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Rating: Blue Awakenings
Not always, but sometimes you need a little blues to live. Without it, life would be even more difficult, because this music has the magic of emanating a kind of melancholic strength that can shake you inside without deceiving you. A strength that all of us feel the need for without warning. Because blues is like that: straightforward, strong, authentic, immediate… necessary.
So, if you happen to wake up on a strange, gray morning like this one with the desire to inject a little living, sincere fire into your veins, then you might choose to listen to this album by Kenny Wayne Shepherd (Reprise Records - 2006). A fantastic work that gathers a series of blues classics played live and on the road with some of its greatest living interpreters, such as B.B. King, Cottie Stark, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Neil "Big Daddy" Pattman, Etta Baker, Pinetop Perkins, Honeyboy Edwards. Additionally, other exceptional musicians should be mentioned, who can boast of having accompanied people like Muddy Waters and Stevie Ray Vaughan in their careers.
To realize this project, the bold and inconsistent white guitarist Shepherd traveled the roads of America with a bus full of instruments and musicians. During this journey, lasting ten days ("Ten days out"), he met these legendary bluesmen, playing with them anywhere with the utmost expressive freedom. Setting up the instruments and microphones wherever they found themselves - outdoors, in living rooms, in kitchens - the musicians let the blues guide them ("What happened is what you hear, we kept it as real as possible"). Day after day, concert after concert, crossing Mississippi and Alabama, the journey became a quest for the roots of this music, testified by performances played with incredible and sincere passion.
The album bursts with different atmospheres in every episode. Guitars now acoustic, now electric, horns, captivating duets, harmonicas, and voices that seem to come from a radio of a century ago, invoking more than a shiver. Each track demands and obtains full involvement during listening. How not to sway and get a little emotional listening to Jerry "Boogie" McCain singing "Potato Patch"? How to remain impassive in front of the note duel between B.B. King's "Lucille" and Shepherd's guitar in "The Thrill Is Gone"? How not to wish to be enveloped by the heart-wrenching vitality of tracks like "Grindin' Man"? If you can, then your soul has gone for a walk elsewhere, because otherwise, it wouldn't be possible.
If all this isn't enough for you, then know that this album comes with a DVD, which documents the making of this project in documentary form. It's like a journey into the past of a land through the stories, music, looks, wrinkles, and voices of its survivors. Check out this video for an idea and then decide if you want to take this small but intense journey. I've already spent too many words and too much time, now it's time for me to return to my desire for blues.
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