In Heavy Rotation: Blues & Resistance

Duke Robillard: Emptying both barrels on Blast Off!

In Full Swing

BLAST OFF!

Duke Robillard & His All Star Band

Nola Blue Records

By David McGee

At age 77, surfacing anew on Sallie Bengtson’s Nola Blue label following a productive tenure with Stony Plain, Duke Robillard is emptying both barrels on Blast Off! and taking time along the way to pay tribute to some of the greats with whom he has worked and for whom he feels a kinship, at least musically. There’s a greasy, grooving blast of Memphis soul in the original instrumental “Galactic Grease,” with a spikey guitar solo Duke designed as a Steve Cropper tribute; There’s a delightful, spirited romp through Sam Thread’s 1929 jazz evergreen, “I’ll Bbe Glad When You’re Dead, You Rascal You,” famously rendered in 1931 and ’32 by Louis Armstrong and featuring both a celebratory vocal turn by Duke and a rousing trumpet solo courtesy Chanonhouse complemented by Mark Earley’s tenor sax workout.

‘Lowdown,’ written by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan, Duke Robillard and His All Star Band, lead vocal by Chris Cote, from Blast Off!

‘I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead (You Rascal You),’ Duke Robillard and His All Star Band, vocal by Duke Robillard, from Blast Off!

Surrounded by familiar names in the All Star Band, (including stalwarts Bruce Bears, always outstanding on the piano and organ, and Mark Texeira, steady as ever on drums and percussion), Duke offers a scintillating potpourri of post-war jump blues, swing jazz, classic R&B, and, not least of all, a heated cover of “Lowdown,” penned by Tom Waits & Kathleen Brennan for Tom’s 2006 collection, Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards, here presented dynamically as a smoldering, Exile on Main Street-style slab of Stones-indebted blues-rock, with vocalist Chris Cote sporting a Jagger-esque swagger over sensual horns. Duke has a couple of songwriting credits here, notably on “Feel My Cares,” a ruminative blues lament he wrote at age 17, pre-Roomful of Blues, featuring Cote in an emotionally charged plea enhanced by Duke’s guitar stinging and moaning its despair. But the dominant mood is upbeat and lively, ranging from the aforementioned aspirational immersion in schadenfreude in “I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead (You Rascal You)” to the horn-fueled romp through Guitar Slim’s “Stand by Me”; to the lusty swing of Tampa Red’s “Look a There, Look a There.” Blast Off! does exactly what the title promises, and then some.

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Eric Bibb: “I see people hide their eyes, can’t bear to look/they’re rippin’ out entire chapters of the history books.”

Arriving with Special Urgency

ONE MISSISSIPPI

Eric Bibb

Repute Records

Review by David McGee

Can’t say enough good about Eric Bibb’s new album, a work so complete in conception and execution it almost defies description. Rooted in but not bound by the blues, One Mississippi (the Janis Ian-penned gem of a title track) touches down in blues, jazz, world music, and certainly folk, with subtle electronic touches for added narrative atmospherics. In his warm, velvety croon of a voice Bibb’s conversational but deeply nuanced vocalizing lends moral heft to his socially conscious lyrics, always confronting our perilous moment with blunt, impassioned poetry. This is nothing new for the artist—he’s been issuing warnings of history repeating itself in the most heinous way for years, but One Mississippi arrives with special urgency.

‘No Clothes On,’ Eric Bibb, from One Mississippi

‘New Window,’ Eric Bibb, from One Mississippi

At the album’s midpoint, Bibb emerges with the exotic funk of “No Clothes On,” with its percolating, percussive atmospherics framing a no-holds-barred takedown of politicians, “so far gone they’re truttin’ down the streets like the dogs, with no clothes on,” peddling lies as easily as breathing air: “I see people hide their eyes, can’t bear to look/they’re rippin’ out entire chapters of the history books.” In “Crossroads Marilyn Monroe,” the horror of Emmett Till’s murder as instigated by a young woman’s bald-faced lie—for which Bibb gives thanks “‘cause the truth will set you free”—becomes ever more vivid for being set in an ominous, thudding arrangement buttressed by the producer-multi-instrumentalist Glen Scott’s Hammond organ moans and an electric guitar’s ghostly echo. Just as he sees a world changing amidst the contained fury of “No Clothes On,” in the gentle acoustic shuffle of “New Window,” he imagines a world healing its polarized battles, as he observes, while looking through a window shattered by a thrown brick, “a hateful crime,” he likens the sweeping up of the broken glass “like healing a nation, it’s gonna take time/lookin’ through this new window, a better world I pray we’ll see…I know love’s the key…” He continues, asking rhetorical questions about the viability of our survival, concluding, after all the uncertainty, “together we stand, divided we fall,” as a hymn-like benediction arises. Similarly, “Show Your Love,” with its wash of comforting strings and acoustic picking backing a tender, low-key vocal, Bibb counsels paying homage to that which persists: “If you’re grateful for every new day, don’t delay, show your love.” With a sly chuckle, he adds: “Don’t wait for Sunday, don’t wait for Christmas, don’t wait for May Day, show your love.” And with all this talk about love, healing love, unifying love, Bibb gives us one of his warmest, most big-hearted love songs in the country flavored “It’s a Good Life,” and life affirming it is.

‘It’s a Good Life,’ Eric Bibb, from One Mississippi

As a companion to his similarly socio-political-focused 2024 gem, In the Real World, One Mississippi shares that album’s striking musical backdrop, under the guidance of Bibb’s longtime musical director (and co-writer) Glen Scott, himself a multi-instrumentalist whose feel for understatement is both uncanny and, well, the perfect cushion to the restrained fury informing much of the lyrical content. Lending noble, self-effacing instrumental support, slide guitarist Robbie McIntosh and fiddler Esbjorn Hazelius serve the narratives with the subtlest of touches, just as Scott adds those strings, gospel-centric background vocalists and tasty, unexpected percussive effects to enhance the ambience when appropriate.

Behold a taste of the resistance now taking root in the streets. Eric Bibb is on it.

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‘kNOw Peace,’ Todd Curry

TLC Unlimited, Inc.

“When there is no peace, you can know peace,” Todd Curry and his singers whisper to listeners on their single, “kNOw Peace.” Especially “in the midst of the storm,” they add, when there is “so much division in the land,” the “tempest will cease” because the Lord is the “catalyst for reform.”

Portions of the meditative arrangement are reminiscent of the late Thomas Whitfield’s setting for Vanessa Bell Armstrong’s 1983 version of “Peace Be Still.” Lejuene Thompson’s penetrating vocals evoke Armstrong’s own on a single that ends abruptly and peacefully. –Robert M. Marovich, Journal of Gospel Music

Lyrics:

I’m tired…and I feel so overwhelmed.

My mind is heavy, trying to comprehend this social realm.

I feel so all alone, I can’t handle this on my own.

When there is NO peace, you can KNOW peace; in the midst of the storm.

The tempest will cease, fear will decrease.

Lord, you’re the catalyst for reform.

There may be no justice…but remember it’s not just-us.

There may be NO peace…but you can still KNOW peace.

So much division in the land, and I’m angry.

I know You have the master plan; Lord, please reveal it unto me.

When there’s NO peace, you can KNOW peace; in the midst of the storm