Kirk Fletcher - Heartache By The Pound

The song remains the same, in that Kirk Fletcher continues to be one of the premier exponents of blues guitar out there.
It really doesn’t matter what kind of song it is, Fletcher’s guitar work is the most delicious icing, and indeed cherry, on the cake.  There’s the sparkling and relaxed ‘Shine A Light On Love’, with its slinky horns and the lift given by Jade MacRae in the middle, around which he wraps a jaunty, twisting and turning solo, and some dazzling extra licks besides.  There’s the smoky ballad ‘The

Kirk Fletcher - he knows what to do with that thing in his mitts

Pic by Mitch Conrad

Night’s Calling For You’, a tale of regret about relationship misdemeanours culminating in the moment when a lover “found about me and your very best friend”, the mood set by subtle piano and organ and then crystallised in Fletcher’s delicate, lyrical solo – and stiffened by a very Whitesnakey little background riff that slides into earshot halfway through.  Or there’s the ultra-twangy Carl Perkins-like rock’n’roll picking on ‘Wildcat Tamer’, a slice of fun that sounds straight out of mid-50s Memphis.
I could point to the way the simple, melancholy ‘I Can’t Find No Love’ is elevated by a solo that takes the melody into a different dimension.  Oh, I just did, didn’t I?  And on the closing ‘Hope For Us’, all concerned ramp up the tension before he takes off into a stunner of a solo, culminating in a segment like showers of sparks falling from the sky.
Best of all though, is the brace of songs in the middle of the album.  ‘Wrapped Up, Tangled In The Blues’ is an infectious tune, soulful but enlivened by a spiky, pinging riff, and it’s just not enough to say that Fletcher’s stinging outro solo sounds effortless.  It’s a high-wire, turn-on-a-dime affair, and whatever other metaphors you fancy.  Then he follows that with ‘Wrong Kind Of Love’, its tickling drums and rubber band bass augmented by funky rhythm guitar, the vocal counterpointed by conversational licks en route to another crackling, jaw-dropping solo – though it fades out rather than, as I’d have preferred, reaching for a big climax.
The song doesn’t remain the same, in that while his 2020 outing My Blues Pathway was peppered with songs about asserting oneself and one’s worth, this time around the subject matter is often – well, heartache, but sometimes also the possibility of music as a means of escape, redemption, transcendence.  Or whatever.  Gotta say, I find the notion of Kirk Fletcher as a cheatin’ heart a bit of a stretch.  But hey, dramatic licence and all that, and most of these songs about love’s labour lost hit the spot in terms of mood.
The song remains the same, in that here and there Fletcher falls a little short on the vocal front.  I’m damn sure he’s worked on his singing over the years – he’d be a fool not to – but it’s still not his forte.  There are times when he sounds entirely at home – ‘Wrapped Up’ and ‘Wildcat Tamer’ being prime examples.  But the wavering opening lines of ‘Night By Myself’ plant a gremlin in the back of the mind, tensing for further moments – though in fairness he just about gets away with it most of the time.  If only he had the velvety vocal control of a Robert Cray, or the zip and personality of a Joe Louis Walker, Kirk Fletcher would be an even stronger force to be reckoned with.
Still, as someone once said, “a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for”, and Kirk Fletcher is still stretching and striving to be as good as he can be.  Meantime, there’s no doubt that he’s a sublime guitar player, as Heartache By The Pound once again makes clear.
 
Heartache By The Pound is out now on Ogierea Records, and can be ordered here.

Kirk Fletcher - My Blues Pathway

Given that Kirk Fletcher is known first and foremost as a standout blues guitarist, it may seem odd to kick off a review of his latest album by talking about lyrics.  But hey, stick with me a minute here, huh?

Seems to me there’s a theme that emerges from a few songs on My Blues Pathway.  ‘Struggle For Grace’ is about the challenge of pushing troubles aside to make the best of yourself.  The Sonny Boy Williamson cover ‘Fattening Frogs For Snakes’ is about no longer doing the hard graft only for others to reap the benefit.  And in selecting Chris Cain’s ‘Place In This World Somewhere’, Fletcher also makes an assertive statement about the day-to-day trials of trying to

You're holding that guitar all wrong you know, Kirk.

Pic by Rick Gould

carve out a space for yourself.  It sounds to me like our Kirk is expressing a determination to make his musical efforts count, to be seen not just as a guy who “coulda bin somebody”, but as an artist whose work really does get attention.

Well, I reckon that with My Blues Pathway Fletcher shows that at his best he’s not just an outstanding blues guitarist, he’s an out of this world blues guitarist.  The first time I saw him live he blew me away, and several tracks here attain that same rarefied level.  This is a guy who can play within the constraints of the blues framework, but also come at you from fresh angles – and without resorting to raw speed.

Take ‘Struggle For Grace’.  On a fluid intro Fletcher effortlessly evokes BB King, all sweetness.  He gets his lyrical point across with a strong vocal, and then moaning horns create a floating backdrop for a fluttering solo of terrific control and lightness.  The outro shows his mastery of tension and release too, but that’s just a warm-up for what he does on the later ‘Heart So Heavy’.  Another self-penned song, it’s a classic slow blues in a minor key, featuring lots of interaction between his soulful vocal and responsive guitar licks.  Then Fletcher produces a couple of solos that go from teasing restraint, hanging back and hanging back, into sudden shifts of gear into higher revolutions, while he adds in twists and turns to wrongfoot you in the most beguiling way.

He can do this on more upbeat stuff too, like the funky cover of sax player AC Reed’s ‘Rather Fight Than Switch’, on which fun guitar breaks abound as he grabs your ear with an unusual wobbly guitar tone, and horns come in to fatten up the song for a bright ending.  Or the way he plays around with a discordant riff on the Texas blues-styled ‘D Is For Denny’, a tribute to his friend Denny Freeman on which some combinations of notes are enough to make me wonder if Fletcher is playing two guitars at once.  Meantime, on the light and breezy funk of ‘Place In This World Somewhere’, his solo plays around with the melody in a way that serves the song beautifully, before he conjures up some jazzy handbrake turns en route to a brief, bleeping fade-out.

‘Place In This World Somewhere’ is, however, one of the occasions when Fletcher sounds out of his comfort zone vocally, as is also the case on the single ‘No Place To Go’.  But he's more at home on the smoothly funky Robert Cray-style blues of the opening ‘Ain’t No Cure For Downhearted’ – also featuring a zippily neat and precise solo – and the gospel-tinged soulfulness of ‘Love Is More Than A Word’, and elsewhere he produces the most confident vocals I’ve heard from him to date, not least on the aforementioned ‘Heart So Heavy’.  And he relaxes nicely into the closing ‘Life Gave Me A Dirty Deal’, a simple old-style blues based on just guitars and harp, on which he’s content to yield the instrumental foreground to Josh Smith on resonator guitar and Charlie Musselwhite on harp – the latter stealing the show.

My Blues Pathway isn’t end-to-end brilliant - it takes a few songs to get up a head of steam, and there are those dips vocally.  But when it’s good it’s bloody marvellous, with strong songs and arrangements - and get ready to prick up your ears for some truly great guitar playing.

My Blues Pathway is released by Cleopatra Records on 25 September

Shirley King - Blues For A King

As the daughter of BB King, Shirley King may have the blues in her blood, but her first career was as a nightclub dancer, and it wasn’t until 1990, when she’d reached her forties, that she took up singing.  And here she is on this latest release, predominantly comprised of covers, still showing some impressive vocal power as she’s backed up by a range of featured guest guitarists.

King’s preferred vocal setting seems to be the kind of R’n’B raunch she heard in her youth from Etta James, which is certainly in evidence on a reading of ‘That’s Alright Mama’, replete with high-revving guitar from Pat Travers.  But the songs on offer here range more widely than that.

The album opens with the retro soul sound of ‘All Of My Lovin’’, on which she captures the vibe

Shirley King - feelin' alright at the mic

well against a backdrop of chiming rhythm guitar chords, a bumping bass line reminiscent of ‘You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’’, and pinging guitar licks from Joe Louis Walker.  And highlights include the languid blues of ‘I Did You Wrong’, delivered with superb control by King and subtle guitar elaborations from Elvin Bishop that show off his terrific blues feel, and the Steve Winwood song ‘Can’t Find My Way Home’, on which King ventures into soulful Shemekia Copeland territory to the accompaniment of fluid, deliciously-toned pinpoint embroidery from Martin Barre.

There are Latin undertones to another Traffic song, ‘Feelin’ Alright’, on which a stuttering piano motif also manages to swing with the assistance of the rhythm section, while Duke Robillard adds economical injections of guitar to complement King’s muscular vocal.  Meanwhile ‘Give It All Up’ brings strings and subtle horns to bear on a Motown-ish vibe that hangs on a poppy descending riff, augmented by some suitably neat guitar from Kirk Fletcher.  And ‘Johnny Porter’, a Temptations hit that comes over like an ersatz ‘Papa Was A Rolling Stone’, is put across stridently with some effective call and response vocals between King and Arthur Adams.

Some choices seem over-ambitious though.  A straight reading of Nina Simone’s ‘Feeling Good’ benefits from some tasteful guitar courtesy of Robben Ford, but while King’s singing is gutsy it doesn’t carry the assertive clarity of Simone.  The treatment of the old classic ‘Gallows Pole’ lacks the urgency and imagination of the Zeppelin version, despite some Ennio Morricone-esque guitar soloing from Harvey Mandel, while King’s vocal has a tendency to wobble at the bottom end of her range – and in truth there are several points across the album where she hits some wonky notes that should really have been fixed with overdubs.  She’s better though on ‘Hoodoo Man Blues’, inhabiting a suitably bluesy space while Joe Louis Walker delivers another crackling demonstration of electric blues guitar.  The oddity here though, is that Junior Wells also contributes vocally, notwithstanding his death in 1998.  Presumably his vocal track from way back when was exhumed for the purpose, though there’s no trumpeting of that approach.

The album closes with King’s take on Etta James’ ‘At Last’, another bold choice which she delivers adequately, though the sweet strings and simple piano chords aren’t quite matched by King, who remains more comfortable in rasping-Etta rather than yearning-Etta mode.

Blues For A King is an enjoyable album, if somewhat patchy.  Shirley King has been well served by the various guest artists, but I can’t help thinking that a little more care could have been taken over the production of her vocals, in order to show her at her best.  The blues feeling is there, but it could have been captured more effectively.

Blues For A King was released by Cleopatra Blues on 19 June.

Kirk Fletcher - Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh, 28 September 2016

Tricky things, expectations.  Just look at the US Presidential election debate, where Democrats worried that if Donald Trump managed just to string some coherent sentences together people might think he’d done great.

In the case of Kirk Fletcher, my expectations were set a couple of years ago.  The last time I saw him, I felt like I was being dive-bombed by a blues guitarist from another dimension.  And I’m not talking meandering jazzy improvisation.  I’m talking breakneck twists and turns, solos that shake your body – fireworks.

So the bar was set damned high for this gig, and if Kirk Fletcher didn’t quite hit those heights for me tonight it was still a cracking performance, and one that had an impact on fellow punters similar to my previous experience.  And while I only know what the impact is on me as a non-musician, the word is that guitarists in the audience were left speechless.

Kirk Fletcher - genial and light-fingered

If ‘Sidetracked’ is a fun opener, ‘Funnybone’ cranks things up a gear and, after a good solo from compadre Dudley Ross, Fletcher bit by bit gets down and dirty in response.  On the Latin groove of ‘Congo Square’ Ross takes another solo, before Fletcher shows off some incredibly light chords.  Ross underpins this with some organ effects on rhythm guitar, and Daniel John takes a quick drum solo, but the abiding impression is of Fletcher’s lightness of touch, especially with his left hand as it flutters over the fretboard.

Fletcher is a genial, smiling figure, and generous too in the number of soloing opportunities he gives to Dudley Ross, but on ‘Natural Anthem’ Fletcher trumps him by showing off some jazzy moves.  I should say that the last time I saw them play together I thought Ross was rather in awe of Fletcher, but tonight he really goes for it.

Things get a bit safe on a slow blues mid-set, and I do wonder whether Fletcher is in his comfort zone too often tonight.  But things get revved up a bit by the boogie of ‘Sad Sad Sad’, on which Fletcher gets down to serious business again before handing over to John McKinsey for a bass solo.

Fletcher’s main challenge though, is his vocals.  Most of the time he manages something serviceable of an Albert King/Albert Collins nature, but on the slowie ‘The Answer’ his voice wanders off key big time.  He’s capable of doing it right, but it certainly needs work, and it’s maybe the prime example of where he needs to get out of that comfort zone.  He didn’t become a sublime guitarist without hard work, and the same should apply to his singing.

Whatever, he gets stuck in down the home straight, delivering some pyrotechnics on ‘Baby Baby’, and having a ball working around the rousing riff of ‘El Medio Stomp’, which assuredly gets everyone going.  ‘Let Me Have It All’ rounds things off with some great funky interplay between the whole band.

Meanwhile, Edinburgh blues guitar honcho Sandy Tweeddale, often seen revving it up with Blues’N’Trouble, delivers the goods in the support slot with a trio apparently put together that afternoon with minimal rehearsal.  So full credit to Will Molleson on drums and Chris Agnew on bass, because the joins were scarcely visible as they scootered through a selection of covers, with Tweeddale showing off a variety of guitar styles along the way.

Highlights include a reading of ‘Every Day I Got The Blues’ that has bags of swing, not least from the rhythm section.  Tweeddale goes all country on ‘Jailhouse Blues’, bringing back happy memories of Naayshville.  A slide-driven, twangy rendition of ‘Rock Me Baby’ takes a new approach to the song, with great syncopation from Molleson, and on Junior Wells’ ‘Little By Little’ Tweeddale produces a fiery, guttural attack worthy of Wells’ sidekick Buddy Guy.  Seeing local musos throw it together with so little rehearsal, to such good effect, is a pleasure.

Kirk Fletcher - Burning Blues - Live At The Baked Potato

I've seen Kirk Fletcher play live, and he's a jaw dropping guitarist.  Joe Bonamassa may be prone to tossing his patronage around like confetti, but his remark that Kirk Fletcher is "hands down, one of the best blues guitarists in the world" may conceivably have a point.  Unfortunately, this self-released live set recorded in LA in 2013 doesn't really do him justice.

Kirk Fletcher takes a load off

Six of the eleven tracks here are instrumentals, perhaps reflecting the fact that Kirk's vocals are in the Albert King vein, serviceable in terms of swing, but short on power.  And in any event where there are vocals they really just provide a frame for the accompanying instrumental workouts.
The former Fabulous Thunderbird gives a heavy nod towards his Texas blues connection with the opening, Freddie King-ish 'Funnybone', and a subsequent cover of Stevie Ray Vaughan's slow blues 'Lenny'.  The former takes off from a likeable theme into a leaping, jazzy guitar solo, followed by an organ solo played out over funky drums.  The latter is subtle and restrained, before building into a wig-out guitar solo.
Highlights include the gentle and soulful Bobby Womack cover 'I'm In Love', with a swelling keyboard solo, the funkier, Latin-style 'Congo Square'.  The closing 'Ain't No Way' displays a more relaxed, confident vocal, and solos that are punctuated by dynamic riffing that exemplify the balance in Fletcher's playing.  As someone once said of Rory Gallagher, he seems to have he happy knack of being able to play the rhythm and lead parts at the same time.
Essentially, the production is under-powered.  The jazzy drums are high in the mix, but much of the time the bass seems to be buried, so that when it does jab through it comes as a surprise.  The audience reaction is scarcely audible, which is bizarre considering the impact I've seen him have playing live.  A studio engineer friend suggests it has been recorded direct from the desk, which would explain the lack of ambience.
There's a great album to be had from Kirk Fletcher, in the hands of a sympathetic producer - this is just an audition.