof) if I didn’t play bare-knuckled!

DATC: Tell us a bit about the guitars you play on the album and on tour.

Carolyn: My main girl is my Tele. She’s a 50th Anniversary re-issue of the ’69 Tele. I put Joe Bardens in place of the standard lipsticks, and bam! there’s a guitar that can keep up with a Les Paul and still be clean enough for fingerpicking (ed’s note: a lipstick guitar pickup is a form of single-coil magnetic guitar pickup having its electronics totally encased in a chrome-plated metal tube).  I recorded almost exclusively with it, as well. Sometimes, I’ll bring Patty, my BluesHawk, or Leslie Pauline, the Goddess guitar (it says so on the headstock in flaming red letters).

For the lapsteel, I have a couple of nice vintage logs that I am too scared to tour with anymore, so I use a Morrell that you can paddle home with if you’re stuck upstream, and it fits with my Tele in one case for ease of flight travel! I borrowed Levon’s mandolin for the recording and Ray’s acoustic. I just got an Art & Lutherie for Christmas. So, I’ll be bumping into things on that this year, too!

DATC: One reviewer said that Peace Meal was a “sacramental feast for the soul”. That’s certainly true of the song Only God Knows When – there’s no more obvious sign of grace than peace. What prompted you to write such a song?

Carolyn: I had it rolling around in my head for over a year. I knew what I wanted to say, but it wasn’t as hopeful as I wanted and it was falling into my box of unthinking hand gestures on the guitar. When I finally got the lyrics to behave, it was Ray Benson who suggested I move it to another instrument to open it up. He was right, and now I have another song for the lapsteel!

DATC: You’ve done a number of songs with spiritual overtones or gospel content – like Judgement Day Blues, Bloodless Revolution, Jesus It’s Gonna Be You, Gospel Song, e.g. And I know you’ve sung a lot of gospel songs with the Imperial Golden Crown Harmonizers. So let me ask you two things – first, how important is that spiritual side of life to you and secondly, how important is it to you as an artist to make a critique of the way the world is – like you do on Only God Knows When and Bloodless Revolution?

Carolyn: I grew up in a church that I left at age 9 when my Sunday school teacher told me my Jewish friends were not going to heaven with me. I called b.s. and left. It took me many years to reach the conclusion that the fault lies with people’s ideas of God’s rules, not their actual God that surely loves them (and if so, why not everyone else?)

I think we all are trying to make sense of the world we share. Spirituality is a common thread of hope. I am saddened by the insistence of war between brothers based on a limited understanding of what is meant to sustain us through times of trouble and doubt. My favorite parable of this is the three blind men with the elephant parts. It’s a sail! It’s a rope! It’s a tree! We may none of us be able to recognise the elephant, but it is here to be interpreted and shared. I hold out hope for a day when we actually look into each other’s eyes and see our brethren and honor all ideas regarding our tiny scope of God and the universe. Making life “as it is in heaven” is the one constant I carry from my youth. I still pray. I am agnostic, searching for unifying theories of love eternal (which is why I so love the writings of Joseph Campbell). It is everyone’s place to point out wrongdoings and celebrate life’s beauty with their art. When you feel it, let it bloom!

DATC: You always seem to be working pretty hard. Any chance we’ll see you on this side of the Atlantic before too long?

Carolyn: Oh, YES! We’ll surely hit Norway, Netherlands, Belgium, and any other place that’ll have us again this year. I try to get us over the water at least 2 or 3 times a year. Updates to our touring can be found at www.carolynwonderland.com or www.facebook.com/wonderchicken If we’re anywhere near you, please do come say hello.