Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen - The Blues And Beyond

Blues Enthused grew out of the notion that I’d like to dig into this sound that was the cornerstone of a lot of the music I’d been listening to throughout my life.
It’s a truism that blues music is a simple form, even a constrained form.  Knock out a I-IV-V chord progression over 12 bars, with an AAB rhyme scheme for the lyrics, and there you have it – that’s the blues.
But of course like many truisms, it’s simplistic. For one thing, the blues isn’t a single, uniform tradition.  It stretches across different styles connected to particular times and places: eg urban blues, country blues, guitar rag, Chicago blues, Texas blues, jump blues, rhythm and blues, hill country blues, blues-rock - and whatever you want to call the stuff that came out of the one-off

Muddy Waters has a vision of the rock'n'roll future

melting pot of New Orleans.  Bearing in mind that I’m not a musician, the last ten years (or more, counting the period preceding the blog) it’s been a voyage of discovery getting my head around all that, plus a heap of other ingredients that bring different spices and flavours to the whole gumbo.
As it turned out though, contemplating all that stuff was really just a starting point.  Once upon a time, Muddy Waters sang that 'The Blues Had A Baby And They Named It Rock & Roll', and in the same song added that “Otis Redding said, the blues got a soul”.  Which got me thinking about the different genres “fathered” by the blues, and how they developed.  Memphis was key to the emergence of both rock’n’roll and Southern soul – the kind that for me has more kinship with blues music, and R’n’B, than Motown – good as the latter might be.  Reading about Sam Phillips and the artists he groomed at Sun Records, flowing through Howlin’ Wolf, Elvis, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis, provided a wonderful insight into the evolution of rock’n’roll (and rockabilly) out of blues and country sounds. Meanwhile Robert Gordon’s Respect Yourself history of Stax brought Soulsville to life, while his more wide-ranging book It Came From Memphis joined the dots.
Memphis was really a fount of not just one but two “scenes” in popular music – those moments when groups of movers and shakers collided in a particular location to kick things on and move the music in new directions.  Lenny Kaye’s book Lightning Striking: Ten Transformative Moments in Rock & Roll is a terrific survey of some of these “scenes”.  It’s a  phenomenon that I find fascinating, and I wish that in addition to his chapter on Liverpool in 1962 Lenny had devoted some space to London around the same time, where the Stones, The Yardbirds and The Who were also starting to make things happen.
The two chapters in Kaye’s book that coincided with my own adolescence though, were New York 1975 and London 1977 – the two almost coincidental explosions of punk.  As a kid who had responded to glam rock, and then started devote himself to hard rock, heavy metal and prog rock, I was pretty resistant to punk – or at least spending my money on it.  All the same, its presence was inescapable at the time, and it generated a new zeitgeist.  Reading Kaye’s chronicles of those scenes, and also Allan Jones’ often hilarious tales of his times as a Melody Maker writer in the mid-Seventies^, took my back to my teens as an inveterate reader of Sounds and the other weekly music “inkies” – though I was more interested in reading about hard rock

Stray Cats - rockabilly revitalised by punk

bands, whose albums I bought when I could afford it, and who I would see live at venues like the Edinburgh Odeon, and then (having moved south for a couple of years), the Retford Porterhouse, and Sheffield City Hall.
I recall a kid in school in Retford who was heavily into punk and New Wave, who stood up on a chair one day by the record player in the Sixth Form common room, waving a 45 in the air and declaring “Singles are the future!”  All the hard rock, heavy metal and prog rock album listeners among us duly rolled our eyes.  But looking back from this vantage point I can see his point – up to a point.  Drawing a line between the immediacy of rock’n’roll hits by the likes of Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry, through the fun of glam-rock and the grit of Dr Feelgood, to the punch of iconic songs from the punk and New Wave era - and let's not forget that punk enabled a resurgence of rockabilly, led by the Stray Cats - sometimes it’s enough to have the classic track crystallised in a single, and not bother with albums by the artists involved.
Whatever, recognising the vigour of some of those inescapable punk, post-punk tunes, over the last year or two I’ve been dabbling in them again, and relishing their often cacophonous charms.  At the same time this interest began to re-tune my antenna to pick up on more current artists who channelled some fresh energy.  Not that I’ve dived in indiscriminately, but now and then my ears have pricked up and I’ve been bowled over by some new names.  Often the sounds in question are pretty retro – rock’n’roll that harks back to glam rock and garage rock, for example.  Some of these artists have made their way into these columns, like The Peppermint Kicks, His Lordship, The Courettes, and Tuk Smith & The Restless Hearts, for whom my enthusiasm has been pretty obvious.  Old names like MC5 and The Dictators have also resurfaced, who fit in the same raucous bracket.  And there are some newer hard rock bands like Wayward Sons and Scarlet Rebels that have grabbed my attention with their sharp, direct sounds that aren’t in thrall to all too prevalent “heavy metal” tropes. But some other sounds have caught my ear now and

The Courettes - bratty chutzpah and exotic guitars

then that I want to delve into but would be an uncomfortable fit for Blues Enthused.  Any takers for Yannis And The Yaw or The Mysterines?
It's partly with these different directions in mind that I’ve decided to wind up the blog.  I want to have more time to explore the full gamut of my music collection, and also to following my nose down some different avenues.  I think too, that this emerging desire to freshen up my musical palate offers a perspective on one of the challenges faced by blues music these days.
I said at the start of this piece that the blues isn’t a uniform sound, and that’s true.  But much of its potential audience is predominantly focused on blues-rock, and privileges guitar wizardry above all else.  A few years ago Joe Bonamassa observed that: “I have learned unfortunately that people want to hear me overplay over blues-rock changes.  So this is what we do.”  He had his tongue slightly in his cheek, but it’s telling that he made this comment in the course of a ‘Rig Rundown’ video devoted to exploring at length the technicalities of his guitars, amps and pedal board.*
The likes of Bonamassa, Eric Gales and Philip Sayce may be classified as blues-rock artists, but if you go to one of their gigs you’ll find that a large part of the audience are primarily guitar fiends, who go batshit crazy over displays of breakneck soloing.  No harm to these artists – I can certainly wig out over a bit of axe madness, and wouldn’t want to eradicate it.
But it’s not enough.  I like songs, and I like wit, emotion and imagination – a more varied diet if you like.  Of course there are blues and roots artists – even some blues-rock artists – who cater for those diverse expectations one way or another, but increasingly I find myself looking further afield.
In a similar vein some blues artists may also feel the need to broaden their horizons, not just artistically but in order to make a sustainable living.  A couple of years ago I went to see Joanne Shaw Taylor, who was touring Britain on the back of her impressive soul-inflected album Nobody’s Fool.  She was 37 at the time, but from a cursory look round the (not sold out) hall it was clear that most of her audience was considerably older – balding heads abounded.  If I was her that would have worried me, seeing my target audience become more advanced in age.  Was that a trend that encouraged Taylor to try out the soul leanings of Nobody’s Fool, in search of new listeners?  Maybe yes, maybe no, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
I still love blues music in many of its different manifestations.  And the blues will endure, no doubt.  As I’ve said before, the House of Blues has many rooms.  In some of those rooms devotees will continue to cherish its roots and traditions.  In others they’ll experiment with new possibilities, giving the blues fresh energy and keeping it current.  But there’s a big musical world outside the House of Blues too, and maybe we’ll bump into each other out there from time to time.

^Brought together in his book I Can't Stand Up For Falling Down.

*You can find the quote from Joe Bonamassa at about 31:09 in the video, if you're interested.

Thorbjørn Risager & The Black Tornado - House Of Sticks

If you’re looking for a band to serve up some modern, imaginative, but still rootsy blues music, Denmark's Thorbjørn Risager & The Black Tornado make for a very good bet, as their ninth studio album House Of Sticks reaffirms.
There’s a whole spectrum of blues and roots sounds on the menu here, tied together by Risager’s smoky vocals and ear-catching lyrics, with the opening ‘House Of Sticks’ serving as a persuasive taster for the original sounds the Tornado can conjure up.  It starts out as primitive, scratchy blues, Risager singing of being “stuck in a house of sticks and a storm is blowing”, before folding in an eerie, drawn out keyboard note and clunking percussion, until a quirky, martial fanfare kinda horn riff pipes up.  There are trilling, jazzy piano runs, and spooky low-slung horn notes before it draws to a close, having sparked the imagination.

Thorbjørn Risager & The Black Tornado - eight men in search of a groove

Pic by Christoffer Askman

They may have a reputation for blues-rocking, but the only time they really rock out here is on the following ‘Already Gone’, which swaggers in with an insistent, nagging riff, over a heavy beat, that could be the foundation for the kind of futuristic boogie on which Muse might offer their usual dystopian observations.  Back on planet Earth though, the focus switches to a couple of scorching guitar solos, the second of which is especially wiry and jagged.
They get good and funky more than once though.  ‘Long Time Ago’ rides an upbeat groove reinforced by wood block clacking from drummer Martin Seidelin, and enhanced by subtle horns, as the basis for some evocative storytelling about a man stuck on the road “looking for something he lost, a long time ago”, and with a steely guitar solo to inject extra urgency.  ‘Inner Light’ sports a loping, Stevie Wonder-like clavinet groove over buzzing bass funkiness, while Risager reflects that there’s “so much hate in this world we’re living in,” but insists that “I know I’m stronger than the darkness / And I’ll hold on till the summer comes around” energised by squawking sax and grooving piano and horns.  And ‘Climbed A Mountain’ is a bopping, behind the beat shuffle with pulsing synth sounds in the background, mingling with toots of horns to create a propulsive vibe, leading to a confident, assertive, harmony-boosted chorus.  There’s a stinging, ringing guitar motif too, and some squealing sax commentary too for good measure.
There’s an autumnal kind of spirit threaded through the album, a sense of time passing, but also of the resilience needed to cope with it.  So ‘Light Of Your Love’ foregrounds gentle electric piano and a laid back, tripping rhythm as the foundation for Risager’s atmospheric vocal about being “Here in the dark, here in the midnight hour”, before a ribbon gets tied around the tune with the simple but effective, mellow chorus.  Meanwhile ‘We’ll Get By’ is a slowie that revolves around weeping slide guitar over acoustic strumming, before getting positive with another simple, uplifting chorus:  “It’s alright, I feel good, I’m gonna hold my head up high”.  And ‘Out Of The Rain’ is mid-paced but dreamy, with its backdrop of moaning horns and squiggling keys, until it’s roused by fuzzy, strident injections of guitar.
They close the album beautifully, with ‘Fine Summer Night’, its restrained slide guitar twirling and unfurling over more acoustic strumming, to create an easy-going vibe like laying back on a veranda with a margarita, scanning the sunset and daydreaming about “catching a fish to fry”.
House Of Sticks isn’t an explosive album, though it does have its punchy moments.  It’s more an earworm of a creature, the Black Tornado burrowing their subtle way into your brain and captivating with their grooves.  My advice is to tune in, turn on, and chill out.
 
House Of Sticks is released by Provogue Records on 31 January, and can be ordered here.

The 2:19 - Keep My Will Strong

They’re a bit of a two-faced bunch, The 2:19.  I mean this in the nicest possible way, you understand.
See, on the one hand the Belfast band are partial to knocking out some rasping, rocking blues. But on the other, they like to pursue some different rootsy avenues.  More importantly though, they’re pretty darned good either way.
They open Keep My Will Strong with a trio of bluesy outings.  ‘One Thing I Figured’ is a grinding blues stomp, augmented by big waves of organ from guest keys man John McCullough. It’s a well-constructed affair, with a ducking and diving slide solo from Paul Wilkinson, supplemented by blasts of harp from Chris Chalmers, who delivers the cryptic lyric with his customary rich

The 2:19 find a suitable venue to get a round in

vocal.  They follow that with the punchy shuffle of ‘Dead Dogs & Bee Suits’, driven along crisply by Monty Sneddon's drums, with an emphatic chorus and wailing slide and harp sparring with each other.  Then ‘Gape Row’ is brighter – ironically given that the downbeat lyrics centre on the demolition of an old street – and strewn with guitar licks, until they dial it down for a bridge that reflects on a celebrated local woman of dubious means.
‘Say Yeah’ signals a shift in tone, with some short and sweet Motown-ish stylings full of chiming piano, tambourine rattling, grooving bass from Marty Young, and sweet backing vocals courtesy of Suzy Coyle, while Chalmers has fun rasping out the “I wanna hear you say yeah” refrain.  And later they lay back into a more relaxed soul vibe on ‘Stepping Stone’, with understated bass meandering over the steady beat, and dustings of chocolate box piano here and there.
In between they show adventurous restraint with the slower ‘Go Blind’, a folk-soul-blues kinda thing that leads with delicate acoustic picking, soon joined by equally delicate piano.  Chalmers delivers a vocal full of feeling on lines like “These eyes of yours could start world wars, and the smile could end them all,” embellished by some hushed harmonies, before they ramp things up into more anthemic mode, crystallising in an evocative, buzzing solo from Wilkinson.
They get subtler still on ‘Hawthorn Black’, a lovely tune with shades of Del Amitri – albeit without the bitterness Justin Currie might bring to proceedings. With brushed drums, prickling acoustic guitar, and softly reflective vocal, it has a vaguely Celtic-soul air about it, and calling it a lovely little tune feels like selling it short.
The Celtic vibe takes a different turn on ‘Who Do They Think They Are’, with a guitar harmony motif from Wilkinson and his six string buddy Ady Young, while Chalmers delivers a smooth but disputatious vocal.  But the guitars really return to the fray on ‘The Ring’, a slow-paced tramp with a spiky, distorted riff to go with the downright gravelly, Tom-Waits-with-a-hangover vocal from drummer Monty Sneddon, reinforced by blasts of harp and a bristling, wiry guitar solo.
‘My Oh My’ is strutting R’n’B locked into a snapping snare drum, with a ‘Spirit In The Sky’-adjacent riff, with squalls of slide and harp adding to the grit all the way to a jangling, swinging outro.  Then they lighten up with some Faces-like good-time boogie on ‘Go Home’, embodying the “It’s three in the morning, I just wanna go home” sentiments in ramshackle bar band style, right down to Wilkinson’s ringing Chuck Berry style solo.
Having got that off their chest, the title track inhabits a soulful gospel vibe.  Sweeps of church-like organ and strokes of piano from McCullough are the principal backdrop for Chalmers’ pleading, hoarse vocal, robustly complemented by some testifying from Suzy Coyle and piercing Wilkinson guitar.  Then they ease through the exit door with the rippling guitar and low key but sunny-side-up mood of ‘Let It Slide’.
With Keep My Will Strong The 2:19 have served up a smörgãsbord of well executed, warm and well balanced, rootsy flavours – and an impressive follow-up to their award-nominated 2023 album We Will Get Through This.  
 
Keep My Will Strong is released on 27 January.

Dom Martin - Buried Alive

Buried Alive is a big album.  It’s big in the sense of capacious – clocking in at 97 minutes it would even be pushing it as an old-fashioned “double live album”, cramming the vinyl with grooves.  But it’s also big in the sense of important, because it confirms – if there was any doubt – that Dom Martin is one of the most original and significant roots music artists out there right now.
I say original, because Dom Martin doesn’t just tread the same well-trodden paths as other singer/guitarists.  He’s not simply a heavy-riffing blues-rocker, for example, though he chucks some buckets of grit into the likes of ‘Unhinged’, with its Hendrix-twisted riff, and the Rory-like, sock-it-to-‘em rock’n’roll slide guitar of ’12 Gauge’.  He doesn’t trot out an endless stream of archetypal guitar solos either, though he does rip it up a bit on both of the above tracks, as well as dialling

Dom Martin - out there on his own

Pic by Tony Cole

up a storm or two amidst the light and shade of ‘Dixie Black Hand’.  Oh yeah, and he knows his way around a slow blues as well, as he shows on ‘Lefty 2 Guns’ with its plethora of licks.
But still, Martin’s modus operandi extends beyond this familiar kinda rockin’ fare much of the time.  For a start, this is a live album on which Martin devotes over half the running time to an acoustic set that finds him weaving tapestries of beautiful, mesmerising guitar as the backdrop for some dark and dangerous tales, told in his sonorous voice that often veers towards a bass pitch that also sets him apart from the herd.
The first of these acoustic excursions, a medley of ‘Easy Way Out’ and ‘Belfast Blues’, is a double whammy of death and danger, set to rippling, coruscating guitar picking that’s quasi-Celtic in the first half, then more Delta bluesy in the second, as it exerts a magnetic pull for over 11 minutes.  It’s astonishing – and by no means unique.
For example, the following segueway of ‘Hello In There’ and ‘The Fall’ glitters, glistens and shifts like a kaleidoscope of silver and gold, incorporating some classical Spanish stylings, while Martin quietly lays out some wistful reflections.  And ‘Hell For You’/’Mercy’ shimmers and sparkles in relaxed fashion even as the Dom fella muses bitterly that “There’s a hell for you, baby”, in tones that carry a John Martyn-like undercurrent of languid smokiness.
In fact Martin’s voice is as important an instrument as his guitar throughout, whether he's toting an acoustic or an electric.  His rich groan takes on an emphatic, determined tone to go with the twanging blues of the opening ‘Daylight I Will Find’, underlining the resilience of the refrain that “It’s been a long old road to ruin / Daylight I will find”.  Then on ‘Government’ the simple, folk-ish tune leaves him space to convey both weariness and disgust.  And ‘Buried In The Hail’ ventures even further into the darkness with sparse, bluesy twanging and an atmospheric vocal to go with the evocative lyrics.
There are counterpoints to the downbeat contemplation though. ‘Howlin’’ trips along merrily to develop into a full blown guitar rag, before taking a sharp turn into electric blues explorations worthy of the title, then exploding into some ruff’n’tuff riffing.  Meanwhile ‘Belfast Blues’ is dramatic and cinematic with lines like “I’ve been shot, stabbed and burned out with those Belfast blues again”, and “Well I grabbed that shovel and I dug that hole / I threw myself in and I watched myself go,” but the drama is soundtracked by a fierce stomp and jagged guitar as much as by quiet menace.  And then the likes of ‘Unhinged’ and ’12 Gauge’ arrive to raise the tempo and the volume.
Is there anyone else out there doing what Dom Martin does?  I don’t think so.  He's out there on his own, doing his own singular thing and doing it masterfully.  Get Buried Alive, and get  yourself wrapped up and cocooned in his performance.
 
Buried Alive is released by Forty Below Records on 13 December, and can be ordered here.

Eddie 9V - The Caves, Edinburgh, 4 December 2024

It’s a cold, damp December Tuesday night.  The Caves feels chilly too, and with only maybe 50 or 60 people in the room the ambience is unpromising.
Atlanta's Eddie 9V and his band are unfazed though.  They come onstage and crack into ‘Beg Borrow And Steal’ from his 2023 album Capricorn, a surefire upbeat groover with a great hook.  It may not have the horns that decorated the studio version, but Lane Kelly’s bass is funky, Chad Mason’s keys add plenty of colour, and the Voltster (as I’m sure none of his friends call him) is a cheery, chirpy presence at the heart of things.  Things are looking up.
The vibe of Capricorn and new album Saratoga is largely a fresh, snap, crackle and pop take on old-fashioned soul, but live 9 Volt and band are a sturdier, bluesier proposition.  So their reading of Albert King’s ‘Travelin’ Man’ has plenty of oomph, with Eddie contributing a satisfying degree

Eddie 9V - it's all in the fingers, people

of guitar sizzle, and Mason adding barroom piano for extra jollification.  They give Freddie King’s ‘Meet Me In The Morning’ an outing too, and give it a dynamic treatment in which 9V alternates between controlled pinging and sudden squalls of guitar, showing an impressive capacity to mix things up, complemented by a suitably expressive vocal.
There are a couple of other covers along the way that also impress.  Howlin’ Wolf’s ‘Miss James’ flexes a heap of muscle, with Mason knocking out a blistering organ segment, given spiky support by Eddie’s guitar.  And there’s an Al Green song too, that I don’t catch the title of but which is a tough strut in a very different vein to ‘Let’s Stay Together’, so much so that it’s the opportunity for drummer Dave Green to launch himself into a solo that starts with him using his hands, rather than sticks, and develops into a full-scale shock and awe barrage.
Their originals stand up well in this company though.  9 Volt shows that he really does know his way around a guitar on the funky, catchy soul of ‘Halo’, spritzing up a couple of solos with smatterings of twists, turns and frills.  ‘How Long’ is classic soul with another strong hook, and a rolling groove that’s given an extra shine by Mason’s keyboards, while our Eddie knocks out some snazzy guitar and a vocal reminiscent of his Atlanta-based hero Sean Costello.  And ‘Little Black Flies’ is a great example of storytelling soul, with another impressive 9V vocal that’s strong on his trademark falsetto, plus a guitar solo on which he conjures up a remarkable sax-like tone. (At which point it’s worth noting that Eddie 9V does not come bearing a plethora of effects pedals.  He has one effect on his amp that he uses on one song, but otherwise it’s all down to his fingers and his manipulation of his decidedly beat-up looking Telecaster.)
They close the show with the hip-activating ‘Saratoga’ itself, a typically savvy soul groove.  But they’re quickly persuaded back, to encore with the brooding, low-down funkiness of ‘3am In Chicago’, and the rhythmically offbeat, half-rapped, bayou-tinged ‘Yella Alligator’, sporting yet another convincing hook to end on a high.
I’m guessing I wasn’t the only member of the audience to get warmed up by this set.  Eddie 9V has a real, positive presence, plays guitar with personality, and he and his band clearly know their onions.  I’d like to think he’ll attract a much bigger crowd next time he’s in town.

Eddie 9V - Saratoga

Eddie 9V may have emerged as a blues artist, but listening to Saratoga - as with his previous album Capricorn - he sounds more like he’s been an inmate of a soul asylum.  A goodly chunk of the 12 songs here lean towards finger-snapping soul stylings, aware of their ancestry but up to date and distinctive.
The title track ‘Saratoga’ sets the tone with a four-on the-floor beat underpinning a cool electric piano style groove, with a soulful vocal from Eddie reinforced by slinky harmonies, and with a smoochy sax bridge before things get lively via a dialled up chorus boosted by organ, and a stinging, fizzing guitar break.  Before long 9V and co are also serving up an old-fashioned soul
ballad in ‘Cry Like A River’ on which his excellent vocal delivery evokes the likes of Percy Sledge

Eddie 9V unobtrusively checks for his wallet

Pic by Cameron Flaisch

and Sam Cooke.  The following ‘Love Moves Slow’ is a loose-limbed stroll in the sunshine, with twirling electric piano and clever backing vocals courtesy Leah Bella Fraser, while the 9V fella musters a Marvin Gaye ‘Let’s Get It On’ vocal vibe – which is quite a compliment.
Eddie and his gang do explore some different highways and byways though, notably on ‘Wasp Weather’.  Here you get a half-spoken vocal over thump’n’clack percussion and diddling rhythm guitar, conjuring up the “two turntables and a microphone” rhythmic feel of Beck’s ‘Where It’s At’.  It’s an irresistible groove, embellished by a barroom piano excursion from Chad Mason.  Then they follow that with a sharp left turn into the dreamy ‘Truckee’, apparently inspired by a mushroom-fuelled camping trip on the eponymous river.  It’s all twinkling guitar and nimble, airy slide remarks, and a delicate, starlit ambience laid out over long, soft organ chords.
Meanwhile ‘Tides’ may be in a soul vein, but with more of a modern edge, akin to The Black Keys.  It may start off with relaxed, skipping drums and minimalist guitar, bass, and Wurlitzer organ, but then crunches into some tough, bass-end chords heralding the “Just like Mars and the moon” chorus, accompanied by clearer swoops of organ, while Cody Matlock adds a subtly warped guitar solo.
‘Love You All The Way Down’ is the longest track on the album, and another slow, trippy kind of animal, easing along over a lazy beat and flickers of organ, while Eddie does his classy falsetto thang again.  There are ripplings of guitar and keys, and gradually it shakes itself out of its reverie, culminating in an excellent outro highlighting sensitive guitar and Wurlitzer.
‘Chamber Of Reflection’ has a jazzy undercurrent, with smouldering, moaning horns from Noah Sills that would surely provoke Joey ‘The Lips’ Fagan of The Commitments into preaching his sermon that “soul music has corners”.
To close 9V jettisons his soul and falsetto vocal stylings in favour of a crooning approach in keeping with a ballad that might have appealed to Elvis, or Roy Orbison, with cooing vocal overdubs and twanging guitar from Eddie himself.
Eddie 9V may be standing on the shoulders of soul giants when it comes to the direction of his latest album, but he gives those influences his own spin, not least by means of his confident, characterful vocals.  And the album is given extra colour by the moments when he jumps off the soul train and comes up with something a bit different.  Saratoga is another impressive outing, taking Eddie 9V further on up the road.
 
Saratoga is out now on Ruf Records, and can be ordered here.

Blues Enthused - Ten Years Gone

After returning from the 2013 holiday down the Mississippi that’s recounted in the multi-part Adventures In The South series, I continued to explore the Blues in a haphazard kinda fashion, poking around in selections on emusic.com for interesting artists, as I’d already been doing for a while, and seeking out biographies of major blues figures and the like.
Reading those books fuelled an extra dimension to my interest in the Blues: it wasn’t just about the music, but also about the people and the history.  I’m an inveterate reader who studied English Literature at university, enjoyed history at school, and have always been interested in learning about stuff - and here was a whole new territory to delve into.  Over the years I’ve read biographies of Howlin’ Wolf, Buddy Guy, Etta James, the Rolling Stones, Wilko Johnson and others; I’ve read Robert Palmer’s historical survey Deep Blues, Greil Marcus’s overwritten but

Reading the blues - with one of the greats

perceptive book Mystery Train, and the companion book to Martin Scorsese’s (much maligned) TV series The Blues; I’ve read about the Great Migration of black people in the mid-20th century, from the southern states of the US to Chicago, Detroit and elsewhere in the north and west, and what it meant for the evolution of the blues; I’ve read about the Memphis music scene, Sun Records, Stax Records and more.  The list goes on, and it spread into other music scenes and disparate artists – over, under, sideways, down, to quote the Yardbirds – but that's a story for another day.
Meanwhile, a couple of months after that 2013 Mississippi holiday, I made a serendipitous discovery.  Browsing around the WH Smith newsagents in Newcastle Central Station one afternoon, killing time before my train home to Edinburgh, I stumbled across The Blues Magazine.  It was evidently a sister magazine to Classic Rock, of which I had been an irregular reader for years, and a properly professional, glossy publication.  It was Issue 9, with the cover pushing a feature about the making of Howlin’ Wolf’s London Sessions album, and I reckoned it would do very nicely to keep me company for the journey home.
The feature on the recording of the Howlin’ Wolf album referenced familiar big names who had guested on the sessions, like Eric Clapton, Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman.  Then there were articles about other artists I knew, like Bonamassa, North Mississippi Allstars, and Sammy Hagar.  But there were also pieces about people who were entirely new to me, like Aynsley Lister, Samantha Fish and Joanne Shaw Taylor.  There were pages of album reviews, of both new stuff and reissues, and gig listings that revealed there were lots of bands touring the country, many of them playing small venues that didn’t ring many bells with me.  All in all it was like travelling back in time to when I was a teenager, and would pore over a copy of Sounds, my weekly music paper of choice back in the days when the “inkies” were required reading for music fans.
The Blues Magazine became a regular buy from then on, not least for the covermount CD that came with each issue.  Through those CDs I was able to get an earful of a range of new artists, such as the aforementioned Samantha Fish and Joanne Shaw Taylor, but also King King, Walter Trout, Mike Zito, JJ Grey & Mofro, and The Temperance Movement, to name just a few.  Some of these artists obviously had more impact than others, but the magazine revealed enough
decent contemporary blues music and blues-rock to further reinvigorate my love of music, and show it was possible to see artists play live in venues more intimate than an arena – rather like the hard rock bands I’d seen in a club setting back in my late teens, at the Porterhouse in Retford, Nottinghamshire, where I lived for a few years back then.
At some point I also noticed that the magazine had started a blog – a rudimentary affair that was nothing like the kind of website that such publications would develop before very long, if they hadn’t already.  And lo and behold, as I was scanning the blog one day I noticed a short item

Different shades of The Blues Magazine

saying that a blues club was being set up in my home town of Edinburgh.  That club scene I’d been uncovering in The Blues Magazine seemed to be coming to my doorstep.
I followed up on the inception of the Edinburgh Blues Club, which looked like a carefully thought through venture.  Membership could be obtained through a subscription of £10 a month, which would provide the club with a stable base of funding with which to promote shows and pay artists, augmented by ticket sales to non-members.  That sounded pretty good to me, so along with my better half I signed up, and in early 2014 we attended the launch event, which included sets by some excellent Scottish artists I hadn't encountered before, like Jed Potts & The Hillman Hunters (pictured below).  Over the coming years the club would provide exposure for many more local musicians, but also touring artists from Britain and further afield – Ireland, the States, Denmark and Australia, for example – including some of the artists I was reading about in The Blues Magazine.  It was an unfolding treasure trove, if you like, an opportunity to see some greats artists up and close and personal, and a pathway to seeing artists in other venues in Scotland and beyond.  And of course I was buying albums by many of these artists, exposing myself to the whole landscape of blues music, its sister soul music, funk, roots music generally, and of course blues-rock – which you might say is where I came in.
As the months passed by in 2014, I began to feel an itch to write about this contemporary blues scene in some way.  This desire went back a long way, to when I was in my teens and an avid reader of the “inkies”, Britain’s weekly music papers.  My favourite was Sounds, which always catered pretty well to fans of hard rock and metal, but I would regularly dip into Melody Maker,

Jed Potts & The Hillman Hunters - Edinburgh Blues Club launch artists

Pic by Mark Holloway

NME and Record Mirror if I saw something of interest.  Could I now do what I’d have loved to do back then, and write some stuff about music, maybe for The Blues Magazine?
I submitted a couple of live reviews, but got no response.  Maybe the artists weren’t of interest, maybe the writing wasn’t great, or maybe they didn’t fit with the print deadlines, who knows?  Whatever, having started to put metaphorical pen to paper, I decided to have a go at writing a blog about blues music for a while, in the absence of an outlet elsewhere.  (I’d tried my hand at writing a music blog titled A New Day Yesterday a few years previously, but ran out of steam after a few months.)  So on 28 November 2014 I posted the first introductory piece, Journey To The Blues #1, and the next day my first live review, of London-based Detroiter Marcus Malone and his band playing in Edinburgh – and very good they were too, though the review was pretty perfunctory.  Still, the blog was now up and running.
I still hadn’t given up on The Blues Magazine though.  Having got no traction with live reviews, I submitted brief pieces on a couple of recent releases to the Reviews Editor, Henry Yates – one of Heavy Love by Duke Garwood, and the other of Modern Blues by The Waterboys.  And hey, I got a reply!  Henry said he couldn’t use them, as I really didn’t seem to like the Garwood album, and he felt the Waterboys’ album wasn’t bluesy enough.*  But he said he’d add me to his reviewers list, and get in touch again in the near future, which sounded promising.  In the meantime, I reworked the Duke Garwood and Waterboys reviews for the blog, to keep up the momentum with it.

Newly discovered gem Curtis Salgado

Henry did indeed get back to me, resulting in my first review for The Blues Magazine appearing in May 2015’s Issue 21, of the album Way Down South by Brazil’s Igor Prado Band and Delta Groove All Stars.  It was all of 140 words, but it was still a little thrill for a wannabe writer.
For the next year and a bit I continued to have one or more reviews published in each issue, often of artists I’d never heard of, some of them bang average, but some of them gems, like Malcolm Holcombe and Curtis Salgado. But it was all positive, in a minor way, encouraging me to the point that I successfully pitched a ‘Bluesbreakers’ profile of promising Edinburgh semi-acoustic trio The Rising Souls, which was published in December 2015.  Hell, I even got paid!  (Though not a lot.)
Sadly though, The Blues Magazine came to a sudden halt in after Issue 31 was published in July 2016, when the owners went bust.  After that I did stints reviewing albums for Blues Matters and the American online magazine Blues Rock Review, but one way and another it wasn’t quite the same.  I’d been keeping Blues Enthused on the go throughout though, and as I was now receiving press releases and review copies directly from publicists, record labels and independent artists there was plenty of material to generate album reviews, live reviews, interviews and other features.
So now here we are, ten whole years down the line from the start of Blues Enthused, and even longer since I first started to pursue my interest in the Blues.  It was a project really, to satisfy my curiosity about the origins of a lot of the music I loved, and it’s been a fascinating tour around the many different rooms in the House of Blues.
 
*Henry was dead right about the Duke Garwood album – that was really the point of the review.  I’d bought it on the strength of a positive write-up in the Guardian, and it was so downright depressing that I wanted to offer my own assessment.  He was probably also right that the Waterboys album wasn’t really blues in nature – but it’s a bloody good album all the same.

Davy Knowles - The Invisible Man

I don't follow the doings of Davy Knowles all that closely, to be honest, although I did think his last album What Happens Next was pretty good stuff when it came my way back in 2021.  The Manxman is based in Chicago, and doesn’t seem to venture over to Britain that often so, y’know, out of sight is out of mind and all that – which is kinda apt when his new album is titled The Invisible Man.  But when I heard the title track on YouTube Mr Knowles came right back into focus.
‘The Invisible Man’ is a slow number with a simple, stumbling kinda riff, over which our Davy adds some brooding licks.  But the thing that really grabbed me on that first listen was Knowles’

Davy Knowles strolling' the blues

vocal, which is expressive and emotive, digging into the intriguing lyric and just getting more resonant as the song progresses.  The arrangement has ear-catching dynamics, and there’s a thematic guitar break which, on a second turn around the block, opens out into an evocative solo.  Put simply, the whole thing works like a charm.
But if the title track is a dark and moody affair, the dominant vibe of the album is actually pretty upbeat, the tone set beautifully by the opener ‘Good To Know Ya’.  It’s a lightly funky thing, with brightly skipping guitar and a warm, easy-going vocal from Knowles that delivers an uplifting, open-hearted message about engaging with others: “I’ve never been the kind to walk by without a smile and a wave / And I’ve never understood those who look down their nose all the way”.
‘Around Here’ is also a tune to put a spring in your step, with its briskly revolving, Celtic-sounding riff that points firmly towards his Rory Gallagher influence.  It bounces along eagerly, with a catchy melody over a snapping beat from Mike Hansen, and Knowles’ incisive, ducking and diving solo is bracketed by a strong, measured bridge featuring a nice ‘Hey Joe’-like bass line from Tod Bowers before resolving into crashing guitar chords and cymbals. ‘Running Out Of Moonlight’ is snappy stuff too, with its jangling, quick-quick-slow riff and cantering tempo, punctuated by tumbles of drums from Hansen and sporting some zippy rock’n’roll soloing from Knowles.  
There are couple of tracks with a relaxed John Mellencamp vibe too, in the swinging ‘All My Life’ with its cheerful guitar refrain, and ‘You Love The Rain’ with its sprightly, chiming guitar belying the title, and another characterful vocal from Knowles in a lower register.  And ‘One Wrong Move’, with its spangly twirl-and-stab guitar, even delves into classic guitar-driven pop akin to The Pretenders when they were back on that chain gang.
He still manages to conjure up more variety though.  ‘Welcome To The Real World’ starts out languid, with halting chords over a quietly shimmering guitar backdrop for the verses.  It climbs into a more emotive chorus with something of a ‘Take Me To The River’ undercurrent, decorated with dabs of mournful guitar, and slows for a romantic guitar solo to polish it further. ‘No More To Weep’ chucks a slow blues into the equation, a darker tune with a low-slung tramp of a riff and another demonstrative, articulate vocal.  The aching chorus is embroidered with subtle, counterpointing guitar licks, and Knowles executes a couple of lyrically bluesy solos to put some icing on the cake.  Then the closing ‘Wonder You Are’ adds a final touch, a hushed and atmospheric love song centred on acoustic strumming and picking with just strokes of drums and minimal bass, and gilded by delicate slide shadings.
The Invisible Man is a really refreshing listen, for the songwriting, for Knowles’ admirable guitar work, and perhaps especially for the quality and diversity of his vocals, making the most of different styles of song.*  Wanna perk up your day?  Here’s the very tonic.
 
The Invisible Man is out now, and can be ordered here.

*As I suggested in this piece a while back, the singing and the song are really the heart of the matter.