b.t.a., raymond lemmon, cookie mcgee
The soul of Man must quicken to creation.
Out of the formless stone, when the artist united himself with stone,
Spring always new forms of life, from the soul of man that is joined to the soul of stone;
Out of the meaningless practical shapes of all that is living or lifeless
Joined with the artist's eye, new life, new form, new colour.
Out of the sea of sound the life of music,
Out of the slimy mud of words, out of the sleet and hail of verbal imprecisions,
Approximate thoughts and feelings, words that have taken the place of thoughts and feelings,
There spring the perfect order of speech, and the beauty of incantation.
- T.S. Eliot, Choruses from "The Rock"
robert ealey and lady pearl are gone, but the house that he built and the band that she led are still going strong.
every so often, when life starts sapping the juice from yr soul, you need to get a dose of something real.
so friday night, my sweetie and i headed over to the bluebird blues club, which thankfully seems to be thriving since sam harris reopened it last fall. (he's got bookings on his calendar as far ahead as june; a positive sign.) when we walked in the door, the place was jam-packed, but rapper 'n' first-time bluebird visitor tahiti kindly offered to share a table and hooked me up with a copy of his cd the birth of whack. nice cat, just finished making a movie with mr. aggravated foe (j.d. gimme a call pls) and about to head to sxsw with his dallas co-conspirator pikahsso.
i usedta sub on gtr with b.t.a. when they held down a sunday night gig at the swing club (r.i.p.) at evans and allen on the east side. the swing club was an unimposing cinderblock building with no sign out front; you had to _know_. inside, it reeked of grease from the fish dinners they usedta cook in back. after a night there, my leather jacket and amplifier would smell like fish for a week. sometimes you'd play for four hours without a break, unless somebody took yr instrument -- lady pearl's brother / b.t.a. gtrist-vocalist ray reed likes to play _long_. some fine and mellow nights were had there, and the music flowed like sweet healing waters.
at the bluebird, b.t.a. was casting the same vibe: the whole history of black music, from country blues to its '50s urban variant to '60s soul to more recent developments in r&b, gets thrown into the pot and used in service of _the groove_. ray was in an elmore james frame of mind, so besides his take on the slow blues "it hurts me too," we got to hear a bunch of shuffles featuring elmore's signature lick. wearing his bandleader hat, ray was working hard to keep his musicians on the same page. while _most_ of the cats are veterans saturated with the music (exception: ray's college-age son on drums, who claims never to practice but has a great natural feel), there are occasional, um, _disagreements_ about the form, which ray resolves in the moment in a way lee allen could appreciate, directing the band with facial expressions, body movement, or the occasional shouted direction. i miss the no-frills precision of diminutive bassist quincy brown, but the current b.t.a. lineup is highlighted by the interplay between ray, who throws splintered shards of notes at will, and the second gtrist (damn, didn't catch his name), who's acquired a strat and a vox amp in addition to his 335 since last time i saw the band and has a searing sound that cuts through like a razorblade, playing _only the good notes_.
one of the attractive features of a b.t.a. show is that, when it's happenin', you don't just get a band -- you get a _revue_. guest musos at every position are jumping up seemingly at will or when called up by ray. there's a long tradition of this in the b.t.a. band; lady pearl herself could play gtr, bass, or drums, and her dtr miss kim is no slouch on the traps herself, as she proved when she took over the drum duties at one point on friday night. now yr _authentic_ (read: black) blues audience is hip that when it comes to this music, instrumental prowess ain't shee-it; rather, it's an art form that's all about _vocal_ expression. instead of an onslaught of gunslingin' gtrists, you'll hear a succession of soul-wrenching singers -- every one of 'em a star, trust me. fuck american idol, this is the real deal.
at the bluebird friday, we were fortunate to hear raymond lemmon, an east side legend whom i hadn't seen since the swing club a coupla yrs back. raymond is a hard-livin' dude who usedta share stages with pearl back in the day, a soul man in the solomon burke or wilson pickett mold who stands on the dancefloor and roars his masculinity while the band stretches out on a I-IV vamp, extending and building tension until the simplest of musical forms is transmogrified into a cleansing, purifying ritual in which everyone, performer and audience, has a part to play, a genuine soul-rinsing, and at the end everybody is drained, it's the best kind of release imaginable. later raymond gave me a cd-r of a performance of his with b.t.a., taped at a tribute to pearl at j&j's back in january. it's an echoey audience recording, and the music's rough, but it feels right, and now i have an artifact to prove to ppl that donwanna venture down to the bluebird that raymond at least exists. it's an enduring disappointment that lady pearl never released any recordings during her lifetime; there are some live tapes floating around that she was reviewing at the time of her death. somebody with a coupla grand in pocket needs to put something out on her purely for historical documentation purposes, imo.
also in the house: dallas gtrist-singer cookie mcgee, who plays an sg with a tone like molten silver and performs in a freddie king bag, which makes sense, since she grew up playing in bands with freddie's kids. (she's also toured europe an recorded for the brit jsp label.) after an initial near-trainwreck before ray and the bassplayer she brought (whom i recognized from vernon garrett's band of a coupla yrs ago) caught on to her approach on freddie's "i'm tore down," she pushed and drove the band to new levels of intensity and made ray work his ass off, trading lines that brought smiles to both axe-slinger's faces. cookie sez she'll be back at the bluebird in june, although the date isn't on their online calendar yet.
when miss kim hits, it's _showtime_. in the three yrs and change since her mom's passing, she's grown more comfortable wearing lady pearl's mantle, and her command of material, stage, and audience has grown. she drives the audience to quasi-religious ecstasies that are part sexual display (especially when kim's cousin cookie -- that's right, there were _two_ cookies in the house -- gets on the floor and starts workin' her thang), part catharsis, and part exorcism. she's a force of nature: strutting, shimmying, snarling, even _purring_ like a cat before hitting you smack dab in your earhole with pure vocal power. you gotta have this, papa. miss kim, ray reed, and the b.t.a. band will be back at the bluebird on income tax day, april 15th. if you miss them, your life will be poorer.
Out of the formless stone, when the artist united himself with stone,
Spring always new forms of life, from the soul of man that is joined to the soul of stone;
Out of the meaningless practical shapes of all that is living or lifeless
Joined with the artist's eye, new life, new form, new colour.
Out of the sea of sound the life of music,
Out of the slimy mud of words, out of the sleet and hail of verbal imprecisions,
Approximate thoughts and feelings, words that have taken the place of thoughts and feelings,
There spring the perfect order of speech, and the beauty of incantation.
- T.S. Eliot, Choruses from "The Rock"
robert ealey and lady pearl are gone, but the house that he built and the band that she led are still going strong.
every so often, when life starts sapping the juice from yr soul, you need to get a dose of something real.
so friday night, my sweetie and i headed over to the bluebird blues club, which thankfully seems to be thriving since sam harris reopened it last fall. (he's got bookings on his calendar as far ahead as june; a positive sign.) when we walked in the door, the place was jam-packed, but rapper 'n' first-time bluebird visitor tahiti kindly offered to share a table and hooked me up with a copy of his cd the birth of whack. nice cat, just finished making a movie with mr. aggravated foe (j.d. gimme a call pls) and about to head to sxsw with his dallas co-conspirator pikahsso.
i usedta sub on gtr with b.t.a. when they held down a sunday night gig at the swing club (r.i.p.) at evans and allen on the east side. the swing club was an unimposing cinderblock building with no sign out front; you had to _know_. inside, it reeked of grease from the fish dinners they usedta cook in back. after a night there, my leather jacket and amplifier would smell like fish for a week. sometimes you'd play for four hours without a break, unless somebody took yr instrument -- lady pearl's brother / b.t.a. gtrist-vocalist ray reed likes to play _long_. some fine and mellow nights were had there, and the music flowed like sweet healing waters.
at the bluebird, b.t.a. was casting the same vibe: the whole history of black music, from country blues to its '50s urban variant to '60s soul to more recent developments in r&b, gets thrown into the pot and used in service of _the groove_. ray was in an elmore james frame of mind, so besides his take on the slow blues "it hurts me too," we got to hear a bunch of shuffles featuring elmore's signature lick. wearing his bandleader hat, ray was working hard to keep his musicians on the same page. while _most_ of the cats are veterans saturated with the music (exception: ray's college-age son on drums, who claims never to practice but has a great natural feel), there are occasional, um, _disagreements_ about the form, which ray resolves in the moment in a way lee allen could appreciate, directing the band with facial expressions, body movement, or the occasional shouted direction. i miss the no-frills precision of diminutive bassist quincy brown, but the current b.t.a. lineup is highlighted by the interplay between ray, who throws splintered shards of notes at will, and the second gtrist (damn, didn't catch his name), who's acquired a strat and a vox amp in addition to his 335 since last time i saw the band and has a searing sound that cuts through like a razorblade, playing _only the good notes_.
one of the attractive features of a b.t.a. show is that, when it's happenin', you don't just get a band -- you get a _revue_. guest musos at every position are jumping up seemingly at will or when called up by ray. there's a long tradition of this in the b.t.a. band; lady pearl herself could play gtr, bass, or drums, and her dtr miss kim is no slouch on the traps herself, as she proved when she took over the drum duties at one point on friday night. now yr _authentic_ (read: black) blues audience is hip that when it comes to this music, instrumental prowess ain't shee-it; rather, it's an art form that's all about _vocal_ expression. instead of an onslaught of gunslingin' gtrists, you'll hear a succession of soul-wrenching singers -- every one of 'em a star, trust me. fuck american idol, this is the real deal.
at the bluebird friday, we were fortunate to hear raymond lemmon, an east side legend whom i hadn't seen since the swing club a coupla yrs back. raymond is a hard-livin' dude who usedta share stages with pearl back in the day, a soul man in the solomon burke or wilson pickett mold who stands on the dancefloor and roars his masculinity while the band stretches out on a I-IV vamp, extending and building tension until the simplest of musical forms is transmogrified into a cleansing, purifying ritual in which everyone, performer and audience, has a part to play, a genuine soul-rinsing, and at the end everybody is drained, it's the best kind of release imaginable. later raymond gave me a cd-r of a performance of his with b.t.a., taped at a tribute to pearl at j&j's back in january. it's an echoey audience recording, and the music's rough, but it feels right, and now i have an artifact to prove to ppl that donwanna venture down to the bluebird that raymond at least exists. it's an enduring disappointment that lady pearl never released any recordings during her lifetime; there are some live tapes floating around that she was reviewing at the time of her death. somebody with a coupla grand in pocket needs to put something out on her purely for historical documentation purposes, imo.
also in the house: dallas gtrist-singer cookie mcgee, who plays an sg with a tone like molten silver and performs in a freddie king bag, which makes sense, since she grew up playing in bands with freddie's kids. (she's also toured europe an recorded for the brit jsp label.) after an initial near-trainwreck before ray and the bassplayer she brought (whom i recognized from vernon garrett's band of a coupla yrs ago) caught on to her approach on freddie's "i'm tore down," she pushed and drove the band to new levels of intensity and made ray work his ass off, trading lines that brought smiles to both axe-slinger's faces. cookie sez she'll be back at the bluebird in june, although the date isn't on their online calendar yet.
when miss kim hits, it's _showtime_. in the three yrs and change since her mom's passing, she's grown more comfortable wearing lady pearl's mantle, and her command of material, stage, and audience has grown. she drives the audience to quasi-religious ecstasies that are part sexual display (especially when kim's cousin cookie -- that's right, there were _two_ cookies in the house -- gets on the floor and starts workin' her thang), part catharsis, and part exorcism. she's a force of nature: strutting, shimmying, snarling, even _purring_ like a cat before hitting you smack dab in your earhole with pure vocal power. you gotta have this, papa. miss kim, ray reed, and the b.t.a. band will be back at the bluebird on income tax day, april 15th. if you miss them, your life will be poorer.
posted by stashdauber at 6:56 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home