Shelving 2005: The Blues Shelf

Their name, the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, sounds menacing or at least like a Saturday night bar room band. The album title, Howl (RCA), brings Allen Gingsburg to mind. However, these blues are Gospel. Handclappin’, acoustic strummin’, harmonica honkin’ set it a goin’ for “Shuffle Your Feet” with its soteriological line, “Time won’t save our souls.” The sound is like when the Rolling Stones would try to dial back a notch in the 60’s, Keith Richards adding a little electric wail on top of acoustic blues, but here the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club gets back even farther to find the old bluesmen. They then bring in the last 50 years of rock ‘n’ roll influence, from Bob Dylan to Coldplay. That Coldplay layer lands on the title track which instead of being some beatnik poem actually sounds like the anguish of Christ over our continued rejection of Him. The smashdown comes on “Ain’t No Easy Way,” a cautionary blues with howling harmonica. I suppose if I’m going to say that these blues are Gospel, I should mention the song with the overt title—“Gospel Song.” The song aches with the difficulty of walking with Jesus and serving Him in the world. The Black Rebel Motorcycle Club is yet another prophet of Christ found in the blues clubs under the bridges.

I have previously reviewed Eddie Turner’s Rise, listening with amazement to his guitar hit the atmosphere. Turner had been part of
Otis Taylor’s band working to produce Taylor’s trance blues. With Turner out on his own, Taylor’s 2005 release, Below the Fold (Telarc), picks up Futoshi Morioka to hit the moon, stars, and that new planet past Pluto with his electrics, making such journeys with just a few notes accenting Taylor’s lyrics. “Hookers on the Street” tells of a man coming to the realization that he’s grown old and his womanizing has left him with no one in life. Morioka’s guitar runs up high to spook these blues. “Hookers” is immediately followed by another uncomfortable tale called “Mama’s Got a Friend” about Taylor’s mom’s best friend moving into her bedroom after his father left her. The children called her their big sister, but everyone was talking, and she was certainly more than a friend. It’s told from an Angela’s Ashes point of view, the limited understanding of a child who doesn’t know what it all means but lives through the incredibly awkward tension. Taylor’s tales are sometimes pulled out of history—“Government Lied” is about the U.S. lying about the whereabouts of a group of black soldiers in WWII—and yet, Taylor’s telling that history while his guitar is reminding us that the story is still here. Taylor sounds like a bluesman from the early days, unearthed from some dusty crossroads. These trance blues slip into a freer spirit on “Working for the Pullman Company,” with daughter Cassie Taylor taking the lead vocals on this bluesy spin about childhood reminiscences of fathers working for the railroads. Finally, when Otis Taylor sings “My God, what a beautiful day,” on “Went to Hermes,” it is a deeply felt prayer, resonating in his solo voice and guitar, an awe-inspired reflection.

Markus James, another blues artist whose music slides towards the trance pattern, combines a sound similar to Taylor’s with his own study of African music. Two of his albums are available to you through the Music Spectrum Giveaway Closet (see sidebar). Thank you to Firenze Records.

Blame it on the handwritten liner notes and drawings, but the John Butler Trio brings Blind Melon to mind. Blind Melon brought on an acoustic jam sense to Hard Rock with its own hippie spirit wrapped up in their somewhere. Butler’s got the acoustic jam, hippie spirit, but he lends this to the blues. Sunrise Over Sea (Lava Records) lets you get lost in the fog caused by this Aussie’s guitar storms. The environmentally-conscious “Treat Yo Mama” seeds the clouds with Butler’s lapsteel and some dousing by Danielle Caruana’s soulsister backing vocals. Butler’s voice sounds somewhat like the bluesy, ballad side of Anthony Kiedis (Red Hot Chili Peppers). With a title like “Betterman,” Eddie Vedder’s quiet side comes to mind as well. This is an excellent song exploring a man’s desire to be with a beautiful woman who makes him a betterman—and yet, he feels he has to leave since he isn’t always that betterman. He leaves before allowing that the woman might show him mercy just as he’d probably show her. “Hello” picks up the pace, Butler’s vocals like a bluesman mumbled rant, crying out a wake up call to someone in full-fledged drug addiction. Or is it? “No, I don’t mind just a little indulgence,/But you gotta do it with a conscience.” Butler seems to be allowing for drug use in moderation, but unfortunately it seems that’s a pipe dream for too many people who use drugs. This song wouldn’t make Nancy Reagan happy, but it’s one of the few songs to come from the Jam Band/hippie culture to actually point out the dangers of drug use. The person addressed by this song is so far gone that he’s stealing from his friends, letting the drugs completely change him. Coupled with the previous track, “Damned to Hell,” there’s a message of conscience and good actions, but “Damned to Hell” is a minute and a half without any Gospel as “all the money in the world can’t save your sorry soul.” The blues rock, but they leave you at some dark places.

To listen is to know what it means to collaborate. Doug Cox & Sam Hurrie wind and weave and tie and wrap notes together from their guitars. Hungry Ghosts (NorthernBlues Music) is an album of intimacy between two artists. Originals like the spiritual blues of “Carry Me Away” (Hurrie) funnel experience and influences into innovation, so that these new tunes are as weathered as Son House’s blues. And indeed, whether on an Allman tune (“Little Martha”), a Jagger/Richards composition (“No Expectations”), or some old Tommy Johnson “Canned Heat Blues,” Cox & Hurrie cover their covers with such graceful blues hands. Some of these songs may be old enough that if they were in a museum, they’d be under glass, “do not handle.” Yet, if I was curator, I’d have no trouble handing them to Cox & Hurrie. They won’t hurt the original while they lay their own masterpieces of revision in the case as well.

Also from NorthernBlues Music, Carlos del Junco’s Blues Mongrel proves that harmonica players aren’t just for background these days. Sonny Terry and others could hold center stage while holding a harmonica, but somewhere along the line, the idea got lost that the harmonica could rightly upstage a lead guitar. Del Junco has plenty of lead guitar support from Kevin Breit, but even on Breit’s own “No Particular Place,” del Junco’s harmonica prowls on top of the rhythm, jumping and squawking to make these blues. Mongrel appropriately relates to regional mix of blues here. This isn’t just a Kansas City wet BBQ or Memphis dry BBQ, but there’s also New Orleans gumbo and some East Coast rocking blues and even a Caribbean cousin on “Let’s Mambo.” In fact, you may find yourself scanning the credits to figure out who’s playing the lead horn on “Let’s Mambo,” because del Junco uses his harmonica like a horn section in Ricky Ricardo’s band.