Alabama Songs
Two outsider artists get on the inside track at the Le Guess Who? festival, Utrecht. Lonnie Holley, Swamp Dogg Le Guess Who?, Utrecht, The Netherlands
“Swamp Dogg tells the crowd about fading eyesight and erectile problems, but sings like a much younger man.”
AMULTISPACE, all-inclusive four days of joyful musical provocation in inviting Utrecht, the full bill for Le Guess Who? 2018 was an eclectic, jump-cutting thing to flash-fry the lobes of the most seasoned musical explorer. On Sunday alone, after rocking hard with New York’s Endless Boogie at a rare lunchtime show, you could zone inwards to the recumbent ambient infinities of Swede-duo Thet Liturgiske Owäsendet, get on up with glorious Sudanese funk force The Scorpios, and then be levitated by Kadri Gopalnath’s south Indian classical music rearranged for alto sax. This global traversing also stops off in Birmingham, Alabama, birthplace of folk sculptor-turned-musician Lonnie Holley. The opening artist at main venue the Tivoli Vredenburg’s Grote Zaal, on Thursday night, the keyboardist/ singer is joined by drummer Marlon Patton and trombonist Dave Nelson to play protean free improvisations infused with jazz and blues. A man who fell to Earth with a haunting voice full of shivers, pain and strength, he explores the planet, and particularly America, as a hostile alien world in need of grace and transcendence. For all the avant-gardism and billowing spontaneity – at one point the 68-year-old professorially removes his glasses to dab at his brow with a cloth and announces, “Everything you’re hearing’s from straight out’ the brain” – deep soul roots and fragmented, spiritual narratives of hurt, family, the mother ship and heaven make this a curiously intimate experience. As Patton rolls and fills around Holley’s untethered vocalising, and Nelson plays long lunar notes, the singularity of the moment is achieved. After announcing that he has 49 grandchildren, and a final, impromptu piece expressing his gratitude, Holley gives a glad thumbs up and is gone. It was a soul performance all right, but not as we know it. Though born in Portsmouth, Virginia, R&B maverick Jerry Williams Jr discovered and refined his anarchic, leg-humping Swamp Dogg persona 100 or so miles north-west of Holley’s Alabama home, when recording at Muscle Shoals in 1970. His closing show at the Ronda hall on Sunday night follows more earthbound map references than the former artist, but the destinations are no less worth the trip. Resplendent in a salmon/peach suit and hat combo with a big gold medallion, and backed by a ’70s-model crack soul group with horns and producer Moogstar on keyboards, he wastes no time in telling the crowd about the fading eyesight and erectile problems that come with spending 76 years on the planet. Yet when he sings he sounds like a much younger man. Playing selected cuts from 2018’s warped, Justin Vernon-assisted Love, Loss And Auto-Tune LP, he also treats us to vintage faves like the poignant ecological lament The World Beyond, a storming burn up of his LSD-sparked breakthrough Total Destruction To Your Mind, and a lengthy, pleading version of the Bee Gees’ I’ve Gotta Get A Message To You that’s wholly in keeping with his unabashed sentimentality. Clearly touched by his warm reception, he ends by getting down on his knees for an extended flesh-pressing session with the people, and needs to be helped up. Swamp Dogg doesn’t care, and neither should we. Like Le Guess Who? as a whole – make the trip once and you’ll never look back – this was an event to savour with unbridled glee.