“The point is, if you hear Blues Musicians writing and singing about the same old thing over and over, that’s not universal truth, that’s just willful mediocrity.”
As an old acquaintance used to say, here’s a lil’ somethin’ from the wee bully pulpit:
Great Blues Music is NOT about the things we ALL share and experience. To borrow a concept from the late, great Cultural Anthropologist Alan Dundes, Great Blues Music is not some sort of catalog of jump rope rhymes that transcend geography to express a kind of universal unconsciousness.
Rather, Blues Music is about the totally unique, personalized, rough-hewn translation of immediate experience into an almost haiku-esque poetic form. Put another way, it’s about musician’s turning their lives, and the lives around them, into song, with a Haiku master’s flair for capturing direct and immediate experience.
Think of Charley Patton’s “High Water Everywhere.” Sleepy John Estes’ “Fire Department Blues.” Skip James’ “Washington D.C. Hospital Bed Blues.” These songs represent the very best of what Blues Music is capable of.
Robert Pete Williams once said his songs came to him on the wind. Bukka White famously called his songs “Sky Songs” because they came to him from out of the sky.
The point is, if you hear Blues Musicians writing and singing about the same old thing over and over, that’s not universal truth, that’s just willful mediocrity.
Sleepy John Estes – I Ain’t Gonna Be Worried No More 1929-1941
Sleepy John Estes is the greatest country blues lyricist of them all. No one told a better story, no one populated their songs with more local truth, no one else’s songs had more real-life characters in them, no one else so directly, masterfully, beautifully, immediately translated the small daily dramas of everyday life into poignant song.
Add to this astounding ability the most beautifully cracked and weeping voice, and you have one of the genuinely greatest country blues talents ever to record.
Add to THIS that Yank Rachel is the greatest blues mandolin player ever, and he’s on loads of Sleepy John recordings.
And add to THIS that Hammie Nixon is, for my money, the greatest country blues harmonica accompanist ever. And HE was on loads of Sleepy John records.
The Sleepy John lexicon contains what are pure and simply some of the greatest country blues songs ever written, performed, and recorded.
And no one better read this and says fuck all shit about Willie Dixon being the greatest songwriter …
Sleepy John Estes – I Ain’t Gonna Be Worried No More 1929-1941
This collection spans the pre-war period during which Sleepy John recorded. It’s one of many collections that do so, and honestly, I’m not precious about which collection or which label you opt to go with, because literally every single thing Sleepy John Estes ever did was absolutely brilliant.
He is the greatest country blues poet of them all—an unparalleled storyteller of such plaintive immediacy, with an unerring eye for detail, and a natural dramatist; he is as authentic and as real as can possibly be wished for or imagined. He is a poet of place, as evocative a chronicler of his world as was Faulkner of his.
Add to his uncanny narrative abilities a voice virtually built to break your heart, and you have one of the most compelling artists this music has ever produced. That he unfailingly found himself accompanied by so many sympathetic and graceful musicians simply extends the scope of his musical accomplishment—Hammie Nixon is by far and away one of my most favorite country blues harmonica players, and Yank Rachel so commandingly owns the idea of country blues mandolin that other words must be invented to describe other’s playing.
Sleepy John Estates is one of the gods.
from Lawyer Clark Blues Now, Mister Clark is a good lawyer, he good as I ever seen He’s the first man that prove that water run upstream Boys, you know I like Mister Clark, yes, he really is my friend He say if I just stay out the grave, poor John, I see you won’t go to the pen
from Fire Department Blues (Martha Hardin) She’s a hard-workin’ woman, you know her salary is very small Then when she pay up her house rent, that don’t leave anything for insurance at all
Now, I wrote little Martha a letter, five days it returned back to me You know little Martha’s house done burnt down, she done move over on Bradford Street
from Floating Bridge Well I never will forget that floating bridge They tell me five minutes time underwater I was hid
Now, when I was going down, I throwed up my hands Please, take me on dry land
They dropped me off, and they laid me in the bed I couldn’t hear nothing but muddy water running ’round my head
from Mailman Blues Reason I ain’t been gettin’ no mail, you know, I done found out what it’s all about You know the mailman been gettin’ drunk, he been leavin’ my mail at somebody else’s house
Now, I been waitin’ on the mailman, he usually come along about 11 o’clock Now, I guess he musta had car trouble, or either the road must be blocked
Mailman, please don’t you lose your head You know, I’m lookin’ for a letter from my babe, some of my people might be dead
(Preacher Boy, live at Mission St. BBQ. Photo by Jake J. Thomas.)
Kind of an intriguing set tonight, if I do say so myself. I certainly bookended with a pair of the usual suspects, and there were a few other familiar chirps throughout as well, but all in all, quite a lot of strange birds making sonic appearances tonight. Lots of country blues in here. Here’s the full list of what I ran down:
If I Had Possession Over My Judgement Day (Robert Johnson, arr. PB)
Preachin’ Blues (Son House, arr. PB)
Levee Camp Blues (Mississippi Fred McDowell, arr. PB)
Old Jim Granger (from the Preacher Boy album “The Tenderloin EP”)
Diving Duck Blues (Sleepy John Estes, arr. PB)
Evil Blues (Mance Lipscomb, arr. PB)
A Little More Evil (from the Preacher Boy album “The National Blues”)
Revenue Man Blues (Charley Patton, arr. PB)
Milk Cow Blues (Mississippi Fred McDowell, arr. PB)
Catfish Blues (Willie Doss, arr. PB)
The Dogs (from the Preacher Boy album “The Devil’s Buttermilk”)
Spoonful Blues (Charley Patton, arr. PB)
Down And Out In This Town (from the Preacher Boy album “Gutters & Pews”)
Sliding Delta (Mississippi John Hurt, arr. PB)
Stagolee (Mississippi John Hurt, arr. PB)
A Person’s Mind (from the Preacher Boy album “The National Blues”)
Down South Blues (Sleepy John Estes, arr. PB)
Coal Black Dirt Sky (from the Preacher Boy album “Crow”)
Black Crow (from the Preacher Boy album “Crow”)
Railroad (from the Preacher Boy album “Gutters & Pews”)
Motherless Children (Blind Willie Johnson,/Mance Lipscomb/Dave Van Ronk, arr. PB)
Shake ‘Em On Down (Bukka White)
And for your listening pleasure, two straight-from-the-stage-to-yer-ear-buds guerrilla-live tracks:
Preacher Boy – Sliding Delta [LIVE]
(arrangement based on the Mississippi John Hurt version)
Preacher Boy – Levee Camp Blues [LIVE]
(arrangement based on a recorded performance by Mississippi Fred McDowell)
For the guitar heads amongst ye, this version of Sliding Delta is performed on a ’36 National (Grandpa’s National), which is set up for standard tuning. This chords are based on Key of E forms, but the guitar is capo’d at the 4th fret. Levee Camp Blues is performed on a different ’36 National (THE National), and the guitar is tuned to an Open G tuning, then capo’d at the 2nd fret.
For the footwear fanatics amongst ye, the stomps come courtesy of my cowboy boots, which are a Size 13.
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.
I’ve been very privileged to have assembled some of the nastiest, funkiest, grooviest, zennist ensembles imaginable over the years, but I’m hard put to recall one more spontaneously dangerous than this one … it’s a strange one, to be sure: keys, bari sax, harmonica, national, no bass … but damn, it grooves, and it’s just very, very, very nasty … diseasedly subversively mojo’d … It’s like Tony Joe White meets Morphine meets 16 Horsepower meets Bukka White meets Motorhead meets Captain Beefheart meets Blind Willie Johnson meets Joe Cocker meets … Whistleman.
So we took to JJ’s recently, and dropped down 2+ hours of completely raw swamp … and I invite you to bend an ear to it, if you would. Mind you, these are unmixed, unmastered, unedited … they’s just straight from the stage into yer ears … but I hope you dig!
First up, just a downright sleazed and brutal take on “Dead, Boy” and I mean wicked. Just 9 minutes of asphalt:
Hear a bit of squall & wail weavin’ in there? That’s Ryan “The Home Town Hero” Acosta on some git …
And fer yer second course, the National takes a ride on the Crybaby Train as the ensemble burns up a workout of Sleepy John Estes’ “Need Mo’ Blues.” Check it out:
And for any of y’all that go WAY back, tell me the first time an iteration of Preacher Boy & Co recorded a live version of “Need Mo’ Blues.” Get it right, and I’ll buy you a bike!
Sleepy John Estes. For my money, one of THE voices of country blues. The reason why we have the cliche “cryin’ the blues.” So plaintive, so heartbreaking, so present, so cool, so real, so powerful, so compelling. An almost laughably clumsy guitar player, and yet the perfect accompanist for himself. With Hammie Nixon and Yank Rachel of course. But really, who’d want a whole mess of guitar gettin’ in the way of that gorgeous voice?
As for myself, I can’t sing like that. And actually, I love guitar like that. Which essentially explains the arrangement of “Down South Blues” that I’ve landed on. And by landed on I mean played endlessly, over and over, year after year, stage after stage, night after night. I’ve been playin’ this song almost since the beginning of Preacher Boy. I’ve had the pleasure of playing this song with SO MANY great musicians: Jim Campilongo, Ralph Carney, David Immergluck, Big Bones, Jamie “Beatnik Beats” Moore, Tim Luntzel, Virgil Thrasher, and many, many others that I’m regretfully not name-checking here but am nonetheless very grateful to …
The point being, I love this song, and I always have, and I’m really excited about the opportunity to commit it to recorded posterity. And with that, a video to share; a wee bit o’ raw behind-the-scenes footage from a recent recording session in the wilds of the Santa Cruz Mountains:
By way of comparison, and if for no other reason than to hip you up to this beautiful song if ya don’t yet know it:
To be honest, I’m not much of a setlist person, though I will say, there do tend to be patterns as regards the songs I select, and the order I play them in. More often than not, it comes down to simple questions of tuning. Because I use a number of different tunings, I generally try to do songs in such an order that I don’t spend the entire time mucking with the pegs.
So, what’s a Preacher Boy set list look like these days? Well, it’s pretty heavy on the country blues, that’s for sure! Here’s the crop from tonight’s show at Aptos St. BBQ, though to be honest, I have no idea what order I played these in, but I do know these are the songs I played (in parentheses, either the composer, or the musicianer I got the arrangement off of):
If I Had Possession Over My Judgement Day (Robert Johnson)
Fixin’ To Die (Bukka White)
Death Letter Blues (Son House)
Jack & Jill Blues (Sleepy John Estes)
Cornbread (PB)
One Good Reason (PB & Eagle-Eye Cherry)
Catfish Blues (Willie Doss)
That’s No Way To Get Along (Reverend Robert Wilkins)
Baby, Please Don’t Go (Bukka White)
99 Bottles (PB)
Old Jim Granger (PB)
There Go John (PB)
A Golden Thimble (PB)
A Little More Evil (PB)
Down & Out In This Town (PB)
My Car Walks On The Water (PB)
Need Mo’ Blues (Sleepy John Estes)
Seven’s In The Middle, Son (PB)
Death Don’t Have No Mercy (Reverend Gary Davis)
Motherless Children (Dave Van Ronk)
Slidin’ Delta (Mississippi John Hurt)
Cornbread (PB)
I’m just starting to read Dave Van Ronk’s autobiography, so that’s what got me in the mood to play one of his arrangements. The book is:
and so far, it’s pretty delightful. Dave Van Ronk was such a huge influence for me. All those Tom Waits comparisons over the years used to just make me laugh, ‘cuz for fuck’s sake, haven’t you ever heard of Dave Van Ronk before?
The first time I ever performed a country blues kind of tune before an actual audience was courtesy of my old high school English teacher substitute Mr. Tom Nolet. He was a blues player, and knew I was hopelessly into it all as well, and very graciously invited me to sing a song at his gig at a coffeehouse. I was 16, and I played (or attempted to play, I should say) Dave Van Ronk’s version of Po’ Lazarus, and I was bloody awful, and Tom apparently lost the gig, and well, that wasn’t a very good start to my career (and obviously not good for his either!) and I don’t think I sang on mic again for another 5 years!
But I still play Po’ Lazarus sometimes, as well as a spin-off of Dave’s version of Come Back, Baby, and of course the version of Motherless Children that I noted above.
So that was me tonight. The Mayor of Aptos St. BBQ.
If ya’d like a lil’ taste, here’s a VERY rough live track from tonight’s show. The tune is “A Little More Evil,” a never-yet-recorded-and-released PB cut (and that thumpin’ sound is me boot!):
jesus christ, look at you, you lookin’ like you dead wrecked
i wish i had a way to pay for you to get your head checked
you so fuckin’ strung out man it’s time to face the music
you ain’t got but the one life and you about to lose it
that isn’t opportunity
that’s knockin’ on the door
and it ain’t fire that you playin’ with
it somethin’ that’s a little more evil
a little more evil
it’s always a maria gettin’ suckers like you laid up
tryin’ to live the myth the ones that came before ya made up
i hate to break it to ya but her name is not maria
she might look ya in the eyes but i swear she doesn’t see ya
that isn’t opportunity
that’s knockin’ on the door
and it ain’t fire that you playin’ with
it somethin’ that’s a little more evil
a little more evil
i ain’t gon’ to be the john to baptize ya in the river
and you too old to be a baby that i’m called on to deliver
there’s a train to judgment and you got a ticket to go
but it ain’t gonna be the lord who come to meet ya at the depot
that isn’t opportunity
that’s knockin’ on the door
and it ain’t fire that you playin’ with
it somethin’ that’s a little more evil
a little more evil
Preacher Boy | The National Blues 