1. Follow The Money
2. Look At New Orleans
3. Old Man's Blues
4. Airport Blues
5. Shafafa
6. Lonely Children
7. Let's Get It, Boy!
8. Three Families Blues
9. Strange Ukulele Blues
10. Green River Blues
11. Crooked Blues
12. Rolling Through This World
13. Slow Motion Blues
14. People Are Strange
15. How I Love That Woman
Total time: 57:05
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Post-Industrial Blues
Bob Brozman
Ruf
The slide and fingerpicking master returns from years of circling the globe in pursuit of multicultural blues connections, and makes another straight blues album. But rather than a bunch of covers, he updates the form with a collection of mostly original numbers.
World music still figures prominently in Brozman's vision of modern blues: In addition to his army of National resonator and Hawaiian acoustic guitars, he extensively uses exotics such as the Okinawan sanshin, the Greek baglama, and the 22-string Chaturangui and the 14-string Gandharvi from India. Also in the mix are ukulele, seven-string banjo and found percussion items such as grass clippers, disassembled marimba pipes and the guts of a toy piano.
Lyrics, too, are far from the status quo on "Follow the Money," "Look at New Orleans," "Three Families Blues" (originally titled "The Immigrant, the Soldier and the Iraqi") and "Crooked Blues" ("It's a crooked world sometimes, as crooked as Dick Cheney's smile").
Kudos to Brozman for taking some chances vocally, occasionally switching from baritone-tenor to falsetto and bass. There's an especially big payoff when he throws in some vibrato, similar to RCA-era Ray Davies or Mungo Jerry's Ray Dorset on "In the Summertime."
external links
artist's link
amazon.com
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