Styles: Modern Acoustic Blues, Contemporary Folk
Label: Borealis
Released: 2001
File: mp3 @320K/s
Size: 109,8 MB
Time: 47:58
Art: front
1. Goin' Where I Never Been Before - 2:38
2. I Love You Emry - 2:15
3. Children - 3:10
4. The Path You Leave Behind - 2:28
5. May You Come And Stay - 2:07
6. Someday My Day Will Come - 3:22
7. I'm A Ram 3 - 3:53
8. Gotta Have You - 4:34
9. That's Where It's At - 3:28
10. No No Blues - 2:33
11. New Morning Blues - 2:31
12. Cancer Ward Blues - 3:17
13. Guitar Mama - 2:42
14. You Missed A Good Man - 3:17
15. He Ain'T Got Rhythm - 2:20
16. Journey's End - 3:16
Personnel:
Michael Jerome Browne (vocals, acoustic guitar, 12-string guitar, resonator guitar, tenor guitar, fretless banjo, fiddle, harmonica)
Ray Bonneville (vocals, harmonica)
Nicolas Caloia (double bass)
Jordan Officer (acoustic guitar)
Jody Golick (tenor saxophone)
John McColgan (drums)
Notes: Playing traditional blues in a traditional manner without sounding academic is a tricky act. Michael Jerome Browne pulls it off beautifully. Browne is a master of fingerpicked guitar, slide guitar and fretless banjo, with a raspy voice that would sound right at home on some Alan Lomax field recordings if you added some crackles and pops to "age" the sound. The thing is, Browne isn't playing this stuff just to keep tradition alive. This is no homage. This is no pastiche. He is playing it because he feels it. He was just born in the wrong era. On most tracks, he plays unaccompanied, but on a few, he has some light accompaniment, and the album ends on a jazzier note, complete with some tasteful saxophone, playing well off of Browne's Lonnie Johnson-style flatpicking. Mostly, though, Browne sticks to country blues. He isn't imitating anyone in particular most of the time. You can't listen to 12-string slide without thinking of Leadbelly, but even then, he sounds nothing like Leadbelly. He just sounds like the forgotten, long-lost blues master whose recordings miraculously resurfaced and were painstakingly restored.
There aren't many people who can pull this off, and Bob Brozman is no longer with us. Catfish Keith. Steve James. If these are the kinds of modern blues musicians you like, Michael Jerome Browne is for you too. And if you long for more blues banjo, check out Otis Taylor's "Recapturing the Banjo."
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