LIVE AT 55: STORMY MONDAY BAND & LOUISIANA RED MEET CAREY BELL
Earwig 4920
These three discs–two from veterans, one from a Young Turk with fire in the belly–give us reason to rejoice. Both veterans are established masters reminding us again of what killer guitar blues is really all about. Even more heartening is a young newcomer who sounds as if he might actually live up to his press releases.
Beneath the quirkiness of Louisiana Red’s imagination there’s often a tender, even plaintive sense of introspection. The world-weary slow blues of “Lonesome Hotel” has Red’s T-Bone-ish guitar meandering through the changes as Bell warbles in the background. Red eloquently captures the ennui of the expatriate musician brooding about a love he left behind (“Bad to be lonesome in a lonesome hotel in a faraway land”). His imagery is enhanced by some lines that sound starkly autobiographical–“I told Hubert Sumlin when he was over here in Germany last year / I told him to tell your daughter I still love her anyway.” The beefy sax solo from Uli Fild doesn’t really fit into the song’s sparse moodiness, but except for a few George Adams-like ascensions into screaming miasma it’s quite successful.
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This disc falls short of the masterpiece it might have been. Several cuts go on too long, and the horns and the rocked-out backup band intrude as often as they enhance. But it’s fun to hear veterans like Red and Bell, bloody but unbowed, charging through a set like this with unfettered imagination and joy.
Dawkins’s style is unique in that he purposely avoids the high, keening tone most electric guitarists use to evoke passion. He prefers middle-register phrases that ascend into high-treble finales with a fuzzy, muted timbre. The effect is almost visceral–it slugs you in the gut instead of piercing your ears. The title song provides a perfect vehicle for this style; it’s built around an ominous, lurking riff based on the standard “Green Onions/Help Me” vamp, but Dawkins slows everything down to a bone-crunching lurch, making hard-core hard-times music. Dawkins’s guitar work on this one is almost frightening, a splintered metallic onslaught that erupts into molten fire and showers you with shards of desperation and intensity. Despite his nickname “Fast Fingers,” Dawkins doesn’t overwhelm you with technique–he lingers savagely over each note, extracting every ounce of emotion.
