i first saw kingfish when he was the opening act on one of the stages at the inaugural pilgrimage music festival in nashville in 2015. he was only 16, and he put on a helluva show.
born in clarksdale, mississipi, one could say that he was raised at the crossroads of the blues. legend has it that robert johnson sold his soul to the devil at the intersection of highways 61 and 49 there, and muddy waters grew up at a plantation nearby. his mom is cousin to country music legend charlie pride, and his family still sings at their church. at 16, ingram won the rising star award from the rhythm and blues foundation, and buddy guy has called him the ‘next explosion of the blues’.
now he has released his first album, on legendary blues label alligator records, and it is a great showcase of his prodigious talent. every track offers a different blues style, from slow acoustic ballads to hard driving chicago rockers. six songs feature keb mo on resonator guitar, and buddy guy joins him on guitar and vocals on ‘fresh out’. it was produced by tom hambridge, buddy guy’s producer.
he will be at the kent stage in two weeks. see you there.
as promised, i thought i would recap my recent visit to new orleans, where i attended the 50th anniversary of what is considered to be one of the more important and comprehensive music festivals in the country. i first had the opportunity to experience the new orleans jazz and heritage festival last year, but only attended two days. being the fiftieth anniversary this year, mrs. redeyegin and i decided to return with our good friends jim and tracy and make a week of it and see the entirety of the second weekend’s offerings.
we kicked things off wednesday night with a free music event at lafayette square featuring trumpet mafia and deacon john, and then headed off to dinner in the french quarter.
the second weekend of the festival started thursday morning, and local favorite cowboy mouth opened the festival on the stage that the rolling stones were supposed to have played at later that day. but since they had to cancel due to mick’s health, we got to hear cowboy mouth do a cover of ‘you can’t always get what you want’, which seemed appropriate. i then headed over to the cajun/zydeco stage for a while, took a tour of the whole venue, then caught a bit of widespread panic’s set before closing out the day hearing mavis staples in the blues tent. she shocked me about halfway through her set when the band broke into the talking heads’ ‘slippery people’. trombone shorty joined her for a bit as well.
friday opened with a couple of local favorites – the iguanas and honey island swamp band. if you are not familiar with them, please check both of them out. once again i headed over to the cajun/zydeco stage, and then went back to the blues tent for the night. first off was sonny landreth, and then los lobos. the latter was celebrating being together for 45 years, and essentially did a 90 minute retrospective on their career. they started with a few all acoustic traditional songs (i think they did nearly everything from their ‘acoustic en vivo’ album), worked their way through their ‘hits’, and then finished with a rocking version of ‘bertha’.
saturday looked questionable for a while, as a major storm passed through the area just before lunch. we got there around two and started off with a band from the republic of congo – jupiter and okwess. they might have been the winner in the category of ‘best band i saw that i had never heard of before’. we then caught some of marcia ball’s set, before heading over to hear jerry douglas and the earls of leicester bluegrass band. once again, i finished at the blues tent with robert randolph and the family band.
sunday was maybe the best overall lineup. i started the day with george porter jr., the only act i saw that was one of the original performers at the 1970 jazz fest. jon cleary was next up, and then little feat, also celebrating their fiftieth anniversary. it was probably not the liveliest set they ever did, but it was great to see them again, and it made mrs. redeyegin very happy. the radiators got back together for the occasion, and they were in great form. i caught a quick glimpse of terrance simien back at the zydeco stage, and then finished off the day, and the festival, with the mavericks. i am glad i did, and have resolved to make myself more familiar with that band.
what a great event. i want to thank my friends kevin and sean for talking me into going last year, and ‘showing me the ropes’. i am so glad that i finally ventured down to experience something that i had yearned to do for years. there is a very good chance i will be down there again soon.
and of course, it is hard to talk about the music of new orleans without a little professor longhair (more on him very soon):
heading to new orleans this afternoon for so we can attend all four days of this weekend’s festival, the 50th anniversary of this great event. i hope to recap all we see once we get back, but in the meantime i will likely be posting on my twitter account during the day. if you don’t already follow me on twitter, please feel free to do so at @redeyeginblog .
one of the first posts i ever wrote on this blog was about j.j. cale, and i am real happy to have an opportunity to write another. cale was a musician’s musician, and one of the unsung forces in the american blues scene. he is probably most widely known as the original writer of two songs made famous by eric clapton, ‘after midnight’ and ‘cocaine’. but more importantly, he is considered to be one of the originators, along with leon russell, of what came to be known as the ‘tulsa sound’. if you are a fan of early dire straits and mid seventies clapton, then this will sound very familiar to you. clapton wrote in his autobiography that cale is ‘one of the most important artists in the history of rock’. neil young said ‘his guitar playing was a huge influence on me, his touch is unspeakable’.
we lost j.j. to a heart attack about 5 years ago, but his widow and his longtime manager got together after finding some old studio work that he had done but never included on a record. we have 15 songs here that likely span a lot of years, but they are all drenched in that classic laid back funky blues.
it’s getting to be that time of year to sit on the back deck after work and cook a little bbq and sip on a cool beverage. i can heartily recommend putting this on the next time you are out there watching the late spring roll in. this is a great introduction to his work and career, and hopefully more people will get to know who he was and just how influential he was on the american music scene.
as he has explained in numerous interviews about this album, it was inevitable that earle would eventually do a tribute album to one of his two major mentors, the legendary guy clark. his grammy nominated 2009 release ‘townes’ was his tribute to the other one, townes van zandt. that is one of my favorite earle albums, and so i was anxious to hear what he would put together for this one.
earle’s friendship with clark started in 1974, shortly after he had arrived in nashville after hitchhiking from san antonio. he replaced rodney crowell as the bass player in clark’s band. nine of the sixteen songs are taken from clark’s two first albums, ‘old no. 1’ and ‘texas cookin”, so he knew much of the material from playing them relentlessly in his youth. as such, he claims that this was an easy album to make, and indeed it was cut in just a few days with almost no overdubbing.
after my first listen, my initial reaction was ‘this could have been better’. the production is a little rough, and i felt that his vocals were lost in the mix a bit. on top of that, he occasionally slips into his exaggerated southern drawl, which blurs the lyrics even further. this is important, because the primary strength of clark’s work has been his outstanding songwriting. my good friend dave agreed, but encouraged me to give it a few more spins, and he was right.
maybe i was comparing it to ‘townes’, but i think that this one is just different, and yet still a labor of love and admiration. on the last cut, ‘old friends’, earle is joined by a chorus of famous clark admirers – emmylou harris, jerry jeff walker, the aforementioned rodney crowell, terry allen, and a few others. if anything, ‘guy’ is a good introduction to guy clark’s work, if you are not familiar with him. earle is coming here to the kent stage soon, and i hope to see him do much of this material. see you there.
redeyegin 