All the upcoming Blues & roots gigs
HAS NEWS OF A HOST OF ROOTS MUSIC GIGS HEADING TO THE CLUNY IN NEWCASTLE OVER THE COMING WEEK
THE Cluny grabs the focus of attention this week with a line-up which is strongly rooted in the essential elements of American music.
Pride of place goes to Alvin Youngblood Hart, a man who is steeped in the blues of the Mississippi delta (and so much more besides) despite the fact that he was born in Oakland, California on the east side of San Francisco Bay.
He comes to the Ouseburn venue next Wednesday night with his band Muscle Theory.
Hart’s family were originally from Mississippi and the music of the region is undoubtedly an intrinsic strand of his DNA.
However, he sees music in the broadest terms – as his recorded output would attest – and there are slices of most of the American traditional music forms in his work.
Hart took up the guitar in earnest in his early teens and he once described the learning process as ‘an obsessive competition among us teenage boys – the guitar was the video game of our day.’
A seven-year career in the US Coastguard service helped him develop other skills, particularly as technician in electronics, and he has applied that aptitude to repair and modification work on his guitars/ amplifiers and the like.
Hart’s debut album, Big Mama’s Door (OKeh Music), appeared in 1996 and prompted Taj Mahal to say ‘Boy got thunder in his hands, sure does’ and the quote was prominently placed on the CD case.
Taj Mahal was only one of many top-class judges to pile praise on the head of the emerging singer/guitarist/writer. The record contained songs by blues giants like Leadbelly (who had an equally eclectic outlook), Charley Patton and the lesserknown Walter Vinson but the bulk of the 13 tracks were either Hart originals or his own arrangements of traditional material.
He followed up with Territory, Start With The Soul, Down In The Alley and Motivational Speaker before embarking on a range of side projects. He has earned a Grammy (for his role on the album Beautiful Dreamer – The Songs of Stephen Foster), Blues Music Award (called a W.C. Handy at the time) for best new artist and a Down Beat magazine Best Blues Album award for Territory.
AYH has worked with friends like Jimbo Mathus and Luther Dickinson (South Memphis String Band), Otis Taylor’s Banjo project, Ian Siegal and the Dickinson brothers in the Mississippi Mudbloods and contributed to the Martin Scorsese film series The Blues; Wim Wenders’ Soul of A Man and in the documentary Last of the Mississippi Jukes.
He was once described as the ‘cosmic American love child of Howlin Wolf and Link Wray…’ but in reality he is the child of many fathers, musically speaking, of course.
He works solo, in a variety of collaborative units and, as he is for this show, with his electric band, Muscle Theory. Whatever the guise, Alvin Youngblood Hart is the real McCoy by anyone’s definition!
The night after that, on Thursday, Cluny has guests from New Orleans when the five-piece Deslondes, are the attraction.
Named after a street in the Holy Cross district in the Crescent City, the country to R’n’B outfit bring a newly released album, Hurry Home, to show off.
Two of the principals in the band, Sam Doores and Dan Cutler, had previously seen service with Hurray