Book review: Songs For Floyd

Book Review:

Songs For Floyd – Blues Poems and Other Things

by Joel Poluck

Text: Vincent Abbate / Photos courtesy of Amogla Records (except where otherwise noted)

Within the musical realm we call the blues, the formulaic offerings at the top of the sales charts often disappoint us. Frequently it’s the outside-the-box artists and releases hovering on the fringes of the genre that capture our imagination.

This was most certainly true of Floyd Lee, a well-travelled singer and guitar player from Lamar, Mississippi who gained a modicum of international notoriety during the first two decades of this century, at an age when most folks retire. Lee was already 68 years old when his debut record Mean Blues made some waves upon its release in 2001. He had been bringing his blues to the subways of New York City and working as a doorman on the Upper West Side in the decades prior. Only after Lee hooked up with young Canadian musician and New York transplant Joel Poluck did the eponymous Floyd Lee & His Mean Blues Band take shape; the quartet’s classic lineup often featured veteran bass player Brad Vickers and Mississippi drum legend Sam Carr. According to Poluck, he and Lee performed close to 1000 shows during their roughly fifteen years together.

Still, the music Floyd Lee recorded in the period prior to his passing in 2020 – most of it chilling, honest and imbibed with the spirit of the masters – surely remained hidden from the vast majority of blues audiences.

Continue reading

Book review: Murder At The Crossroads

Book Review: Murder At The Crossroads

A blues mystery by Debra B. Schiff & Doug MacLeod

Text: Vincent Abbate

(Full disclosure: The reviewer is the author of Who Is Blues Vol. 1: Doug MacLeod – The Authorized Compact Biography.)

Let’s start with this: You needn’t be a devotee of blues musician Doug MacLeod or a blues fan at all to appreciate Murder At The Crossroads, a new novel MacLeod wrote in collaboration with author Debra B. Schiff. The book – billed on its cover as “a blues mystery” – stands on its own merits as a plainly told tale of a middle-aged man struggling with the guilt he has felt ever since witnessing a racially motivated killing as a young man in Mississippi. It’s also an unflinching portrayal of racism as it has existed at two different points in American history.

Continue reading

Dump That Trump: 10 Blues Songs for Election Day

Dump That Trump: 10 Blues Songs for Election Day

Thank you, Donald, for making the blues political again.

Text: Vincent Abbate

You’ve come here for the music, right? Not to hear me rant about #45. So let’s get to it.

In the past five years, the man in the White House has pissed off a lot of people. Including a small army of blues musicians. They’ve felt compelled to speak up, literally in an effort to defend their country. Don’t believe me? Go enter “trump blues” on YouTube. You’ll find dozens of musicians, well-known and unknown, whose only outlet for the frustration and disgust they feel has been to write and sing about it.

The ten songs and videos I’ve chosen for this countdown to Election Day 2020 are some of the more eloquent and funniest blues protest songs of the Trump era. My fellow Americans, blues lovers everywhere … let’s do this!

Continue reading

The Mini Moon Story

The Mini-Moon Story

Words: Vincent Abbate

Sometimes it’s the little things that count the most.

When Doug MacLeod came to Cologne in October to perform at our book launch event, he stayed over at the apartment I share with my wife and two kids. For one night, we cleared away the Hot Wheels and Lego and turned my son’s room back into the guest room it used to be. And while it wasn’t the Ritz Carlton, Doug appeared happy enough with the accommodations. Maybe it was the four-foot-high Spiderman poster towering over his bed.

Now, Doug is also a serious baseball fan. Specifically, a St. Louis Cardinals fan. My two children happen to play little league baseball for a club called the Cologne Cardinals. So I thought it would be nice to surprise him with a piece of Cologne Cardinals merchandise during his visit. My kids were in on the secret.

Continue reading

WIB Extra: The Finnish Blues Awards

The Finnish Blues Awards

January 13th, 2018 @ Nosturi, Helsinki

Words & photos: Vincent Abbate

You never know where the blues is gonna take you.

Last December, when a guitarist friend invited me to the 2018 Finnish Blues Awards, I thought: Why the heck not? Helsinki is just a two-and-a-half-hour flight from my home base in Germany. Any chance to see a new city and meet a new culture first-hand – even for 24 hours – is a chance I grab.

And I knew this much: There’s no shortage of capable bands in Finland. Like the Wentus Blues Band, who I first stumbled upon 15 years ago in Dresden. Or the combo led by young singer Ina Forsman, part of the Ruf Records Blues Caravan 2016. Leading the pack is slide guitar goddess Erja Lyytinen, who has a particularly strong following in England and is a bona fide celebrity at home. There’s also Erja’s long-time (now former) right-hand man Davide Floreno – my host – a rock solid guitar player in his own right.

But beyond that, as I sat inside the black Mercedes sedan carrying me from Helsinki’s Vantaa Airport to the city center, I really had no idea what to expect. The first impressions were of a flat, barren, snow-covered landscape deep in a wintertime slumber. And boy does it get dark early. By four p.m., while I settled into my hotel room overlooking the loading cranes in the Port of Helsinki, evening had already taken hold.

Continue reading