Ever feel the blues? I get the feeling that most Americans born after 1979 probably really don’t know what the blues truly mean. I fall into that category – I’ve never experienced the true reality behind what the blues really are. That doesn’t stop people from enjoying a good blues based song. There was a movie all about it, that journey to understand the blues. That movie was Crossroads and no I don’t mean that dopey Brittney Spears disaster.
It starred Ralph Macchio and Jami Gertz. Ralph played a classical guitar student that was more interested in learning about the blues and it’s true legend Robert Johnson. He did a bunch of research to find out people Johnson hung out with and thought he found that Johnson had one song that he never recorded – a “lost” song. Ralph’s character find’s a Willy Brown and befriends him. Through the movie Willy Brown promises to show Ralph’s character the lost song from Robert Johnson, but unfortunately there never was one.
The movie is a journey and during the journey Ralph’s character hits hardships and loses his girl played by Jami. The end is an infamous scene of Ralph’s character playing guitar against the Devil’s guitarist played by none other than Steve Vai. As a musician it’s an extremely fun rent just for the ‘cutting heads’ scene alone. If there is any guitar player on the planet that was meant for the roll to play the guitarist for the Devil, it’s Steve Vai. His persona in the movie is absolutely amazing and of course he has the chops to play too. I could probably sit and watch that scene over and over for an entire day before I got bored to tears.
Because the blues is so inherently based in black American history it’s often tough to associate it at all with a white guy. Probably the first popular white blues player that truly embodied it might have been Eric Clapton, but the recent reigning king had to be Stevie Ray Vaughn. If anyone really came out of troubled times and got the vibe right it was him.
Today’s song is in a different vein. It’s well played, and certainly embodies the essence of what is happening to make blues accessable for the masses. James Anthony has apparently been playing guitar for a number of other artists. So he certainly seems to have his way around the guitar very well taken care of. I would be interested in hearing how he would sound if he had lost everything and bottomed out. I think it might change the character a little bit, though I don’t know if it would be for the worse or for the better.
This particular song caught my ear and I recommend snaggin it. Follow the CD artwork and you can get snippets of the rest of the Album. Could be you’ll dig the whole thing and would rather pick it up instead. Either way, I think you’ll be happy with what you discover here.
Enjoy your Super Bowl Sunday!!!