The Road Not Taken: Changing Roads

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Robert Frost 1920

Kakabeka Falls, Thunder Bay

 

It has been over 2 years since I last drove along Highway 61. I have been attending a conference in Thunder Bay on the North Shore of Lake Superior. Our hotel was 10 minutes walk across a busy road intersection from the main conference venue. The cold biting wind of an early Canadian winter tore at us as we waited for the traffic lights to change and distinguished the many international delegates pathetically trying protect themselves from the inevitable march of an arctic winter from those warm hardy locals.

The little walking figure replaced the red hand, I started to cross the road and there it was. It was unmistakable, a small familiar heart shaped road sign (this time with a crown over the top of it). Highway 61 and I was walking across the “Blues Road”, across the road the bluesmen took to escape the poverty of the Delta, across the road that Dylan took to escape his Minnesotan boredom and across the road that those intrepid travellers took in April 2010 to follow the music to the heart of America. I was crossing the “Mother Road” of American music, in Canada!

The Mother Road of American Music. (In Canada!)

All roads have to stop somewhere; they just can’t go on forever! I had not thought that our road crossed the border, gained a crown and became a royal route. Surely most of our music heroes stopped in Chicago, some like his “Bobness” escaped south from the bitter cold northern winters but I asked myself whether any ventured this far north. What a contrast the icy cold wind blowing across the intersection is from the hot southern sultry primordial musical soup that became blues, jazz and eventually rock and roll. Robert Johnson would not have had time to stop and barter with the devil on these frozen crossroads!

No bartering on this crossroads

Time to start travelling once more. Time to try and learn something about the nature of all things Americana, at a crucial time in its history. Is it going to remain the great power that it has been and will it continue to be the global creative force that it was in the 20^th Century? We travel during the last 3 weeks of one of the most important elections in the country’s recent history. We are flying to Seattle with the intention of following Route 101 along the spectacular West Coast of America.

Martin Green and I have been attending the World Rural Health Conference in Northern Ontario. Conferenced out and exhausted, we move on to Seattle to meet our wives (Jacqui and Liz) who will be joining us there.

Martin Green at Thunder Bay

Me: Some hard conferencing

The sight of Highway 61 and the prospect of travelling the length of Route 101 has inspired me once again to log on and restart the Blog. The “Blues Road” will sing out once more and I hope that you will join us on our journey.  Feel free to connect either through the blog or by email (johnwj@irh.ac.uk)

To finish with Robert Frost, I would have loved to go back to the the Mother Road but 101 beckons us!

Brooks Williams

Brooks Williams



"How soulful a solo guitarist can be when he has 
talent, taste and astonishing technique."
(Blues Revue)

"Darkness" Playing with his colleague Boo Hewerdine State of the Union)

Brooks'  journey takes him all the way from his home in Statesboro (Georgia) via Boston (New England)  to Cambridge (UK). He is the quintessential "Journeyman" musician who has mastered musical styles on his way and made them his own. He has spent the last 23 years on the road, giging with the likes of  Taj Mahal, Paul Jones, John Hammond and many more. He has performed extensively across the North America & Europe and was one of the headline acts at this years' Shrewsbury Folk Festival. His prodigious talent and musical knowledge reflects his dedication to his art and his skill in captivating the audience and his large fan base. He was recently named one of the top 100 Acoustic Guitarists (Acustic Magazine) and has over 17 recordings to his name.

Brooks at Glastonbury 2012

He is not only a blues man but the blues remains an integral part of his musical persona reflecting his roots in Georgia. He is a virtuoso on bottleneck slide as well as his effortless fingerpicking and flat picking styles. He plays a mixture of traditional roots music interspersed with his own original material.

Blind Willie McTell's original recording

Brooks Williams (hometown) Statesboro Blues

I first heard the "Statesboro Blues" on Taj Mahal's electrifying debut album in 1968. The songs goes back much further and Brooks' version reflects Blind Willie McTell original recording. Many believed that Blind Willie was also a native of Statesboro, but he was born in Thomson (Georgia) referring to Staesboro as his "real home". Not a bad legacy to hail from!

Sadly we missed Brook's performance at Glastonbury this year, despite the fact that our stall is close to the Burbon Stage where he played. It is often the acts that you sadly miss at Glastonbury that makes you want to back again the following year!

We hope to see you in Montgomery on 25th February to join us at this unique gig. Numbers are limited, so get hold of your tickets as soon as possible!

His latest Album in partnership with fellow member of "The State of the Union" Boo Hewerdine

"A beautiful album, full of classy playing and great songs" (Acoustic Magazine) State of the Union is a masterclass in song writing, showing off the talents of bluesy American stalwart Brooks Williams and cult British singer-songwriter Boo Hewerdine to full effect. Whether it's authentic Americana, delicate ballads, re-imagining modern pop or a new take on the classic standard "Peg And Awl" the union of Williams and Hewerdine is in a wildly creative state, producing one of the year's must-have albums

Brooks Williams "Weeping Willow Blues"

The Gig

• 25th February 2012: Brooks Williams
• Montgomery Youth Centre: 7.30 p.m.
• £12 per person
• Bring your own drinks and glasses
• "Savoury nibbles" provided
• Tickets from "Bunners" or hmdjones@btinternet.com

Discography
Baby O! (Red Guitar Blue Music, 2010)
The Time I Spend With You (Red Guitar Blue Music, 2008)
Blues and Ballads (Red Guitar Blue Music, 2006)
Guitar Player (Solid Air Records, 2005)
Live Solo (Red Guitar Blue Music, 2004)
Nectar (Signature Sounds, 2003)
Acoustic Beginnings 1990-1991: A Best Of (Red Guitar Blue Music, )2002
Skiffle-Bop (Signature Sounds, 2001)
Dead Sea Café 1992-1997: A Best Of (Silent Planet Records, 2000)
Little Lion (Signature Sounds, 2000)
Hundred Year Shadow (Signature Sounds, 1999)
Seven Sisters (Green Linnet Records, 1997)
Knife Edge (Green Linnet Records, 1996)
Ring Some Changes: Guitar Duets with Jim Henry (Signature Sounds, 1995)
Inland Sailor (Green Linnet Records, 1994)
Back To Mercy (Green Linnet Records, 1992)
How The Night-time Sings (Red Guitar Blue Music, 1991)
North From Statesboro (Red Guitar Blue Music, 1990)


Links
Brooks Williams:      http://brookswilliams.com/
My Space:                 http://www.myspace.com/redguitarbluemusic
No Bones Jones:       http://www.nobonesjones.co.uk/

Back On The Road! The Journey Continues

Resting on my journey!

A Happy New Year to you all our loyal followers who may have been wondering whether the three intrepid travellers and echo champions had taken the wrong turning and strayed away from the Blues Road for ever. To quote that well known philosopher from Yellowstone Park, Yogi Bear, "If you come to a fork in the road, take it." We took it and we have had a great time but the Blues bekons us back on our journey.

Tucker and Win Bones

We don't have a route and we don't have a destination but we are going to listen, promote and enjoy some great music in the meantime. No Bones and I are planning to run a series of Blues and Jazz evenings in Montgomery over the next 12 months. Even Tucker, buried in the wilds of Yorkshire, has been tempted out of hibernation. I am told that the thought of joining his old traveling mates has driven him out of his state of suspended animation and he now has a recordable metabolic rate!

Mississippi John Hurt's Grave

Those experiences that we had along the Great Mississippi helped us understand the origins and the nature of the music and we want to share them with our friends and our fellow "Blog Travellers". When I listen to those Mississippi John Hurt blues and ballads now, I feel that I have a tangible link with the Delta and his forgotten grave in a wood on the edge of the flat delta plain. We can't provide you with the same experience but we can share our passion for the music and give you the opportunity to see some fantastic musicians in our own Mid Wales backyard.

No Bones and Mrs No Bones winning Gold at Glasto

No Bones has had a great year which culminated in him winning the Gold Medal for the Greenest Trader at Glastonbury. He and Gill are still cooking great food and providing a warm hospitable welcome for all those who visit us in Montgomery.

Tucker with that silly shirt!

Tucker is still writing his book and playing music whenever he can and I am enjoying retirement, building coracles and living and working in our new home and garden overlooking my beloved Welsh Hills.

Coracle man (Not very steady!)

Our first gig will be on February 25th in Montgomery at the Youth Centre at 7.30pm. We have hit the jackpot by securing one of the finest Blues and Acoustic performers resident in the UK. Come and join us and listen to legendary Brooks Williams. I will be posting more information on Brooks in the next few days. So watch this space and join us for what promises to be a great evening

The Great Brooks Williams: Montgomery 25th February

A Road Well Trodden

"Little Stevie Wonder"

8th Wonder of the World (Tamla Motown)

The history of the Blues is all about conquering disadvantage. The most disadvantaged blues men and women of all were those who had a disability that reduced their capacity to earn by working in the fields and on the plantations.

The story of the disabled bluesmen was brought home to me when I went as a young medical student and went to see Sonny Terry and Brownie Maggie at LSE in London in the early 70s. Here were 2 blues legends; one crippled musician leading on his blind colleague.

There are many blind musicians in the annals of the Blues and there are probably many more who are now forgotten and unrecorded. Some were great musical geniuses while many would have played on street corners as buskers do now. There are many musicians with the prefix Blind…..  and some of the most well known blind musicians included Blind Blake, Robert Bradley, Bo Carter, Ray Charles, Art Tatum, Cortelia Clark, Reverend Gary Davis, Sleepy John Estes, Blind Boy Fuller, Blind Roosevelt Graves, W. C. Handy, Jeff Healey, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Willie Johnson, Bryan Lee, Blind Willie McTell, Blind Mississippi Morris, Blind Joe Reynolds, Teddy Darby, Blind Sonny Terry.

The young Stevie Wonder

This Roll of honour includes some of the most influential of all on the Blues Road. Were they musicians because they could not do anything else or was it the absence of one of our most precious senses that gave them that special genius to create music about their lives, loves and hardships. More recently, blind black musicians such as Ray Charles and Art Tatum have been able to scale the heights of 20^th century popular music and become household names.

Many of these issues passed through my mind as I stood at the Pyramid stage in Glastonbury this June to hear one of the most famous all black blind musical entertainers.

At last we were celebrating a blind musician who had made it to the very top, but whose path had been shaped and trodden by the myriad of blind musicians who preceded him. A musician who owes so much to those who passed along Highway 61 before.

Blind Lemon Jefferson

Blind Willie Mctell

Ray Charles, King of Soul

Stevie Wonder, born Stevland Hardaway Judkins  in Saginaw, Michigan(May 13, 1950) is a multitalented instrumentalist, singer song writer, record producer and Human Rights Activists. Stevie became blind soon after his birth due to retinopathy of prematurity. He moved with his mother when he was four to Detroit, where he began singing in a church choir and playing instruments, including piano, harmonica, drums and bass. He was apparently discovered by Gerald White of The Miracles and it was soon after that the artist “Little Stevie Wonder” (The 8^th Wonder of the World) signed with Motown Records and he has stayed loyal to the same label ever since. His subsequent hits include classics such as “Superstition”, “I Wish”, “I just Called to Say I Love You” and many more. One of his first singles, "I Call It Pretty Music, But the Old People Call It the Blues", acknowledged the blues influence on his early music. He has recorded more than thirty U.S. top ten hits and received twenty-two Grammy Awards, the most ever given to a male solo artist. He has won an Academy Award for Best Song and has been inducted into the Rock and Roll and the Songwriters Halls of Fame. American music magazine Rolling Stone named him the ninth greatest singer of all time

He is not so well known for his work on Human Rights and as a political activist. He has never forgotten is hard childhood and has campaigned relentlessly for the downtrodden around the world. It was his campaigning which led to the adoption on Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday as a national holiday in the USA and in 2009 he was named United Nations Messenger of Peace.

Happy Birthday Glastonbury

This was my first Glastonbury and I was ever so fortunate that it was the driest for many years. I saw many great acts but one of the most unforgettable was seeing Little Stevie Wonder who Motown once billed as the 8^th Wonder of the world, fulfilling the aspirations and dreams of all those black blind musicians who came before him!

Hugh caught by the Glastonbury Green Police

One of the other great legends to appear this year was Willie Nelson. A hard living country maestro in the mold of similar giants such as Johnny Cash. He was one of the Alternative Outlaw Country Stars of the 1970s. Time has turned this once hard drinking rebel into one of the old grandees of country music. His music was angry white Blues and his message was that of the poor and underprivileged white country folk. I was so privileged to see him along with Stevie.

The Gem of Glastonbury "No Bones Jones"

A special thanks to my hosts at Glastonbury. Gill and Hugh Jones are very special people and together with their 4 fabulous boys and all their friends operate one of the best culinary gems of the Festival. If ever you come again, don’t forget to call at “No Bones Jones” the best Vegan/Vegetarian food stall EVER! 

No Bones

P.S. Try the Fritters and Granny Jones’ Bread and Butter Pudding

Gill and Fraser

The City of New Orleans

The City of New Orleans in all its Glory. "The best train song ever"

There is nothing like being stuck on a journey to galvanise me into adding another chapter to my blog. Certain songs leave an evocative trail behind them and seem to encapsulate the experience of a journey not finished or a road still traveled. Traveling entails patience, observation, meditation, contemplation and a balance between activity and being passive. You hand over your care to an airline, a driver or as in this instance a train.

Arlo Guthrie

Arlo Guthrie’s recording of the City of New Orleans (his only chart success) says it all. Contrary to popular belief, Guthrie did not write the song. It was written by the late Steve Goodman who sketched the outline while traveling on the train with his wife in 1970. It was only on returning home and hearing that the passenger service would be discontinued that he refined the song and released it on his first album. Goodman was always grateful to Arlo Guthrie however who recorded it on his biggest hit Album, Hobo’s Lullaby in 1972. So the story goes Goodman played the song to Arlo at the Quiet Knight bar in Chicago who agreed to add it onto his latest album release.

I am due to see Arlo Guthrie in concert in August and as is often the case I began to rummage through my iTunes collection and started to listen to all things Guthrie. Alice’s Restaurant remains one of the anthems of the early 70s. I remember going the Windmill Cinema in Soho with my friend Piers Rowlandson to see this cult film which had captivated anti-Vietnam America. The distributor must have been so nervous about its success in the UK that they screened it in a tiny intimate theater more used to seeing bare breasted beauties rather than long haired American hippies.

His Father Woody

The song is one of those tunes that keeps reverberating in your consciousness but it has also great significance to the Blues Road. It was the train that brought many of the great bluesmen from the Delta into Memphis and ultimately into Chicago. More important even than Highway 61 as a conduit to work and recognition. Illinois Central was their first sight of the great city and close by, the Maxwell Street Market was their first taste of Chicago living. Songs often refer to Maxwell Street and I always believed that the coffee was named after the street (It was actualy named after the Maxwell Hotel in Tennessee) and that the “Spoonfull Blues” refered to the coffee (Sadly not, a song written by Willie Dixon after a blues number by Charlie Patton)

The song is a lyrical, romantic account of a journey and bears no mention of the significance of the journey to the blues story. Guthrie was adamant that he wanted the song to have more of a rock sound about it than Goodman’s flocky version. He recorded the album at Sun West Studios in Hollywood and it was produced by Lenny Waronker. Waronker with a glittering collection of musicians (Ry Cooder, Burritos bassist Chris Ethridge, drummer Jim Keltner and Jim Dickinson on piano) pusuaded Arlo to record it at the end of a long session. The resulting recording was so laid back that they had to tweak the speed and overdub it to get it right.

The song has subsequently been covered by Willie Nelson, John Denver, Jerry Reed, Judy Collins, Chet Atkins and many others. Kris Kistofferson referred to it as “the best train song ever!”

It’s heartening to think that Goodman eventually gained the recognition he deserved and won a posthumous Grammy for the song sadly, soon after his death.

In famous company (Joan Baez, Arlo, Rambling Jack Elliot and Bob)

Arlo Guthrie has made a considerable contribution to American music but his pedigree is unrivaled. He was born into the “First Family” of American folk. His father Woody traveled through the USA writing songs and experiencing difficult and hard times. He had an affinity with the downtrodden, the dispossessed and the exploited and wrote about the hardships of the great depression and the despair felt by the voiceless migrant workers. Woody died of Huntington’s Chorea prematurely but a wealth of his recordings still remain. His book “Bound for Glory” is a must read for American roots fans.

Bob Dylan describes meeting the very young Arlo when he visited Woody on his arrival in New York. As children, the Guthrie kids would have grown up with household names such as Pete Seeger, Cisco Huston, Rambling Jack Elliot, Bob Dylan and many more. What an influence this must have been on the young Arlo Guthrie?

Maxwell Street Market in its Heyday

Arlo's successful album: Hobo's Lullaby

The “City of New Orleans” was not the only famous train that left out of Illinois Central Station. The “Green Emerald” rode to St Louis while the “Miss-Lou” traveled to Jackson Mississippi.

All these trains run by the Illinois Central Railroad had their own livery, splendor and mythologies but this was to change when Amtrak took over the service in 1971. Much of the romance disappeared and the rolling stock gradually deteriorated. The train stopped short of Memphis following Katrina and Arlo and the train joined up to help publicise the damage and collect funds for the victims of the Hurricane.

Its still possible to ride that famous train which takes 19 hours to reach New Orleans. Listen to the songs below and take a virtual ride through towns with magical names such as Chicago, Carbondale, Cairo, Memphis, Greenwood, Yazoo City, Jackson……..and beyond.

Arlo singing the City of New Orleans

Lyrics: City of New Orleans

Riding on the City of New Orleans,

Illinois Central Monday morning rail

Fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders,

Three conductors and twenty-five sacks of mail.

All along the southbound odyssey

The train pulls out at Kankakee

Rolls along past houses, farms and fields.

Passin' trains that have no names,

Freight yards full of old black men

And the graveyards of the rusted automobiles.

Chorus:

Good morning America how are you?

Don't you know me I'm your native son,

I'm the train they call The City of New Orleans,

I'll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done.

Dealin' card games with the old men in the club car.

Penny a point ain't no one keepin' score.

Pass the paper bag that holds the bottle

Feel the wheels rumblin' 'neath the floor.

And the sons of Pullman porters

And the sons of engineers

Ride their father's magic carpets made of steel.

Mothers with their babes asleep,

Are rockin' to the gentle beat

And the rhythm of the rails is all they feel.

Chorus

Nighttime on The City of New Orleans,

Changing cars in Memphis, Tennessee.

Half way home, we'll be there by morning

Through the Mississippi darkness

Rolling down to the sea.

But all the towns and people seem

To fade into a bad dream

And the steel rails still ain't heard the news.

The conductor sings his songs again,

The passengers will please refrain

This train's got the disappearing railroad blues.

Good night, America, how are you?

Don't you know me I'm your native son,

I'm the train they call The City of New Orleans,

I'll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done.

This is for train buffs!

The original by Steve Goodman

Willie Nelson and the Highwaymen

Johnny Cash

John Denver and many more!