Becoming a tortoise

When I started this blog I figured it would culminate on July 1st 2015, Willie Dixon’s 100th birthday. But I haven’t come close to my goals because I haven’t devoted sufficient time and effort.

I want to have playlists of well-written modern blues songs to circulate to Blues DJs. I want to investigate all of the musicians that people have mentioned when I asked if they knew of good modern blues songwriters. I want to see a blues songwriting competition start up, read discussions about songwriting in the blues magazines and blogs, see a write-up about a young blues musician that focuses on the songs rather than how many Stevie Ray Vaughn licks he or she can rattle off…   

I have come to realize that there aren’t many people who feel the way I do about Blues songwriting. I believe that the Blues needs better-written songs to nourish the roots, to make new fruits. I don’t want the Blues to exist only in museums; a reference resource rather than a vital force that continues to shape music and inspire new music forms.

So… I missed my self-imposed deadline but I still believe this is worth doing. It’s important to me and that’s reason enough to continue. Slow and steady wins the race.

The Thrill Is Gone

"The Thrill Is Gone" Roy Hawkins/Rick Darnell

Version – B.B. King

BB King’s most listened to (and most re-recorded) song has a lot of lyrical things that blues songwriters can learn from.

The thrill is gone

The thrill is gone away

The thrill is gone baby

The thrill is gone away

You know you done me wrong baby

And you'll be sorry someday

The thrill is gone

It's gone away from me

The thrill is gone baby

The thrill is gone away from me

Although I'll still live on

But so lonely I'll be

The thrill is gone

It's gone away for good

Oh, the thrill is gone baby

Baby it’s gone away for good

Someday I know I'll be over it all baby

Just like I know a man should

You know I'm free, free now baby

I'm free from your spell

I'm free, free now

I'm free from your spell

And now that it's over

All I can do is wish you well

This song has very similar words in the first three verses. This makes it easy to understand and listen to – it’s catchy.   

It does tell a story over the course of its four verses –

You’ll be sorry you done me wrong

I’ll be lonely but I’ll live on

I’ll get over it

I did get over it.

Much of the song’s power comes from remaining right here in the present moment, describing a particular feeling. This is a strength of the blues as a song form and it enables timeless songs.  Unlike most blues songs, however, it also tells a linear story – but it is the story of how his feelings progress, not a narrative of events.  

Another little thing that sticks out for me - the phrase “The thrill is gone” begins each of the first three verses. Then it repeats in the second line with the word “baby” added. In each verse, the second line differs just a little bit from the first line, but says the same thing. This gives the singer more room to work with, and helps bring different degrees of emotion to the lyric.

I didn't appreciate “The Thrill Is Gone” until I started playing it myself and began to understand how sing-able it is. I hadn't picked up on the emotional progression that happens in the lyrics and how much emotion the singer can put into the song.

I had to learn it for a blues competition, of all things.

I think it was the year 2007. I was a finalist in the Telluride Blues Challenge which is part of the Telluride Blues and Brews Festival held in Colorado every year. At that time, each finalist played a 15 minute set and each of us had to perform the same “compulsory” song as dictated by the Festival and communicated us one week prior to the final. That particular year the song was “The Thrill Is Gone”. 

Madman-Architect-Carpenter-Judge (in that order!)

Betty S. Flowers, an English professor at the University of Texas at Austin published an essay in 1997 entitled “Madman, Architect, Carpenter, Judge: Roles and the Writing Process.” Although her essay was directed to prose writers, the concept is even more useful for songwriters.

Flowers identifies four different personas who come into the writing process sequentially. Writing begins with the madman, who brings ideas and energy to the page, uninhibited.  Just write down any crazy thing - let imagination run wild for ten minutes and don’t stop to edit. Next comes the architect, who looks unsentimentally at the madman’s “wild scribblings,” selects the chunks that could possibly form into a song, and arranges those nuggets into verses, refrains, etc.

Along comes the carpenter, the craftsman, who does the detail work of making sure the lines are similar in length, the rhyme scheme is consistent, the words have an internal rhythm, etc. He nails the ideas together.  Finally, in comes the judge, who inspects the work, critically.

Writers get tripped up, Flowers suggests, when their judge gets in the way of their madman.

“So start by promising your judge that you’ll get around to asking his opinion, but not now,” Flowers writes. “And then let the madman energy flow. Find what interests you in the topic, the question or emotion that it raises in you, and respond as you might to a friend – or an enemy. Talk on paper, page after page, and don’t stop to judge…”

I believe many blues songwriters allow the judge to enter the process too early – he rules out topics and modern language that “don’t belong” in blues songs.  And perhaps we allow the architect to limit the song structures to blues forms that have been built over and over again in the past. Blues does have limits – but we could allow the madman to finish his part in the process before the other members of the team have their turn. 

Curtis Obeda

Curtis Obeda

One of the things that makes Curtis Obeda noteworthy and worth studying as a blues songwriter is that he writes for other vocalists (notably Willie Walker) as well as writing songs for his own band, The Butanes, where he is lead vocalist and guitar player. When you know that your song will be sung by another person, especially an incredibly talented singer like Willie Walker, you have to write more universally and give the singer words, rhythm, melody, meaning plus enough space to allow them to bring their own interpretation to the song.

Obeda was inducted into the Minnesota Blues Hall of Fame in 2014 in the category of “Blues Song” for “Crying to Do”, recorded by Willie Walker and The Butanes on the album “Right Where I Belong” (2004). In the nomination speech, Mike Elias said that Curtis “was comfortable and proficient in both Blues and Soul. He respected the history and limits of the genres.” ¹

He writes and performs across several genres including R&B, Soul and Blues. His songs for Willie Walker are most often about romance and the complications thereof. The songs he sings himself cover greater subject breadth and are often humorous.

Writing for Willie Walker, Obeda gives him lyrics that make sense and can be sung honestly and with feeling. The songs on the first album featuring Walker, “Right Where I Belong” (2004), are, with only one exception (“Change”), about the ins and outs of romance. The most recent Walker album “Long Time Thing” (2011) runs about 50-50 between romance and other topics and is more satisfying for that.

“It Ain’t Your Ladder” tells a woman that other people contributed to her success. She shouldn’t just pull that ladder up after herself once she’s climbed to the top, she should leave it where others might benefit from it –in other words, offer her own helping hand. Great song, taking a complicated subject and expressing it simply and effectively.  “Dirty Deeds” is another one I especially like – it’s more like the songs Curt sings himself with the tongue-in-cheek humor. “Betrayed” is a fresh angle on cheating: Walker sings how he was betrayed by his best (male) friend. In another writer’s hands it would be the woman who is shamed.

I have only one Butanes “solo” album – 2014’s “12 Frozen Favorites from the Upper Bayou”.

The language of the lyrics is pleasingly modern – words that people actually use in conversation. And the songs are smart, with a lot of humor in the lyrics. “Ain’t No Doubt” relates how the singer visits (and quickly leaves) a scary bar, a gay bar and a wine bar before he finally finds a bar he likes. But then his wife shows up. Each verse of “It’s Not That Bad” lists unpleasant things - at home, at the doctor’s and trying to get across town. In verse four he eats oysters in a month with no R… but it’s not THAT bad!

Sometimes Obeda’s cleverness gets in the way of the song. In “Call Me” he uses about every sense of the word “call” that exists – nouns, verbs, adjectival phrases… it’s a great dance number but the song doesn’t really go anywhere.  

He gives himself few songs that give opportunity for emotional expression in the vocal. They generally don’t have the telling detail of the humorous songs. In “Can You Help Me Brother” Curtis tells us how sorry he is, how wrong he has been, how he needs to get back where he belongs but we don’t know what it was that made him so angry in the first place. “Funny Way of Living” expresses anguish about his overbearing woman, but again, no poignant or cinematic detail that would make us feel the way he feels. If she had made him “cut his meat smaller and chew it twice” ² we’d have a bit more sympathy.

What songwriters can learn from Curt Obeda

• ·         He makes the songs catchy – sometimes a repeated refrain, sometimes a chorus. You can almost always tell what the title of the song is. It actually pisses me off that the hook line from “Amy Is a Gold Digger” keeps running through my mind since I don’t particularly like the song but it sure is catchy. The back-up singers are often used to repeat the title or hook, an effective tool for songwriters as well as record producers.
• ·         He puts a lot of work and craft into his writing – the last verse of a song is as well-written as the first. The scansion, rhyme schemes and meter are consistent from verse to verse. He keeps to the subject and theme of the song, the words fall naturally.
• ·         He gives the singer room to sing – plenty of long notes, good melodies and chord changes.
• ·         He adds humor – just the right amount for the genre, I think. He doesn’t limit the humor to sexual innuendo as is common in the blues.
• ·         He will write verses that lead to the chorus or refrain from different, but complementary directions. For example, in “Drift to Sleep” there is a linear story about missing his baby at night… In “Drives Me Crazy” the singer relates how it drives him crazy when his baby takes a long time to make a special dinner. In Verse two, she takes a long time getting ready for bed. In “I’m OK” the verses cover different periods of time – things happen in the span of days in verse one; they span seasons in verse two. In “If You Expect to See Another Day”, after each verse he uses a different lyric in the lift before the repeated refrain. It all adds interest, keeps you on your toes and paying attention.
• ·         You can dance to it! The Butanes mostly play clubs; club audiences want to dance. Aspiring blues songwriters might find bands who would record their songs if they make dance-ability a priority in their writing.

Good songs have the right balance of same and different. Curtis Obeda really has this down. Every song is approachable, not hard to get into. And once you are grooving along with the music, he takes you in an pleasantly surprising direction before he puts you back on track.

Notes.

1. “Limits”… just a word, but it gives me pause as I try to articulate for myself what these limits might be. These boundaries are hard to define; I guess everyone has their own perception of what is inside and is outside of a Blues limit. What is, or is not, the Blues.

2. A line from “B.S. (Bob’s Song)”

I listened to

Right Where I Belong (2004)

Memphisopolis (2006)

Long Time Thing (2011)

12 Frozen Favorites from the Upper Bayou (2014)

Butanes web site

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.

Al Cook - Blues Songwriter from Austria

Al Cook is a tireless traditional blues song generator. He takes themes, musical fragments and lyrical phrases from the blues corpus, combines them with his own stuff and ends up with original songs. Some of these are better-written “traditional” songs than the actual traditional songs he draws from.

On Moving Back to Alabama on Cook’s album “The Birmingham Jam”, for example. He takes a couple of lines from Charley Patton’s Going to Move to Alabama. Patton sings, “Say, mama got the washboard, my sister got the tub, my brother got the whiskey, mama got the jug.” In Cook’s song, “My sister got a washboard, my daddy got a jug, now give your kinfolk a great big hug” merges the Patton lines into a song with more depth and interest. It is the story of a family moving back to Alabama from Chicago after their dreams of a better life did not come true. It has a linear narrative, and some imaginative phrases –“It’s so cold in Chicago the birds can hardly sing; they’d freeze in flight if they could spread their wings. They’re flying back to Alabama…”

Al Cook is from Vienna, Austria. So he is writing not only in a foreign language, but an idiomatic subset - blues idiom. After 50 years of listening and playing traditional blues, his fluency in the blues is obvious. He thinks about what he is doing, and his place in blues tradition, as evidenced by the blog entries on his web site. I find his vocal stylings a little too imitative of the older black blues artists, but then again, he is creating a historical representation foremost, a personal expression second. His imitations are top-notch by the way.  

I sought out Al Cook’s music on a tip from David Evans, author of “Big Road Blues” and perhaps the preeminent academic of blues music. Evans describes himself as a traditionalist where blues is concerned, and probably doesn't share my concern that modern blues songwriting is generally poor. Cook is a living example of the formulaic blues composers that Evans discusses in his book (and in a large body of academic writings in publications such as The Journal of American Folklore).

Al Cook released an ambitious project in 2013 – “Mississippi 1930 – A Fictional Journey to the Land Where the Blues Began”. He wrote the songs as far as I can tell. But they sound authentic old blues. Example – Jake Liquor Blues. Cooks spoken introduction to the song states he wrote it to honor Tommy Johnson, who recorded Alcohol and Jake Blues in 1930.1. Cook’s song is very different but has a very similar feel. This is what he does so well. (Cook’s song is also different from Ishman Bracey’s 1929 song with the same title.)  

Here’s my take on Al Cook – he’s written (and still writes at age 70) a ton of formulaic blues songs that use the phrases, meanings, feel, structure and sense of traditional blues. He probably does it better than you or I can. So, instead of writing your own lame, formulaic songs, think about using some of his good ones.  

Notes.

1. Someone recently paid $37,100 for a mint condition 78rpm record of Tommy Johnson's Alcohol and Jake Blues. The highest ever for a 78. 

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).

Mark Harrison writes modern blues songs. Hot damn!

Mark Harrison took up blues songwriting fairly recently in his music career after buying a 1934 National Trojan guitar – a wood-body resonator that Eric Bibb had traded in at a guitar store in London. As he tells it, he first tried to play traditional blues songs from people like Charlie Patton, Muddy Waters and Blind Willie McTell but they didn’t sound the same. He had no lessons, didn't read tablature or use video tutorials – he just played what he could. After a while he realized he was writing new songs, not versions of old ones.

His naiveté has paid off. Harrison’s songs don’t sound like anybody else’s, but they are full of the blues tradition that inspired him. I believe he will continue to bring a new audience to the blues and he exemplifies the kind of blues songwriting that I want to write myself.

Lyrics.

The first distinctive thing is his use of contemporary language and subject matter in his lyrics. Most lyrics would sound natural if spoken as part of a conversation. There are very few blues clichés or language that isn't native to London. He does occasionally sing with a slightly Southern USA-tinged inflection (time=tahm, why=whah, don’t=don’) but in general he sounds like he is singing with the same voice he uses when he talks.

Many songs contain portraits of people and events that seem like they might exist in his day-to-day world. We meet Smiler John, Big Mary, Deacon George, Georgia Greene, and even Mark’s Dad. We go with Mark to observe the neighborhood street corner, Highgate Hill, Starley Street… places we might have been to ourselves, people and places that make the songs seem like they are about our own lives.

Mark has advice for us in many songs – be here now, live in the moment and be grateful. He often makes a moral point or commentary on what’s wrong with the world.

Many songs have topics outside of the blues paradigm subjects (romance, travel and anxiety). For example, he writes literally and figuratively about bombs dropping during the Second World War. There are references to charlatans, Mexican gardeners, recurring dreams, panic attacks, a mule with its shoulder gone…all good blues subjects that have been ignored by most blues musicians.

A few songs are set in the USA and we hear words like juke joint, second line, Cadillac; for the most part Harrison’s vocabulary is refreshingly idiosyncratic.

The language in general is simple and straight-forward; it is not hard to understand what he is saying. There were a few lyrics where I didn’t get the point, but just a few. 

Mark’s scansion is generally consistent and rhyme schemes are tight, though he is willing to fudge a rhyme if he needs a non-rhyming word to get his point across. The lyrics are overly narrative in my opinion - he would communicate better if he were to show rather than tell: be more cinematic than descriptive.

Another area he could improve is to focus on very specific detail in order to better communicate the big picture. This is especially true with his characters and the songs about his own thoughts and actions. I didn't have much emotional connection with his characters – I know what they did but I didn't feel what they felt or why I should care about them.

Music.

The songs all have a definite melody. This will strike many blues fans as sounding somewhat less bluesy, perhaps because we have become accustomed to blues songs that restrict themselves to a pentatonic scale. 

The guitar sound contributes a lot to keep the songs bluesy, with Harrison’s scratchy voice adding some more of the same. When Josienne Clarke takes the lead vocal, especially on the earlier two albums, her sweet and pure tone takes the song into the realm of folk music. On The World Outside album, she slides into the notes a little more, gives the flat note a little more time before she straightens it out and hits the melody.

His songs don’t give him much room to emote vocally – not many long vowel sounds. This suits his vocal style, and also the conversational nature of the lyrics. However, I hope he writes some songs that would give a more accomplished singer some room to stretch out. His lack of vocal prowess may be limiting his songwriting.

Harrison often uses a chorus or refrain in his songs, unlike traditional acoustic blues singer-songwriters. Willie Dixon was among the first bluesmen to (re-)use these structures, and typically his songs were recorded by bands, not solo acoustic musicians. This practice helps make the songs accessible – the listener can learn and internalize the repeated sections, and even sing along (aloud or not). Every song on the 2014 album has a refrain.

The songs are quite highly arranged. At least one guitar part will echo or be in unison with the vocal melody. The songs almost always have riffs - lines the band play ensemble that might have started as guitar riffs. Some songs have a very major scale feel in the verse melody that becomes “bluesified” by using the b7 or b3 in a riff. 

As far as I can tell, there is little live improvisation captured on record. It would be interesting to hear the band live.

The music is stylistically similar over all three albums, I suppose this is natural given the same band members throughout. It seemed to me that instrumentals were longer and less numerous in the newest album.

I think that European blues fans must be more open-minded than fans here in the USA. The reviews of his albums in the European blues press praise his non-conformity but still include his music as within the blues tradition, rather than implying that it isn't blues. Mark Harrison has three albums out, gigs regularly and it looks as though his career will be a long one. This is a fortunate thing for blues songwriting and for the blues genre in general. 

Link to Mark Harrison web site

Notes. 

I listened to three albums - The World Outside (2014), Crooked Smile (2012) and Watching The Parade (2010). 

Doug MacLeod observations

Doug MacLeod is one of the few blues singer-songwriters to achieve a long and consistent career performing his own songs almost exclusively.¹ What can I learn from his work to help me be a successful blues singer-songwriter?

I started to wonder if his songwriting has changed over the course of his career, and decided it would be instructive for my own songwriting to dig deep.

I listened to seven albums – No Road Back Home (1984), Unmarked Road (1987), Whose Truth, Whose Lies (2000), Dubb (2005), Utrecht Sessions (2008), Brand New Eyes (2011) and There's a Time (2013). I was interested to see whether he changed the things he wrote about, how he wrote about them, how did they relate to blues tradition…

I believe that blues would be more popular if we were to write songs about our actual day-to-day lives that use common, everyday 21st century language. That’s the whole focus of this blog. Academic study of blues music posits that traditional blues songs are usually about travel, romance and anxiety. Blues developed (like all folk music) as an oral tradition; blues musicians recombined existing blues lyrics to make new songs – a formulaic approach. (A good place to start reading about this is David Evans’ book, “Big Road Blues”.) As blues recordings became more available, songwriters started to get a bit more creative, introducing new ideas, modern references to African-American history, songs about news events and so on. Willie Dixon, more than any other songwriter, brought blues into the 20th century. Blues had spawned pop music, Broadway tunes and jazz. Dixon brought some parts of this modern music back into the blues - musical elements such as bridges and choruses, chord structures that had evolved out of the blues. He wrote about current city culture, you could dance to the blues.

OK, first I’ll talk about lyrics.

Doug MacLeod’s songwriter roots are evidently the singer-songwriters that preceded the Willie Dixon era – even though he spent many years as a band member in Chicago-style electric bands. His song topics generally fit into the blues tradition – travel, anxiety and romance. But every album has one or more tunes that don’t fit that mold; some give us advice or commentary on some aspect of the sorry state of the world.

He rarely uses recombined formulaic phrases from existing blues songs.² His songs usually make sense and the verses relate to one another and progress in a linear way. It does not seem to me that he wrote about different topics as his career progressed. The main change I hear is that he got better and better at doing what he does. The writing is more refined, adept, there are more layers of meaning, and meanings that go deeper; he allows questions to go unanswered. This is not a clear, qualitative old/new MacLeod difference; he tackled difficult subjects early on in his career.  Long Black Train, from 1984, shows us how there is a good side and a bad side to what life gives us. And no easy answers.

Some themes that run through the albums I listened to –

• ·         There is a reason for leaving your lover. A woman may look good, act sexy, but there is something wrong inside. A man might be too self-involved and selfish to really show love. Doug leaves women more often than they leave him.
• ·         Life is what you make it.
• ·         The devil is involved in a lot of things that go wrong.

Some things I notice he doesn't sing about –

• ·         Having fun getting stoned or drunk. Drugs and alcohol generally have bad consequences.
• ·         Ordinary day-to-day activities like shaving, shopping, changing clothes, having a conversation with his wife, dealing with the travel arrangements and details of his touring life…

This was a lot of listening. Fortunately, I can listen to Doug MacLeod all day – the same way I can listen to Muddy Waters. I took detailed notes on lyrics for six albums (excluded Utrecht Sessions) and on four albums for musical content.  My discussion of musical qualities excludes the 1984 album No Road Back Home (blues-rock band) and also Dubb (2000) and Utrecht Sessions (2008) because I focused on early versus late.

Musically, Doug MacLeod’s songs are always well constructed with a feel, chord structure and delivery that is appropriate to the subject of the sing – good prosody in other words. I’m not going to talk about production or very much – the producer(s) have the most influence there, and I’m focusing on songwriting.  But I do want to applaud his wide variety of tonal textures (guitar sounds, vocal styling, etc.) which is common to all of the albums.

Many acoustic blues musicians of the past 50 years who were guitar studs (as opposed to songwriters) went down the Blind Blake/Reverend Gary Davis road, playing pre-arranged and ragtime piano-inspired songs. Doug Macleod certainly has the chops but he didn't do that – he stayed within the blues tradition to a large extent. There are certainly some ragtime chord progressions, but generally not the piano left hand type of arrangements you hear from Stefan Grossman et al. He often takes it outside – a discordant open string accents the chord, maybe a chromatic figure, often an unusual chord choice between verses or as a turnaround.³  But every album has solid traditional 12-bar blues songs, played in the traditional way.

Most albums employ a rhythm section and the early ones feature guest musicians. I think the production has refined in later albums to showcase and focus on Doug’s playing and singing.

He has a lot of songs that establish a groove, often on one chord, for the verse with a couple of additional chords to turn around or for the refrain. Often he uses a b3 – 4 chord progression here, not a traditional blues thing as far as I know. 

He doesn't use bridges. Also, very rarely is there something you might call a chorus, though he does use a lot of refrains.⁴

Bottom line – Doug hasn't changed what he does over the past 30 years of his solo career. He just has gotten better at doing it. And if I want to be a blues singer-songwriter in the blues world that exists today, I should write more songs within the travel-romance-anxiety paradigm.

Footnotes.

1. He recorded a Bukka White tune The New Panama Limited on A Little Sin, Willie Dixon’s Bring It On Home and Muddy Waters’ Rollin and Tumblin’ on Ain’t the Blues Evil

2. Formulas – like Necessary Clothes – no particular story, verses don’t relate to one another as much as other song have it. But he doesn’t use formulas much and this isn’t really just a formula song.  Old Country Road is formulaic – traditional treatment, extra measures of instrumental noodling at the end of the line (in verse 1).  V1 – walking blues away on country road, v2 – moon lonesome, me lonesome too cause my baby treats me so unkind, v3 why do you treat me bad, I’m a good man.

3. Unmarked Road has greater variety of harmonies in guitar – weird chords. Whose Truth Whose Lies has greater mixture of styles and songs about things that are out of the usual blues topics. Norfolk County Line – about lost love, a wistful expressive lyric sung as a duet. St Louis on My Mind -      formulaic. Black Pony – very metaphoric. Unlonely – a simple love song.  Also a lot of guitar textures – distortion on Going Down Country – do we hear that on anything else? You Won’t Find Me has a little distortion – also a less usual chord progression – JL Hooker boogie A-C-D riff with an occasional b7 between verses. Time for a Change – discordant open strings, minor key. I wonder if the later albums go back to more traditional blues structures and timbres.

4. If I wanted to be 100% right about this, I’d go back and listen to everything again but I just don’t want to 

Doug MacLeod. Epitome of the Blues Singer-Songwriter

My next few posts are going to be centered on Doug Macleod. The International Blues Foundation honored him in 2014 as the Acoustic Artist of the Year and also awarded his latest album, “There Comes a Time” as the Acoustic Album of the Year. 

To my knowledge, MacLeod is unique among successful blues performers in that he only performs his own original songs. He is one of the few solo artists that are featured performers at major blues festivals. He has recorded 22 albums of his material plus an instructional DVD.  

I will explore:

How does he do it? Why is he successful as a solo acoustic artist in a field dominated by electric bands? What can I learn from Doug that would help me grow as a blues singer-songwriter?

My focus is on his songwriting, but as I've been listening to the man I have come to think that the songs can’t be separated from the performance. And it makes me wonder to what extent this is true for blues in general. While there are blues songwriters whose songs are mostly recorded by other people (Gary Nicholson for example), MacLeod is more of a singer-songwriter. He has had a dozen-or-so cuts by other artists but the overwhelming majority of his songs have been played by Doug only.

Let me over-generalize to make a point. It seems to me that blues audiences are the most enthralled when an instrumentalist takes a solo. Close second – the band is tight, in the groove, a good beat, playing off one another and it makes you want to dance. Vocal performance runs third in holding their attention, and the words of a song don’t really matter. Sure, if you go out to hear Janiva Magness the vocals are going to be your focus, but for nine out of ten acts at a typical blues festival, the melody and words are not the main source of audience satisfaction. Songwriting is all about melody and words.  

Doug MacLeod’s words matter a lot – and his delivery ensures you know what he is saying. His singing is excellent – he has a good range, multiple vocal “personalities”, always expressive and soulful. He will draw you in with this storytelling between (and within) songs. But how successful would he be if he weren’t an absolute motherfucker on guitar? His playing is always sensitive, expressive and appropriate for the song, though he can whip out licks that make your jaw drop any time he feels like it. Do you think instrumental performance is the most important thing? I’d really like to know!

I thought it would be interesting to look at how his writing has developed over the past twenty years; approximately the period since he became mainly a solo performer. I am listening and making notes about three albums recorded between 1996 and 2000, and three albums from the past five years.

What topics or themes did he sing about in the 90’s versus what concerns him today? Has his language changed?

Listening to Doug MacLeod’s music is time well spent. OK, then, let's go!.