Big Bones is my mentor. My inspiration. In many ways, he is my origin story.
We have gotten along, and we haven’t. He’s been successful, on top of the world. And then not. I too have had my ups and downs. We’ve gone years without speaking, and we’ve watched Bruce Lee movies together on a VCR plugged into a generator while shivering away in a 1968 Dodge Pace Arrow parked in a fog bank on the Grapevine in the middle of the night en route to a gig at B.B. King’s club.
It’s almost impossible to imagine, but I’ve known Bones almost 30 years.
As Bones pointed out to me in a late night text after midnight last night, the last time he was in Memphis was with a misfit blues band somewhere around 1996 or 1997.
That band was Preacher Boy and The Natural Blues.
Go back to Memphis Big Bones. It’s going to be wonderful!
Click the album cover below to hear a Preacher Boy and The Natural Blues song featuring Big Bones. And then wish Bones very well on his way back to Memphis!
Special nods of appreciation and admiration to Coyote Slim, Chicken & Dumpling, John Maxwell, and Country Pete. More to come about you soon, but suffice it to say, I am humbled and honored.
Oakland. My former home. The Oakland of a long-gone Navy. The Oakland of Ken Stabler. The Oakland of Eli’s.
To misquote that English bluesman (for that is, in so many ways, what I think he really is) Billy Bragg, “I don’t want to change the world, I’m just looking for a new Oakland…”
I and you and we will find a new Oakland Thursday night. A blues Oakland. A solo Oakland. A duo Oakland.
(To find out more details about this event, please click here. You’ll be taken to a Facebook Events Page)
We will be the Oakland of Your Place Too and Flint’s. And we will be the Oakland of The Terrace Room.
What follows are 9 Reasons you should be in this Oakland/that Oakland Thursday night. These 9 reasons are an aggregation of what was once 7 reasons, then appended with an 8th, and now modified to include a 9th.
*Historical Note: The James Brown chord is a 9th.
Read on, and dig.
(and if you’re already familiar with reasons 1-8, then get on to the end of this post and dig Number 9. Number 9. Number 9. Number 9…)
REASON ONE:
Because, what is blues? Blues is not some chump in a designer suit in front of a wall of amps playing “tributes” to a huge crowd of $100 ticket holders in a theater. Blues is a person, and people. Blues is raw. Blues is an instrument with a sound, in hands with a feel, below a voice with a power. It is not whispered. It is music for all generations, played where there is food and drink and diapers and bottles and laughing and talking and dancing and silence and nothingness and just being present. It is not the cry of an oppressed people any more than it is formulaic entertainment. It is American Haiku with a thumb pick. It is slightly dangerous and very funny and a bit about fucking but also the strange intelligence of old people and the smell of swamps and the in-the-momentness of monks. This is REASON ONE to attend this event. Because you will hear boots stomp to the raw sound of American Mojo Haiku Swamp Songs.
REASON TWO: Coyote Slim. Because of all the above. Because he’s the real deal. Because he plays farmers’ markets, and is grateful about it. Because he cares about his clothes because he respects his opportunities. Because his bio says he’s an arborist. Because he understands how to sing, and why it’s important. Because you should listen to Coyote Slim. Because he has R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Because when he plays and sings, the sound is alive. This is REASON TWO why you should attend this event.
REASON THREE: John Maxwell. Because his latest album has him playing “Let The Mermaids Flirt With Me.” Which is one of the greatest not-as-well-known performances Mississippi John Hurt ever recorded. Because he plays a slide guitar version of “St. James Infirmary.” Because CD Baby says he’s recommended if you like Leon Redbone. This is REASON THREE why you should attend this event.
REASON FOUR: Chicken & Dumpling. Because they’re called Chicken & Dumpling. This is REASON FOUR why you should attend this event.
REASON FIVE:
Country Pete McGill. Because Holy Crap, check him out:
And THAT … is REASON FIVE to attend this event.
REASON SIX: Preacher Boy. Yours truly. I’m writing this, so I can’t say anything about myself, but I’m a reason to come all the same. So I am REASON SIX to attend this event.
REASON SEVEN:
A reviewer once wrote of one of my albums that I sung every word as if I were about to expire. I was very proud of that review. I still try to sing that way, and some day, I’ll be right. Your life is a choice, too. Every moment of it. Is your past impacting your present right now? It is. So the past is here right now. And of course the present is here right now. And is what you’re doing right now going to impact the future? Of course it is. So the future is here too. Which means now really is the only moment. So I sing that way. And on the evening of September 10th, it will be your only moment, and you can do with that what you will, but I hope you choose to attend this event, because that will illustrate and exemplify what you care about. That you care about realness. That you care about hearing skin on brass. Boot on floor. That you care about the actual sound of a throat framing the word “down.” That you know all soulful people wear groovy shoes. It will show that you’re a Blues Monk Haiku Zen Blues Master with big mojo. And you want to be that don’t you? Because you want to be close enough to reach out and touch the musician, but you won’t, because you won’t need to.
Due largely to when and where I was born, I haven’t had too many flesh-and-blood musical teachers. My Grandpa certainly, from whom I received my Nationals. But that’s very nearly it. Certainly I’ve had friends, peers, fellow musicians that I’ve learned uncountable amounts from, but I like to think/hope those are give-and-take relationships.
By and large, my teachers have been recordings and books. Vinyl releases from Vanguard, Takoma, Arhoolie. Books by Samuel Charters, David Evans, Stefan Grossman. And of course, the music. This has been my true teacher. The music of Bukka White, Sleepy John Estes, Charley Patton, Son House, Blind Willie Johnson, Robert Pete Williams, and so, so, so many more.
There is one exception to the above, however. There is one teacher, one flesh-and-blood teacher, at whose knee I have genuinely studied. His name is Big Bones.
I’ve told the tale too many times to merit repeating here, but suffice it to say Big Bones looms large in my life. I played with him for the first time on a street corner in Berkeley, some 25 years ago. We’ve gone years in silence since, intermingled with long, strange, beautiful and hard hours, days, weeks, months on the road together. We’ve driven to Arkansas, flown to Amsterdam, sailed to Ireland.
Through the strange machinations of fate, I am not scheduled to play WITH Big Bones that night. Rather, I am scheduled to compete AGAINST him. This is of course ridiculous. I could sooner eat dinosaur marrow w/ mole sauce than compete with Bones.
The event is of course not a competition of any kind, really. It is a celebration of a raw, urgent, vital music. A music that lives fully within the boundaries of Big Bones.
Due largely to when and where I was born, I haven’t had too many flesh-and-blood musical teachers. My Grandpa certainly, from whom I received my Nationals. But that’s very nearly it. Certainly I’ve had friends, peers, fellow musicians that I’ve learned uncountable amounts from, but I like to think/hope those are give-and-take relationships.
By and large, my teachers have been recordings and books. Vinyl releases from Vanguard, Takoma, Arhoolie. Books by Samuel Charters, David Evans, Stefan Grossman. And of course, the music. This has been my true teacher. The music of Bukka White, Sleepy John Estes, Charley Patton, Son House, Blind Willie Johnson, Robert Pete Williams, and so, so, so many more.
There is one exception to the above, however. There is one teacher, one flesh-and-blood teacher, at whose knee I have genuinely studied. His name is Big Bones.
I’ve told the tale too many times to merit repeating here, but suffice it to say Big Bones looms large in my life. I played with him for the first time on a street corner in Berkeley, some 25 years ago. We’ve gone years in silence since, intermingled with long, strange, beautiful and hard hours, days, weeks, months on the road together. We’ve driven to Arkansas, flown to Amsterdam, sailed to Ireland.
Through the strange machinations of fate, I am not scheduled to play WITH Big Bones that night. Rather, I am scheduled to compete AGAINST him. This is of course ridiculous. I could sooner eat dinosaur marrow w/ mole sauce than compete with Bones.
The event is of course not a competition of any kind, really. It is a celebration of a raw, urgent, vital music. A music that lives fully within the boundaries of Big Bones.
I invite you to join me for this extraordinary event. It will be memorable.
The perfect road song is a kind of Holy Grail for songwriters.
To write it is to experience a holy striking of compositional lightning, the result of which is ideally a song magically evoking the singular juxtapositions of fear and exhilaration that inevitably define a long, possibly late-night, and certainly lonely drive.
This is something I believe all songwriters pursue.
My most recent attempt did not succeed. It is not the perfect road song.
It is called “My Car Walks On Water,” and while it is not the perfect road song, I will say in its defense that it has certainly stood the test of time. I first tried to demo an early version of this song back in 1993. 21 years later, it is still with me, still alive, still changing, still convincing me it is real, a real road song …
I am safe in here
No need to worry any longer
The rain may break the forest’s bones
But my car walks on the water
To equate one’s car with Jesus is the usual unusual nocturnal moxie of the driver driving, alone …
This new iteration is my favorite version. Somehow, with Bones …
My desert island road song is probably “State Trooper,” by Bruce Springsteen, from his dark acoustic masterwork Nebraska. The imagined conversations (or so I perceive them to be) with a State Trooper play out like a narcoleptic head play starring a driver, and no one else …
Maybe you got a kid
Maybe you got a pretty wife
The only thing that I got
Has been botherin’ me my whole life
Mister State Trooper
Please don’t stop me
And the descriptions of the passing nocturnal nightscape are desperately, dirtily perfect …
New Jersey turnpike
Ridin’ on a wet night
Beneath the refinery’s glow
Out where the great black rivers flow
My first “proper” attempt (meaning, my first published and recorded attempt) at the perfect road song was a cut called “The Drive Goes On” from my debut album Preacher Boy & The Natural Blues:
The rearview mirror shines back my red eyes
And the yawns come on, just before sunrise
I keep my eyes open, cuz accidents happen
My left leg is asleep and the right one’s nappin’
It was not perfect either, but to this day, some 20 years later, I hear the song, and I remember exactly where I was driving on that dark mountain night …
“My Car Walks On Water” is altogether a different kind of narrative animal; more compressed, bluesier, a broader reconciliation of the simple (It’s rainin’ hard, and I can’t see) and the strange (The rain my soak time’s swingin’ braids).
But is it, “The Perfect Road Song?”
No, it is not.
But it is one more humble and deeply felt contribution to a growing canon of songs that collectively represents our search for harmonic Americana Nirvana.
~
For more about Preacher Boy, or to connect with Preacher Boy on a particular platform, please click any and/or all of the links below:
After completing the sessions for “Crow,” I stayed on at Revolution (the English studio outside Manchester where we recorded the album) laying down a bunch of publisher demos of additional songs I was working on at the time. Among these tracks was a song called The Bottle & The Pen. I recorded a solo acoustic version with just voice & The National, thinking I’d revisit it at another time to explore arrangement possibilities with the band.
Fate intervened, however, in the form of Frank Klein, and Biscuits & Blues. Frank was the manager of Biscuits at that time, and was pushing hard, and with great imagination, to broaden the ways in which B&B could contribute to the world of blues music.
The answer was a record label! Frank launched Means Streets Records, as presented by Joe Louis Walker, with this release:
Mean Streets Blues – A San Francisco Collection – 13 Stompin’ Tracks
The album reads like a Who’s Who of Bay Area Blues from that era, and to the endeavor’s credit, nearly all of these artists are STILL vibrant presences on the scene. Check it out:
Tommy Castro, Alvin Youngblood Hart, Lavay Smith, Mark Hummel, Rusty Zinn, Big Bones, James Armstrong, and more; it’s a remarkable collection.
Remarkable all the more for the fact that, like so many great blues projects with great blues intentions, this would prove to be the only Mean Streets Records release.
That said, I am extremely proud to have been a part of this project, and was honored and humbled both when Frank asked for a song. Having just completed the Revolution sessions I mentioned earlier, I had quite a few new recordings to consider, and The Bottle and The Pen, in its original solo acoustic format, was the final selection.
Strange journey, that it now lives on as the title to an article about wine & literature. Prophetic in a way, I suppose. The chorus lyrics:
If you wanna know where I come from I’ll tell you this my friend I was born beneath a bottle and a pen
You can here this recording of The Bottle & The Pen by clicking here.
~
Big Bones and I recently reunited for a very special show at Biscuits & Blues: you can see footage from that performance below:
Brand-new footage of Preacher Boy & Big Bones, with Zack Olsen on drums, performing “Shake ‘Em On Down” live at Biscuits & Blues, December 8th, 2014!
I first heard Bukka White perform this song on a vinyl album from the Takoma label, and it literally changed my life. That was when I was probably 16, maybe 17 years old, and probably 4, maybe 5 of those songs have been in just about every set I’ve ever played since. Shake ‘Em On Down, Poor Boy Long Ways From Home, Fixin To Die, Baby Please Don’t Go, Aberdeen Mississippi Blues, etc. The point being, I’ve been playing Shake ‘Em On Down, for a LONG time … and I still love it. I LOVE to play this song …
For you guitar heads, it’s a pretty straightforward I-V-V progression, with a couple of arrangement twists. The National is tuned to Open D, and most of the action is actually on the low end, designed to mimic (albeit with a different rhythm) Bukka White’s original descending bass line …
The lyric is straight up raw blues poetry; sexy as hell:
She got somethin, I don’t know what it is But it sure make me drunker than any ol’ whiskey still …
Bones takes an awesome approach with his harmonica on this version, opting to largely play a minor vibe, which ties to the main riff cleanly, but then darkens up the IV and V which, on the National, are major. Killer manipulation of the abstract flatted third …
For this edition of Songs From The Vaults, we’re going to look at a tune called “Old Jim Granger.” This was recorded for, and released on, The Tenderloin EP, a joint release between US-based Blind Pig Records, and UK-based Wah Tup Records.
It was recorded at Coast in San Francisco (if memory serves?), and features Steve Escobar on drums, Danny Uzilevsky on bass, Big Bones on harmonica, and yours truly on National and vocals.
The sessions were engineered by Bryan Zee.
The tune is in Dm, and The National is tuned to Open Dm (D A D F A D).
Old Jim Granger was an angry man
He had a fence so high you couldn’t see his land
His house was hidden by trees as well
We only knew he was there when we heard him yell
Us little boys, we didn’t have much sense
We only wanted to see inside of his fence
So we dug a hole and crawled through to his place
Waited to see if he’d show his face
He come runnin’ right outta his house
Screamin and cursin, we could hear him shout
“Get off my land unless ya wanna get shot,
Say yer prayers, cuz my shotgun’s cocked”
Well, we broke and ran, to the left and right
Tryin’ to get out of Mr. Granger’s sight
We heard him shout, “Boys, you can’t hide from Jim!
I’m gon’ release my hound, he’ll tear ya limb from limb”
Tearin cross the yard that old hound came
And Mr. Granger’s gun was out and aimed
I jumped up to run, and I swear to Gog
He don’ missed me and he shot that dog
Old Jim Granger was a lonely man
He didn’t have no wife, he didn’t have no clan
That old hound dog was like his only kin
And when he died, that was it for Jim
Well, I’m a grown man now, but I remember still
What happened right after that dog got killed
When he saw what he’d done, into the house he walked
To say goodbye with his shotgun cocked
Preacher Boy | The National Blues 