Harrison Kennedy sets a great example for blues songwriters

Harrison Kennedy is a Canadian blues musician who was a pop star for a number of years with the group Chairmen of the Board. After this experience he learned to write his own music and play the guitar, according to the Welcome page of his web site www.harrisonkennedy.ca but there was a thirty-year gap, while he worked as a supervisor in a chemical plant before he began to release recordings of his own stuff.

Kennedy’s roots are down-home acoustic blues. His songs and his sound overall have a coherence and thematic consistency that speak to the integrity of his music; you feel he is just being himself. He has a distinctive sound, many tunes combine an electric band with an old-timey jug band feel, especially when he plays banjo. He is a remarkably good singer with a huge range.

Harrison Kennedy is a bridge between the blues of the 1930/40s and modern blues and R&B.  While his sound recalls the formulaic songwriters of the pre-war years, the songs usually stick to their narrative subject. Rather than just stringing a bunch of bluesy lines together, the verses have linear narrative. We don’t find many huge surprises music or lyric-wise but the songs are well-written.

Many of the songs have modern topics – “One Dog Barking” talks about how the “profit motive” is dominating and screwing up the world like a bully in the school yard. Kennedy mixes in a modern vocabulary.  “I Can Feel You Leaving” is a heart-felt, honest (but over-long) blues with lines like, ”My romantic gestures only met with your sighs”, “You take a piece of my heart with you when you go”. In “Them 90s Blues” he references Frankenfoods, lap dancers, sports bars, wars about gas and “They made a baby in a Petri jar; This morning it was front page news”!

He is willing to go out on a limb with his lyrics. For example, “Leading Lady” is an ambitious attempt to use the metaphor of the stage for life in general. It doesn’t quite work because Kennedy doesn’t give us any detail or “furniture” that paints a scene of a stage theater. Another example is “Look A Like” where he sings about how seeing another woman he is attracted to makes him afraid of losing his own woman – an interesting topic and angle.

Kennedy’s lyrics more often “tell” than “show” – we don’t get to see things through his eyes but we do get to experience how he feels about his subject from the way he sings and plays.

Songs I enjoyed most – “Cruise Control” where it “felt like the twilight zone…” Could Be Me, Could Be You”, about being (or not being) homeless, is the song that made me search out Harrison Kennedy after I heard Eric Bibb’s cover. “I’ve Got Your Number” uses numbers (duh) but does a good job of relating them to the woman who is the subject of the song.

I felt that the earlier albums have more “Kennedy substance” in the songs. The 2014 record (official release Feb 27, 2015) has many lyrics that are blues middle-of-the-road, well written to be sure, but could have been written by anybody. “Shake the Hand” and “I’ve got News for You” have a bit more interesting detail. And “Jimmy Lee” is a nice positive love story that gives us a real sense of person and place as it devotes the four verses in turn to him, her, their morning and then their evening.

I found it encouraging that many reviewers praise Kennedy’s using modern lyrical themes, keeping the songs short and not piling on long virtuosic instrumental solos just for the sake of it (let it be said that there is plenty of virtuosity in the playing).  Harrison Kennedy is setting a good example for blues songwriters and I hope this positive critical response will lead others to do the same.

Albums I listened to:

High Country Blues (2007)

One Dog Barking (2009)

Soulscape (2013)

This Is from Here (2014) (All on Electro-Fi Records).

Allmusic.com has excellent and informative reviews for Harrison Kennedy’s albums here.

Have you heard Eric Bibb on mainstream radio?

It is very encouraging how well-liked and respected Eric Bibb has become in the blues world. He is an annual nominee on most Best-of-the-Year lists and the International Blues Foundation honored him as Acoustic Artist of the Year in 2013 (his album “Deeper in the Well” was nominated too). But he states clearly on that album that he is no traditionalist. He sings, “Music is more than rules and tradition…If I feel it, that’s good enough for me” (in the song “Music”).

His songwriting is excellent – well crafted, written to hit his sweet spots as a performer, full of integrity and personality. I feel like I know the guy, though I've never met him. 

“Deeper in the Well” was the first Eric Bibb album I listened to from beginning to end. It is definitely a blues album (more so than the other five albums I listened to in depth) and Bibb brings new structure and chord forms to the blues tunes. The instrumentation is refreshing – fiddle, mandolin, banjo, harp and accordion are endemic to the structure and setting of the songs, not just guest artists taking solos. The language is plainspoken and doesn't try to be clever. The topics of the songs generally don’t get far outside the blues pantheon – life is good; don’t let yourself get messed up on drugs; life is what you make it; life has ups and downs; she’s so fine. But nothing is hackneyed and nothing sounds like an overused phrase that was stuck in the verse just because he needed a rhyme.  

Most of the original songs have a modern outlook and some have interesting twists and mechanisms. On “In My Time” Eric tells us how his personal life has ups and downs. He pairs up opposites to show how his life has gone and you get the sense that it was all good. He’s been treated like a boss/like a boy; like a tramp/like a star. Lived fast/taken it easy.  Played in Paris, Rome /on front porch back home. Ridden in Bentleys/on a mule. Great detail, cinematic in places and all with a ring of truth.  Once his credentials are established Eric gives us his advice - Best thing you can do is be a faithful friend.

In “Music” Bibb takes music snobs to task. He pokes fun at people who need to categorize music before they can decide whether to like it. “Like looking at the labels on the faucet tap before they can tell if the water’s hot!” Beautiful!

There are four songs written by others ¹, one co-write and two traditional songs. A very satisfying recording and I recommend it as a good first experience for people who are new to Eric Bibb.

As I listened further, I realized that Bibb is primarily a gospel singer. He describes his music on 2008’s “Get on Board” as "a further exploration into the place where blues meets gospel and soul."  That’s a good description of all the stuff I listened to, especially the emphasis on “further exploration”. Eric Bibb makes new cloth out of the well-worn garments he has lived in for years.

He shows his blues chops on “Blues Ballads and Work Songs” (2011) – a compilation of mostly traditional songs recorded between 2005 and 2011. But Gospel is the center of Eric Bibb’s songwriting – redemption, faith, courage, perseverance, life is what you make it, get on board, a new and better life awaits. Bibb’s Godfather is Paul Robeson; his father is Leon Bibb, a prominent African-American folk musician of the 50’s and 60’s.

Bibb released albums in 1977 and 1980, and then there is a gap until 22 albums since 1997. Many albums have lyric or subject themes (e.g. freedom and Martin Luther King on “Blues People”) or a thematic vibe (e.g. “Deeper In The Well”) that comes from the instrumentation and overall feel of the playing. 

Eric Bibb lived in Finland for many years. I will guess that he developed his music in relative isolation from any particular music scene – I’m thinking about folk, blues, gospel music communities that might have drawn him to center on a particular genre and adopt its definitions and rules. He goes his own way and does not limit himself to the boundaries on any particular genre. I thought it interesting that on “Blues Ballads and Work Songs” the original tunes were much less bluesy-folky than the covers. I was surprised (end encouraged!) that the album the IBF voted as acoustic blues album of the year in 2011 (“Troubadour Live”) does not contain a single traditional 12-bar blues.²  

Comments on some specific songs that taught me something as a blues songwriter.

The album “Jericho Road” was released in 2013.  Check out With My Maker I Am One. It is a very 21st-century blues lyric, set into a timeless gospel theme. The singer takes on 24 different roles of characters doing their thing – Okie, landlord, junkie, slave, juke stomper, banker, candy man, movie star  and states “…with my Maker I am One”.  It does have the traditional blues themes of life has its ups and downs or life is what you make it, but the roles themselves are a mixture of modern and blues stereotype.

On “Troubadour Live” Shavin’ Talk is particularly poignant and full of current-day language. As he looks at himself in the mirror while shaving, Eric muses on how lucky he is, given that life is far from perfect. He keeps the shaving story going throughout the song, and ends with a very non-traditional set of rising chords. It remains a blues song.

“An Evening with Eric Bibb” (2007) has a couple of songs I found notable. To Know You is a straight-forward positive love song, heartfelt and eschewing the traditional “she’s so fine” attitude. I wish there were more positive love songs in blues music. Shingle By Shingle is another great 21st-century lyric dealing with a traditional blues topic – life is what you make it – as he patches the roof, piece by piece.

Eric Bibb is a staple on every blues curator’s playlist that I looked at, including the internationally syndicated programs. He deserves much more mainstream radio play in the USA. I hope that happens a lot in 2015 – the year of the blues songwriter!  

Notes.

1. Including a lovely song by Harrison Kennedy (Could Be You, Could Be Me) that makes me want to explore Harrison’s music as soon as I've finished typing this post.

2. I am defining “traditional 12- (or 8-) bar blues” as having only I, IV and V chords. And certainly not a II major (even though Robert Johnson’s version of Love In Vain kind of does).