Eric Bibb – Migration Blues

ERIC BIBB

Migration Blues

Stony Plain

ericbibb.com

stonyplainrecords.com

As I’ve said often before, Eric Bibb is one of the most inspired, and inspiring, of contemporary blues and folk artists. Eric has been quite prolific over the past two decades, releasing many studio albums, live albums and collaborative albums and the quality of his work has been consistently high. My best-of-the-year lists here on the Folk Roots/Folk Branches blog have included an Eric Bibb album for six of the past eight years – and they were on my lists many times before that when the Montreal Gazette was publishing my annual picks.

Migration Blues, a topical and timely set of songs about the migration of peoples and individuals – from country to country or place to place – is one of Eric’s most powerful and compelling collections.

Before discussing any of the songs, I’ll mention that this is an intimate recording. In addition to Eric, who variously plays various guitars and six-string banjo, the core musicians are multi-instrumentalist Michael Jerome Browne of Montreal on various banjos, various guitars, fiddle and mandolin; and harmonica master JJ Milteau of France. The three virtuoso musicians – whether all three or two at a time – are a seamless unit.

The album opens with Eric’s “Refugee Moan,” a haunting song sung from the perspective of a refugee praying for a way out of his war-torn country to find a home somewhere peaceful. The song is a universal plea that could apply to refugees from any of the conflicts that have plagued our world in recent decades – even recent centuries.

Other songs about refugees include “Prayin’ for Shore,” a heartbreaking account of refugees – such as the millions who have left Syria over the past six years, or the Vietnamese boat people of a generation ago, or the displaced Jewish Holocaust survivors attempting to reach pre-state Israel after the Second World War – who cross treacherous waters in flimsy boats because they have no other choice; and “Four Years, No Rain,” co-written by Michael and B.A. Markus, which reflects how combinations of war, drought and even terrorism affect refugees.

“Delta Getaway,” co-written by Eric and JJ, reflects the experience of a pre-war blues artist from Mississippi who witnessed a lynching and feared for his life in the Jim Crow South setting out to make his way north to Memphis and on to Chicago. A similar theme is voiced later in the album on “With a Dolla’ in My Pocket” and, to an extent, on “Blacktop,” an older song co-written by Michael and B.A. Markus and sung as a duet by Eric and Michael.

“Diego’s Blues,” co-written by Eric and Michael, tells the origin story of the son of a Mexican woman and African American man. Diego’s mother was one of the many Mexican migrants who’d arrived in the Delta in the 1920s to find work in an area experiencing a labor shortage because of the migration of African Americans leaving the rural South for the urban North hoping to escape Jim Crow; while “We Had to Move” – inspired by the story of James Brown’s family – describes the reasons why the people in one particular African American neighborhood were forced to migrate somewhere else.

Michael Jerome Browne, Mike Regenstreif & Eric Bibb (2005)

There are three powerful instrumentals on the album. In the title track, co-written by Eric, Michael and JJ, you can virtually feel the footsteps of people on the move in the sounds of the instruments. In “La Vie c’est un oignon,” Michael’s fiddle and JJ’s harmonica wordlessly tell the story of the forced migration of 18th century Acadians from Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island to Louisiana where they became Cajuns; and in the short “Postcard from Booker,” Eric plays a guitar owned by the late blues artist Booker (Bukka) White in a tribute that perhaps reflects the traveling life that White led as a musician.

In addition to the songs written or co-written by Eric, Michael and JJ, there are also superb versions of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land” (including the often unsung political verses) and Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War,” two songs which remain as powerful today as when they were written more than 75 and 50 years ago.

The album ends quietly with a beautiful version of the traditional African American spiritual “Mornin’ Train,” featuring Eric on vocals and guitar with Ulrika Bibb singing harmony and Michael setting the pace with his banjo.

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--Mike Regenstreif

Rory Block – Keepin’ Outta Trouble: A Tribute to Bukka White

RORY BLOCK

Keepin’ Outta Trouble: A Tribute to Bukka White

Stony Plain Records

roryblock.com

In 1974, when I was 20-years-old, I was a stage manager (area co-ordinator) at the Mariposa Folk Festival and one of the artists I got to work with that year at Mariposa was Booker “Bukka” White, a 68-year-old legend of the Delta blues. I wasn’t yet familiar with White’s recordings, but I knew some of his songs via recordings by Bob Dylan, Dave Van Ronk and Tom Rush. What I remember most, more than 40 years later, was White’s imposing presence sitting on stage with his steel-bodied National guitar, and the authority and power in his singing and slide playing. That June weekend in Toronto was the only time I got to see him play live. He died less than three years later.

Rory Block, who grew up in the folk music community in Greenwich Village, met White there in 1965, when she was about 15. “Watching him perform was transformative. Bukka had absolutely no mercy on the guitar and slammed it like Paul Bunyan wielding an axe,” she writes in the notes to Keepin’ Outta Trouble: A Tribute to Bukka White, the latest in her series of tribute albums to legendary blues artists she had the opportunity to know and learn from as a kid. Earlier releases in the series include tributes to Son House, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Reverend Gary Davis, Mississippi John Hurt and Skip James.

While Rory has often included a song or two she wrote about those artists on these Mentor Series tribute albums, along with her versions of their classic songs, she brings many more of her own songs to this project than ever before. Of the 10 tracks, half are Bukka White classics and half are Rory’s original songs inspired, in some way by him.

She opens the album with a pair of original tracks. In “Keepin’ Outta Trouble,” she gives us a couple of scenes from (or imagined from) White’s life: a fight in a Mississippi barroom that gets him in trouble and a prison term at Parchman Farm that ends when he impresses the governor with his music. Then, in the gospel-influenced “Bukka’s Day,” we hear about his hard life of work growing up, the influence of the church, his becoming a musician and again, of that fight that put him in prison. Ultimately, it’s a piece of blues philosophy about the saint and the sinner in all of us.

Rory’s songs later in the album include “Spooky Rhythm,” in which she pictures White as an itinerant musician, “Gonna Be Some Walkin’ Done,” which was inspired by White’s guitar part to his song “Jitterbug Swing,” and by an off-hand comment he made on a record, and “Back to Memphis,” a tribute to the music White played in Memphis so many decades ago.

Booker "Bukka" White

Bukka White’s songs – covered with equal doses of respect for his original versions and Rory’s own creativity – include “Aberdeen Mississippi Blues,” “Parchman Farm,” and the often-covered “Fixin’ to Die Blues.”

My favorites of White’s songs in the set are the train songs, “New Frisco Train” and “Panama Limited,” a description of a train trip with the slide guitar duplicating the various sounds of the train as it makes it journey through the south.

Rory is the only musician and singer on the album but she sometimes fills out the sound by overdubbing more guitar parts, harmony vocals and creatively improvised percussion effects.

Like she had with the other albums in her Mentor Series tribute, Rory inspired me to pull Bukka White’s own recording off the shelf and listen again to that powerful musician I encountered at Mariposa so many years ago.

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--Mike Regenstreif

Eric Bibb – Blues People

ERIC BIBB
Blues People
Stony Plain 
ericbibb.com

As I’ve said before, Eric Bibb is one of the most inspired and inspiring of contemporary blues (and folk) artists. Blues People is yet another offering from the prolific singer, guitarist and songwriter that reinforces that opinion.

Some of my favorites of Eric’s albums are relatively simple productions that feature just him and perhaps another musician or two. Others, like Blues People, are much more elaborate productions with extensive back-up and many special guests turning up on specific tracks.

There is a concept to Blues People as its songs – 11 of which were written or co-written by Eric while four were drawn from other sources – capture snippets of the lives of musicians who have played blues over the past century or so and place them in the context of the times and changing times in which they’ve lived.

Michael Jerome Browne, Mike Regenstreif, Eric Bibb (2005)

Among the album’s highlights is “Driftin’ Door to Door,” co-written by Eric and Montreal’s own Michael Jerome Browne, and sung from the perspective of an itinerant musician – perhaps someone like Booker (Bukka) White. Eric notes that Michael’s outstanding slide work on this track was played on White’s own National guitar.

Other highlights from among the original songs are the very moving “Rosewood,” sung from the perspective of a man who survived the hate-motivated 1923 arson attacks and murders in which all of the African American homes in Rosewood, Florida were burned down; “Remember the Ones,” an R&B duet with Linda Tillery that pays tribute to the many heroes of the Civil Rights Movement; and “Dream Catchers,” also sung in an R&B mode by Eric and co-writers Ruthie Foster and Harrison Kennedy, in which they emphatically place themselves among contemporary people continuing the work and legacies of those civil rights heroes.

Among my favorites are several songs not written or co-written by Eric. These include a down home duet with Guy Davis on Guy’s “Chocolate Man,” almost certainly inspired by Mississippi John Hurt’s “Candy Man”; an uplifting rendition of Reverend Gary Davis’ “I Heard the Angels Singin’” on which Eric’s vocals and guitar are joined by Michael Jerome Browne on 12-string, JJ Milteau on harmonica and the Blind Boys of Alabama with their inspiring singing; and “Needed Time,” a traditional gospel song that Eric has previously recorded in several different arrangements. This one starts with Taj Mahal, alone on vocal and banjo, in what sounds like an old field recording before shifting into a multi-layered arrangement with Eric singing lead and glorious harmonies from the Blind Boys of Alabama and Ruthie Foster.

Blues People is certainly among the best folk-rooted or folk-branched albums of the year.

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--Mike Regenstreif