Chris Thomas King drags blues into 21st century
Bloomington, Ind., Herald-Times, 11/6/01
Sunday night's "All Over Blues" program at the Indiana University Auditorium turned into an episode of "Blues Survivor." Those there to see Chris Thomas King, star of O Brother Where Art Thou?, probably expected a sensitive acoustic guitar picker singing old-time country blues.
They got that and so much more. In his solo career, King has been fusing blues and hip-hop for the past decade, and the audience wasn't quite braced for the performer in leather pants, knit hat and New Orleans Saints jersey, backed by a bass player and DJ. It was too much for some in the audience, who left at strategic points in the set.
This band is at once a tribute to Muddy Waters, who died in 1983, and the great Chicago blues masters, and also the living embodiment of that scene.
Coming out to a small audience made smaller by the huge auditorium, Portnoy mock head-counted, saying the room contained "the 160 hippest people in Bloomington." The attendance level at this show perhaps finally proves the correlation between promoting/advertising and attendance, something show promoters Union Board should note for next time.
The band opened not with Muddy Waters, but ex-Muddy harmonica player Little Walter's instrumental "Off the Wall." That was followed by "How Many More Years," a tune made popular by Muddy's chief Windy City-rival, Howlin' Wolf. In fact, the band did as many Walter tunes as Muddy, but the entire set was a greatest hits lineup of the genre.
The set really kicked into gear when Johnson, in gold-rimmed tinted glasses, a green-and-gold shimmering Aztec shirt, leather pants and snakeskin boots, stepped up for Waters' "Mannish Boy," the one-chord, stop-time stomp so identified with the idiom. The sparse audience shouted in all the right spots, getting into the jerky rhythm. The band was the picture of restraint on this.
Guitarist Margolin, a visual doppelganger to Jerry Garcia, took the mike for "Caldonia." Margolin's thin, flat voice carried none of the weight of Waters' deep, hypnotic purr, but he made up for that with showmanship, gesturing wildly and coming to the lip of the stage to sing sans microphone on a slow blues.
No one can touch Waters' vocal style, but Margolin channeled his slide guitar sound. So well-versed is Margolin in Muddy's guitar voice, that he taught Muddy's own son, Big Bill Morganfield, the intricacies of that sound.
The set closed with the blues national anthem, and Muddy's traditional closer, "Got My Mojo Working." Smith worked hard on the train beat, as King made his first appearance on the call-and-response classic, which got the audience going.
The main event was something else entirely: Darkness, a thick fog, a large, ominous DJ, and a pre-recorded slide guitar riff introduced King to the stage. But he was armed with a microphone, not a guitar, and he stalked around the stage, giving an African-American musical history lesson, with the refrain, "Welcome to the jungle, this is my home."
This is not your daddy's beer-commercial blues show, and some left after this first song. The audience was a mix of ages, and many of all hair colors and styles stuck around until the end.
Perplexed looks did come from the crowd, who were more used to these beats thumping from jeeps than on stage at a "blues" concert. King was an educating MC, referring to lynchings and thefts, topics of classic blues, but using the straightforward urban style of the day.
King often refers to the "21st Century Blues." It is the name of a song, an album, his record label, his band and the weird genre he has created, and he makes a great effort to connect blues' rhythmic and thematic tradition with hip-hop's updated version.
DJ DaV, sampled classic blues such as "The Thrill is Gone" and bassist Anthony Hardesty upped the funk, while King wrenched classic single-string bends from his Gibson. The lines were blurred: Had it been a real drummer instead of a beatbox, and had he sung it rather than spoken it, would it have been blues then? Tough question.
The highlight of the set, just because it worked the smoothest, was the acoustic portion. King is a masterful guitar player, well-versed in the classic styles. His "Hard Time Killing Floor Blues," from the O Brother soundtrack, was a creep-for-creep reading of Skip James' original. It was what some people came to see, judging from the handful that left after that song.
As one of the few in that movie who actually sings and plays in real life as well, King has released a CD of songs inspired by the film. The song "John Law Burned Down the Liquor Sto'" was a fine imagining of a Depression-era blues song.
The set went back into the hip-hop style, closing with "Revelations," from the recent Act II Revelations: 2000 & Beyond. The song used the lyrics from Robert Johnson's "If I Had Possession Over Judgment Day" and its percussive, propulsive rhythm, and a sample of Son House's spiritual a cappella "John the Revelator" over a two-step dance beat. It was easily the best fusion of blues and electronica of the evening.
King was sure to give props to the Muddy Waters band, saying, "Those guys electrified" the blues, "we digitized it and sampled it."
It isn't pretty or perfect, but it's a message that needs to be heard. Those who stayed to the end were treated to an interesting, forward-thinking talent, no matter the genre.
Reporter J.J. Perry can be reached by phone at 331-4352, or by e-mail at [email protected].
