Future Juke preview - A Festival of 21st Century Blues

There’s this Future Juke Festival coming up at a handful of venues in London in the next week, in case you hadn’t noticed.  So I thought I’d pitch in with some thoughts on a few of the acts I’ve tripped over previously.  Well why not?

Eli “Paperboy” Reed could well be one of the highlights of the week at the 100 Club on 4 June, judging by the urgent, sometimes gospel-inflected, Sixties-style soul of his 2016 album My Way Home.  If Samantha Fish took Detroit R’n’B mini-epics of love and rejection, and re-tooled them for the 21st century on her album Chills & Fever, Reed’s style is a throwback to the old days, with

Eli "Paperboy" Reed up close and personal

a reverb-drenched production where you can practically hear scratches on 45rpm vinyl.

The energy levels are intense on the likes of ‘Cut Ya Down’, but he also pulls off sweetly Sam Cooke-ish soul on both ‘Tomorrow’s Not Promised’ and the title track, with its gospel choir like backing vocals.  It’s worth bearing in mind that in addition to spending a year or so imbibing the blues in Clarksdale, Bostonian Reed played organ and piano in a Chicago church alongside noted soul singer Mitty Collier, so he knows his onions, and it’s apparent here.

‘The Strangest Thing’ is rock’n’rollin’ testification, while ‘A Few More Days’ has a dash of funk with its cocky guitar riffing.  And throughout it all Reed delivers vocals that are raw and convincing, with controlled melisma – and it’s not all boy/girl, moon/June soul subject matter by the way.

There are people who rave about the soul of our own James Hunter Six, but frankly they’re smooth operaters compared to Reed’s fervent reawakening of the Sixties.

One of the other main events is the outing at Dingwall’s on 1 June by Californian Grammy Award winner Fantastic Negrito, and you can find a review of his upcoming third record Please Don’t Be Dead here – with links to coverage of his two previous efforts.  But he’s also supported by British trio Miraculous Mule, so what are they all about?

Well, I’m not yet acquainted with their latest album Two Tonne Testimony.  But back in 2015 I came across their back-to-basics reading of ‘In My Time Of Dying’ on a covermount tribute CD to Physical Graffiti produced by Mojo magazine. On the strength of that I got hold of a couple of their albums, Blues Uzi and Deep Fried, which showed them offering a few different modes of

Miraculous Mule get spiritual

bluesiness.

First and foremost perhaps, they have a penchant for traditional spirituals and folk songs of the kind you might expect from Blind Boys Of Alabama, but often with a British sensibility that’s sometimes modern and edgy, sometimes dead straight. So they do a delightful version of ‘Wayfaring Stranger’ that sounds like it’s straight out of the British Blues Boom by someone like The Animals.

Or there’s their minimalist take on the 19th century hymn ‘I Know I’ve Been Changed’ – also recorded by Aaron Neville – where the lead vocal is backed by little more than low key guitar and choral backing voices, with sporadic handclaps – a template they exploit more than a little.  But they might also produce something like ‘Satisfied’, with its guitar buzzing like a jarful of wasps behind the favoured device of a hypnotically repetitive, work song-like vocal refrain.

Then again, stuff like ‘Highway Song’ offers a blissed-out wah-wah trip that’s all Swinging Sixties London, whether in the hands of envelope-pushing Brits or Hendrix, who’s also echoed in the ‘Crosstown Traffic’ style riffing they bring to the gospel of ‘I’m A Soldier’ (aka 'Soldier For Jesus', a song often played to great effect by electric blues icon Joe Louis Walker). Or in another vein altogether you might get some country blues with clanking percussion a la Lincoln Durham, as on ‘Blues Uzi’.

On 31 May Brighton’s Mudlow are part of a three-part bill at The Islington. Their retrospective collection Waiting For The Tide To Rise opens with the well gutsy ‘Down In The Snow’, which features a guttural, ‘Peter Gunn’ style riff accompanied by swelling horns, gruff barked vocals and a down-in-the-dirt guitar solo from Tobias Tester, plus a tasteful trumpet break,  But for the

most part it's a three-piece affair, with a few interjections of harp and horns.

Sometimes this means down to earth grunginess on the likes of ‘Drunken Turkey’, with the howling vocals sounding like a herniated Screaming Jay Hawkins, or a North Mississippi vibe on ‘So Long Lee’ with its rolling guitar line.  Often it's dark, contemplative Americana, maybe haunting as on ‘The Jester’ with its twanging, spaced out guitar notes and tickled piano. Some of this, to be honest, can start to seem a bit earnest and sombre, though Tester does turn his hand to a good Tom Waits-like vocal along the way.

Personally I like them best on the likes of ‘Stubb’s Yard’, which has a jaunty Delta simplicity to it that’s redolent of Frank Frost and Sam Carr.  Or on ‘Codename: Toad’, which has an air of Feelgood but more primitive – although they take their foot off the pedal a bit, rather than ramming it home in the way Wilko, Lee and co would have done.  Hopefully they’ll give stuff like this a bit more welly live.

But what do I know? There are other acts out there during Future Juke, billed as a Festival of 21st Century blues.  Go see, go hear!

Physical Graffiti Redrawn – Give A Little Respect?

Cover versions of familiar songs always present artists with a challenge.  Should they stick, and remain faithful to the original?  Or should they twist, and try to re-imagine it in some way?

This dilemma becomes especially interesting with a tribute album like Physical Graffiti Redrawn, issued with the latest edition of Mojo, celebrating the 40th anniversary of Zeppelin’s classic double album.  How do you go about re-tooling songs like these?  How much of the structure do you retain?  Are there segments you feel comfortable jettisoning or re-working without confounding the listener’s expectations?  Happily, while some of the efforts on show here work better than others, none are real duds – and some even manage to reveal more about the originals.

Miraculous Mule - getting radical

White Denim and Blackberry Smoke open the proceedings with satisfactorily straightforward versions of ‘Custard Pie’ and ‘The Rover’, largely confining themselves to a few curve balls here and there, and then some experimentation in ‘outro’ territory.  White Denim throw some different sonic effects into the mix, while Smoke extend proceedings to allow for some guitar harmonies and duelling.

Some of the most interesting readings are more radical though.  Londoners Miraculous Mule (pictured left) take a pair of shears to ‘In My Time Of Dying’ for example, lopping off half its length.  The Mules capture the core of the original in just three minutes, eschewing the languid slide and repetitions of the original in favour of their own atmospheric intro, followed by pounding riffs alternating with thrumming energy.  Then they top it off with a closing section that reflects their own fascination with gospel and work songs, expressing their own personality without being self-indulgent.

Son Little (pictured below) goes even further, with a genre-switching, de-funked ‘Trampled Under Foot’, re-styled as a slowed-down and sultry slice of soul.  The Philadelphian has some voice, and uses it to scorching effect here, conjuring up a slow burning, up close and personal seduction.  It may not be out and out blues, but it’s enough to suggest a listen to his 2014 EP, ‘Things I Forgot’ may be warranted.

Malian combo Songhoy Blues tackle the mountain that is ‘Kashmir’, and if there’s not much they can do to break free of those byzantine riffs, they still manage to get on top of the song, partly by toning down the instrumentation to their fuzzy, desert blues style, and partly by playing a Joker - an entirely new vocal delivered in their native tongue rather than English!

Son Little, aka Aaron Livingston

If those are the highlights, the second half of the album takes an interesting turn, as several contributors opt for a wistful, sometimes introspective approach that fits the material like a glove.  Max Jury delivers a lilting ‘Down By The Seaside’ with tasteful rolling piano, even more delicate than the original.  Rose Windows introduce a flute part into some hazy, jazzy passages in ‘The Wanton Song’, albeit also letting rip with a squally, fuzzed up guitar break.  And Hiss Golden Messenger take a sunny, Californian troubadour tack on ‘Black Country Woman’.  Heck, even Duke Garwood, whose latest album I slated here recently, does a good job on ‘Night Flight’:  a clacking rhythm evokes a slow train rolling through the night, to which he adds rumbling, moody guitar.  I’ve often thought there’s something a little bit downbeat to the tail end of Physical Graffiti, and these versions underscore that thought.

Oh yes, and there’s a crisp, witty little take on ‘Boogie With Stu’ from Kitty, Daisy and Lewis.  Often regarded as the ugly duckling of the album, here it’s translated to guitar, and leavened with a nod to the clavinet phrase from ‘Trampled Under Foot’.

As these kinds of classic album reboots go, Physically Graffiti Redrawn is about as good as it gets.  Credit to Mojo for putting it together.