Mojo's Cold Shot 
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Thursday, April 30th, 2009

Mojo’s Cold Shot: Happy 70th, Luther “Guitar Junior” Johnson

by Mojo Flucke

This column, sadly, sometimes looks like the blues obituary page. Well, forget that for now! This Shot, we’re celebrating the life Luther “Guitar Junior” Johnson, a ripping-good Chicago-style guitarist who cut his teeth with legends Muddy Waters and Magic Sam, touring with them in the ’60s and ’70s.

He still plays out–mostly in New England, where he makes his home nowadays. In fact, I and fellow Popdoser Ed Murray caught him at The Village Trestle in Goffstown earlier this month, where he rang in his 70th birthday after the gig.

Here’s a fantastic 10 minute shot of Luther in his solo rockin’ prime of the 1980s, done from a Cambridge, Mass. club. You can hear the Mississippi and N’Awlins in his voice in the interview part, but the music is pure urban blues along Memphis and Chicago lines, with Muddy and B.B. King sounds coming out of his guitar. (Bonus: The video also features awesome Pinetop Perkins footage, as he performs with Luther; that guy, by the way, is still pumping out blues in his 90s, and last I heard, was still pretty sharp):

So there you go. Still kicking and entertaining folks, Luther’s a living guitar legend, the kind of which we’re losing left and right as they all get to be that age. Go see him and support him out there on the road, the guy’s got blues running in his veins and still brings it, albeit with a few more slower, downhome selections mixed in that he used to. After the show, meet him, buy a couple CDs, shake his hand, get an autograph. He’s good like that.

Here’s a double-shot of music, “Doin’ The Sugar, Too,” the title track from his 1984 Bullseye Blues album, and “Got To Find A Way,” another title track–this one from his 1998 Telarc album.

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Thursday, April 16th, 2009

Mojo’s Cold Shot: Naomi Shelton & the Gospel Queens

by Mojo Flucke

Be still my soul. Lawd have mercy. When soul first came out, so many social issues made so many people so PO’d (civil rights, Vietnam, rioting in seemingly every urban area, drug abuse, the specter of nuclear war) that retreating into gospel-sounding soul music was a welcome respite–and a way to constructively vent the emotions that otherwise might drive a man or woman to commit an act that was, er, socially nonconstructive.

Welcome to 2009, the post-Bush wasteland of scorched-earth economics, war and pestilence, terrorism, drug abuse and bad, bad pop music. Along with acts like Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, James Hunter, Amy Winehouse and a fistful of other neo-soul artists my peers have been writing up on Popdose (Ken Shane’s Black Joe Lewis piece is one example), Naomi Shelton & the Gospel Queens have come to rescue us from the stuff we hear about on the radio and see on the TV and flat-screen computer monitors that just plain don’t make no sense. Like a shooter going off in Binghamptom at a facility whose sole reason for existence was helping noncitizens become citizens here in our land of milk, honey, and executive bonuses. I mean, WTF? (more…)

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Thursday, April 2nd, 2009

Mojo’s Cold Shot: Left Lane Cruiser

by Mojo Flucke

On one hand, Jon Spencer, in my book, has a lot to answer for. The half-baked, half-rehearsed stuff he sometimes releases is offensive to the people who work for a living for actual money to buy his records.

On the other hand, he and a few other people grafted their musical knowledge, interest and love of Mississippi Hill Country blues to their own tuneage and created an exciting new genre of music known today as Deep Blues, practiced by the folks who attend the annual Deep Blues Festival in Lake Elmo, MN (of all places).

Gotta love him for that. YAY-ess. I’ll also give Flat Duo Jets, Chickasaw Mudd Puppies, and Timbuk 3 a share of the credit for the fantastic Deep Blues acts out today like the Black Keys, Black Diamond Heavies, and even the White Stripes, the latter of which the Deep Blues guys kinda ignore–I think–because Jack White can seem a little arrogant and a little too big for his britches.

This week’s electric blues duo you’ve never heard of–but should love–is Fort Wayne, IN’s Left Lane Cruiser, which belts out guitar-based blues, raucous like few others in the milieu.

I love their unofficial theme song, “Truck Song.”. And then there’s “Wash It.” Bashing, raw, primitive, electric blues. No synths, no frills, no Timbaland or Pharrell to smooth out the sonic rough spots that might offend your rose-fragile ears. If that ain’t a Cold Shot, I don’t know what is.

Jon Spencer fans, don’t think I am a hater. I am ambivalent. As a peace offering, I give you a deeply unauthorized track from Pussy Galore’s, ur, reinterpretation of the Rolling Stones’ Exile On Main Street. The whole album, they did, but I’m just giving you “Hip Shake.” Google the rest of it if you’re really curious.

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Thursday, March 5th, 2009

Mojo’s Cold Shot: John Cephas, 1930-2009

by Mojo Flucke

Last summer, I gave y’alls a Cephas & Wiggins Cold Shot that had no news peg, no current-events hook that made it relevant to that time, just a nice little cut to get you through the day and toss some props to one of my favorite traditional blues acts.

I am saddened to report that now, I’ve got that news peg: Guitarist John Cephas passed away this week. He was 78 years old.

John Cephas, in 1989

Cephas & Wiggins weren’t electric guitar heroes, they weren’t rock slaves. John Cephas played acoustic guitar in the Piedmont style, with the touch of an extraordinary folk talent and the love of a most devoted fan. Who were his biggest influences? Let him tell you in the spirited, autobiographical—at least he told me it was autobiographical in an interview I did with him once—song “I Was Determined,” from C&W’s Alligator album, Homemade. (more…)

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Thursday, February 19th, 2009

Mojo’s Cold Shot: Los Lobos, “That Train Don’t Stop Here”

by Mojo Flucke

Los Lobos‘ 1992 album Kiko is nothing short of fabulous. A tour de force of primitive rhythms, Latino percussion, gorgeous acoustic and muddy electric guitars, and melodic variance of epic Sgt. Pepper scale. Oh, and the album’s punctuated with baritone saxophone, not a common rock flourish, at least since about 1962.

In other words, it’s pure genius. I might argue its a top-five, all-time album, next to the likes of Exile on Main Street and the aforementioned Pepper, if one caught me  in a mood to argue such things (or held a gun to my head). It’s that good.

Part of what makes the album tick is the Lobos’ willingness to dip into whatever musical style that suits each particular song and bust out of whatever typecast that came before in their recorded repertoire. That’s not easy, especially when it comes at the expense of defying audience expectations.

Drunken mariachi (”Rio De Tenampa”),  dusty acoustic folk (”Two Janes”), countrified rock (”Reva’s House”), and a half-dozen other styles find their way on to Kiko—including rockin’ blues of the pre-Cream style.

That brings us to today’s Cold Shot, “That Train Don’t Stop Here,” proving that blues can pop up in the same old places—or where it’s completely unexpected. Songs like this say to me that the blues is a living, organic form, and not just marooned on old 78s in the Smithsonian’s humidor.

In the title of its greatest-hits compilation, Los Lobos called itself “just another band from East. L.A.” I beg to differ—regardless of the humble beginnings, this band—and record—is one for the ages.

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Thursday, February 5th, 2009

Mojo’s Cold Shot: Jimmy “Duck” Holmes, “Gonna Get Old Someday”

by Mojo Flucke

Even in these crushing economic times, blues fans can count on three things: Death, taxes, and until they spend every last red cent they fish from the ashtrays and couch cushions in Mississippi, Fat Possum Records gonna dig up, record, and release records from obscure originals performing the blues, whether they’re commercially viable or not.

Enter Jimmy “Duck” Holmes, whose juke joint The Blue Front in Bentonia (home town of blues legend Skip James) dates back to segregation times and is now on official stop on the Mississippi Blues Trail (below: Duck and his crew celebrate).

His new record on Fat Possum, Gonna Get Old Someday, finds Holmes sharp of spirit and handy with the acoustic guitar. A casual player up until the last few years, Holmes preferred to work the Blue Front, which has been open since 1948, when he was one year old and his father launched it. No doubt Duck himself helped move a bottle or two of his dad’s famed bootleg ’shine.

Today, however, he’s a working musician, and his style is way-gone old skool but his voice is clear and beautiful, as evidenced in “Hurry, Hurry.” It’s not really important that Duck isn’t a longtime fixture on the circuit, someone with a pedigree of B.B. King or Buddy Guy. What he is doing is preserving a fiercely local blues style that James created and Duck’s in a position to understand–and feel.

And in these economic times, we know for sure that he’s doing it out of love for the blues, because there’s no money to be made playing Skip James style during boom years. Bless you, Duck and Fat Possum. Keep it real. You too can keep it real by checking out Jimmy “Duck” Holmes at his MySpace and at his Mississippi Arts Commission home page.

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Thursday, October 23rd, 2008

Mojo’s Cold Shot: Restaurant, “Joe D”

by Mojo Flucke

Meet Restaurant, or Restavrant, depending on how the person writing about this crazy Texas duo interprets the band’s logo. Equal parts Flat Duo Jets, Timbuk 3, Black Keys and Chickasaw Mudd Puppies (yeah, you read that right), these frenetic nutballs are a little bit country and a little bit rock and roll.

And a lot blues.

Here’s the group’s first single, “Joe D” off the recently released album Restaurant Returns To the Tomb of [sic] Guiliano Medidici. Rock on with this lo-fi craziness the group itself bills as “electro-country-punk.” Whatever it is, I wants me some more of it.

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Thursday, October 9th, 2008

Mojo’s Cold Shot: R.L. Burnside, “First Recordings”

by Mojo Flucke

The blues aren’t dead yet. But, compared to, say, 1971, they’ve got one foot and two thirds of the other in the grave. Let’s admit that.

Blues fans haven’t heard as much groundbreaking stuff in recent years as we did in previous decades, when dinosaurs like Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker roamed the earth and were still cranking out new material — or at least phenomenal reinterpretations of old stuff.

In fact, the whole tribute-duets era of the 1990s really turned this hardcore fan off to new blues recordings altogether for a time, with a few exceptions. B.B. King paired with hip-hop producers and rappers? Give me a break. Undignified for everyone involved. Made me quite sad. I fled to the box-set aisle and fortified my collection, diving deeper into the blues and R&B from the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s.

Not making the blanket statement saying that all these collaborations were all junk. Just saying, it wasn’t, for example, the quality of Hooker and Canned Heat throwing down the awesome blues rock they did back in the 1960s, back when I was literally in my infancy.

The one exception in the groundbreaking department was Fat Possum Records, which, to be fair, also did its share of undignified remixing in an attempt to get the Jon Spencer Generation hipped to ancient treasures like R.L. Burnside and Asie Payton. The remix/duet stuff was a little interesting, but not really earth-shattering. (more…)

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Thursday, October 2nd, 2008

Mojo’s Cold Shot: Robert Bradley’s Blackwater Surprise, “I Thank You”

by Mojo Flucke

I’m not much of a modern blues guy; in fact a lot of my pals like to refer to me as a crusty-old, close-minded, purist curmudgeon. ‘Tis true, I’d much rather listen to old Chuck Berry blues instrumentals, ancient John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters,  early ’70s blues-funk throwdowns from Albert and B.B. King, or even early- 50s R&B than polished, slick Robert Cray or horned-up 2008 urban blues. Because to me, nothing says “hard luck and trouble” like a perfectly digitally sparkling pristine recording by some white dude who grew up in suburbia. Not.

That being said, I am a sucker for a fine soul crooner, no matter the vintage, race, creed, or city of birth.

One such singer who fits this bill perfectly is Robert Bradley, whose fine fine recordings of the last decade or so make me shiver with admiration. For the record, he is blind, was raised in Alabama by a single mother, and was a street performer before he was discovered in the mid ’90s by a group of guys who couldn’t believe their ears.

Also, for the record, they were cranking out bluesy soul records before Amy Winehouse and her ilk brought soul back into vogue (and I thank her for doing so). Bradley was making the rounds with his retro sound when Kid Rock heard him, and sampled him on “I Got One For Ya” in 1997. (more…)

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Thursday, September 11th, 2008

Mojo’s Cold Shot: The Scissormen, “Luck in a Hurry”

by Mojo Flucke

A couple months back, I interviewed the Scissormen for Popdose. They’re a raunchy blues-rock duo in the vein of Black Diamond Heavies or Black Keys, except masterminded by an even older soul, rock journalist Ted Drozdowski.

Well, as luck would have it, this month the group’s new record, Luck In A Hurry, hit the shelves — whichever shelves are still open to blues duos scratching out a living in southern juke joints and selected fine watering holes in New England.

Drozdowski’s deep blues, like many of his compadres out there, carries the torch not so much for the polished Chicago gentry like Buddy Guy or his Memphis peer B.B. King as much as rough-and-tumble Mississippi Hill Country originals like Junior Kimbrough and R.L. Burnside, rediscovered and immortalized on Fat Possum Records in the 1990s. In fact, Drozdowski credits Burnside — who encouraged him to follow his dream and play the blues — for inspiring the riff on the new record’s “The Devil Is Laughing.”

On the new record, the Scissormen play mostly the sparse, forlorn blues we’ve come to appreciate from the milieu, oddly suitable for these times of economic war, woe, and social inequity, much as they were back in the mid-20th century when blues dinosaurs roamed the South’s back roads practicing their art.

But on “Whiskey and Maryjane,” they bring in a ringer: Dicky Barrett of the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, who you can hear clearly appreciates joining a punky little slide tune from which you can practically hear the rust chips fall. Morphine drummer Billy Conway makes an appearance on Luck in a Hurry, too. These guys not only help change things up sonically and put their stamp of approval of the proceedings, but they also help make the connection from ancient blues to modern rock. Drozdowski’s the bridge from old to new, the impresario, his guitar the catalyst. There’s some kind of magic in those grooves that no digital studio creation can replicate.

One area where the Scissormen have digitized is their media: Check a heapin’ helping of tuneage, video, and other stuff at both the band’s download page and MySpace.

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