Music on Monday: Battery Chicken. Electrifying.

Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band. 




Breezy, Aaron and the Rev. interviewed.

Music on Monday: A Man Not Playing No Rock and Roll.

Mississippi Fred McDowell. He did not play no rock and roll, but he can still put you into a trance.

Let The Train Take the Strain

The only way I'll ever get to draw a Hellboy strip is to just draw one, so I have. It's like the joke, "My Grandfather whistled the national anthem for Queen Victoria. She wasn't there, but nonetheless that's who he was whistling it for."

I've always been interested in the old blues legend of the singer going to the crossroads to make a bargain with the devil, exchanging his soul for musical talent. Likewise I've always had the notion in the back of my mind of illustrating folk songs or blues songs; one of my favourites is the diabolic, close-shave-with-damnation vision of 'Down Bound Train', particularly the riotous version by Steve James but written by Chuck Berry, of all people.

The idea of a bluesman going to the crossroads and meeting an unexpected sort of devil seeded the whole thing and it crystalised into this story. Besides, steam engines and hell and so on seemed to fit nicely with Mike Mignola's vision.

I'll do a post sometime about just why Mike Mignola's artwork is so good (lots of black, for one thing - proper black black)but for now here's my pale imitation.

With a tincture of Bo Diddley for flavour.

The fonts are Letter-O-Matic, and Duvall Outline for the title.















Legal, please-don't-sue-me disclaimers: 'Down Bound Train' lyrics copyright Chuck Berry. Extracts from 'Who Do You Love' copyright E. McDaniel. Hellboy character copyright Dark Horse Comics and Mike Mignola, and I dare say I've infringed rampantly all over you. Sorry.

Music on Monday:Wolf at the House's Door

I was thinking about the Bob Dylan Free Trade Hall bootleg the other day, and how remarkable it is that this legendary moment ("Judas!") was captured on tape so you can actually hear it, liberated from the years, a moment still live and crackling.

There's a similarly legendary quality to this exchange, which appears on the surface to be a performer dealing with a very drunk audience member who is making a lot of noise. Performer cuts down drunk with a fairly damning indictment of his wasted life that he "ain't done nothin' with" because he only loves whisky.

It's a harsh remark, with all the more force behind it for being delivered by the mighty Howlin' Wolf. What is really eyebrow raising if you're a nerdy blues cove, which I am, is that the object of the comment, the rowdy drunk, is Son House. And then the Wolf sings, which is always remarkable, regardless.

Music on Monday: White Boy Blues

If I say "what a noise", I mean it entirely positively. 'Bukka' White knocks the hell out of a National Steel guitar playing Aberdeen, Mississippi Blues, one of his signature songs.

He had hands like Rachmaninov, a punishing way with a guitar and a Mississippi accent forty yards deep, which could partially account for the fact that he's been chiselled into history as 'Bukka' White, when his real name was Booker T. Washington White. 'Bukka' was the name a (white) producer put on the label of his first set of recordings in the 1940s, and despite hating it, White was stuck with it.

Legend has it that in 1937 White shot a man in a barroom brawl (in self-defence, it was later determined), fled to Chicago, and was two songs into a recording session when the police came for him. He served time in the notorious Parchman Farm, where he composed the songs that would make his reputation.

Not the least of his legacy is that a White's young cousin (one B.B. King) developed his distinctive finger vibrato trying to mimic White's, not understanding he did it with a slide.

The guitar featured in this video (probably, anyway - I say that to give this low voltage anecdote some narrative cohesion) is the one that wound up in Eric Bibb's hands:

While Bibb has been carrying a torch for his musical ancestors for 40 years or so, it took a chance encounter with a guitar owned by one of Bibb’s heroes, Delta bluesman Booker White, to set it ablaze.
It happened after a concert in the north of England a few years ago. A fan came up and asked him if he’d be interested in playing this old guitar. “I opened the case and there was this wise old instrument - it played like a dream” explains Bibb.

I remember talking to someone from Newcastle who heard that White's guitar was on sale at a music shop in the city. When he went there he found that there was some sort of mini pilgrimage underway and the shop was full of people like him who'd just come to have a look at Booker White's National steel.

Anyway - that guitar (probably) in the substantial mitts of Booker T. Washington White, tough, loud and magnificent.