Puttin’ the Hammer Down
Ash Grunwald live @ topos, Leverkusen, Germany
Words: Vincent Abbate / Photos: Udo Udelhoven, Gerwin Jakobowski
There’s not much hollering and moaning in the blues anymore.
We’ve got singers, the good and the great, and not a few vocally challenged guitarists. But can anyone rattle the window panes with his voice? That’s what happened when the incomparable Son House took his otherworldly field holler indoors to the coffee houses a half-century ago. And when, even further back, Robert Johnson moaned his “Me And The Devil Blues,” well … you could practically see ol’ Satan close his claws around the doomed minstrel’s shoulder.
Ash Grunwald has got the holler down.