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JOHN
LONG "LOST & FOUND"
Source: All Music
Date: 03/2006
Writer: Steve Leggett |
On
Lost & Found, his debut album on Delta Groove
Records (an earlier demo-styled cassette release,
Long on Blues, was released independently in 1999),
John Long has stunningly re-created the sound
of a pre-war country blues player, right down
to the little Tommy Johnson -like upward vocal
swoops he takes at the end of phrases. What sets
Long aside from simply creating an elaborate facsimile
of the style, however, is that the songs he does
are not ancient Delta pieces, but originals written
by himself and his brother Claude Long, each one
done in the template of an old blues 78 from the
1920s or 1930s. The obvious question, though,
is why bother making this kind of music in the
21st century when there is easy access to digital
renderings of those original 78s? The answer is
simple. You have to love the music enough to want
to live inside it and use it for a personal means
of expression, and you have to respect it enough
to stay inside the framework, right down to the
least slide slur on the guitar. All of this Long
does, and he doesn't attempt any kind of postmodern
update of the country blues, which, ironically,
makes what he does all the more postmodern, since
by changing little, Long makes the style sound
almost radically new. Long doesn't sample the
old country blues; he inhabits it, which is why
he isn't a revisionist in any shape or form. Yes,
he's derivative, but so was Robert Johnson and
everyone else who has ever played the blues, because
the blues demands it. The blues demands you take
what has already been done and said and put your
own personal spin on it, but by the same stead,
you have to work between the lines, because the
blues is an incredibly conservative form. Break
the pattern and it isn't the blues anymore. That's
why so many of the songs here sound familiar.
They're drawn from familiar templates. That's
also what makes these songs work, because while
sounding familiar, they're also eerily fresh,
as well. It's a difficult walk to pull off, to
sound like something from the past in the present,
knowing full well the future is going to sweep
it all up together soon enough. Lost and found,
indeed. Highlights include the opening track,
"Hokum Town," the acoustic funky "Pressure
Cooker ('Bout to Blow)," the moving "Healin'
Touch," and the piano version of "Leavin'
St. Louis" that closes out the set. |
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