SEAN COSTELLO Source: Blues Revue Date: 04/2008 Writer: Tom Hyslop

Q&A with Sean Costello

Sean Costello stepped into the limelight while still in high school, winning a national blues competition in Memphis before contributing guitar to Susan Tedeschi's best-selling 1998 album Just Won't Burn. Once recognized primarily for his youth and his dedication to unadulterated blues guitar, in the past decade Costello has become widely hailed as one of roots music's finest vocalists and most distinctive guitar stylists. He remains a standard-bearer for real blues, but he delivers far more than expert variations on themes by Jimmy Rogers and Otis Rush.

Since our last conversation, Costello has augmented his signature sound with the vintage soul and funk, Dylanesque turns, and in-the-wee-small-hours ballads revealed on his self-titled fourth album. That disc, released in 2004, promised to be his breakthrough, but in the first in a series of reversals of fortune, its label, Artemis Records, folded almost as the album hit the shelves. Now Costello has regained momentum with new bandmates, a fresh sound, and a determination audible in the raw, deep grooves of his first long-player in four years, We Can Get Together. We spoke with Costello as he toured in support of its release.

Between professional disappointments, gear theft, changes in personnel, and working with a band long-distance, the blues came home in a serious way for you.

It was a weird transition. I had guys who had stuck it out with me for 10 years, and we thought we had hit the big time with this Artemis thing. We had a huge (for us) record advance, we'd signed with big agencies ‹ we had made it! [But] we weren't getting the gigs, we weren't getting any recognition. It was obvious things weren't going the way we thought. And then all the guys, one by one, had to do something else with their lives. Thank God I had some other people come into my life ‹ Aaron [Trubic] and Ray [Hangen] from Buffalo, and Paul [Campanella]. I had to go down to a trio, which at first I wasn't excited about, but ultimately it's made me a stronger player, a stronger singer. It's been difficult, but at this point I'm more excited about the band than I ever have been.

What difference has the new band made in your music?

The feel is a little more rock 'n' roll. It's a little more angry. I started young and I was progressively getting more and more successful, and then came hard times. It was pretty bad for me personally, and I had to keep struggling and surviving. And my existence was very different than flying up to New York every couple of weeks and playing with famous people. So I had to do some learning about myself and the world, and I'm taking another shot at it. I've got something to say, and I still feel like I'm not overexposed, that's for sure.

How does the new record reflect the changes in your situation?

It's a summation of what I've been through the past five years. I wanted to simplify and bring it back home. I just had my band and a few buddies playing on it. A lot of the vocals are live; the guitar is live with the drums and bass. I wanted to get something gritty, the Atlanta vibe. I tried to make a real organic thing. The last record I did was really produced ‹ in a good way ‹ but I wanted to do something bare-bones and capture the feeling of the music I had been playing, which was kind of influenced by my environment.

"Organic" is a good description. For example, I hear raw, aggressive guitar on top of some serious Hi Rhythm grooves. It's complex but crafty.

We're trying to mix it up. "Little Birds," for instance, that's like a bluegrass tune filtered out of an old English ballad. Levon [Helm] sang it to me. I put a certain vibe on it from my blues background. And Oliver Wood's playing slide, and there's jazz drumming on it. So it's sort of an Appalachian old-timey number, with Tom Waits guitars on it. Some songs, I think about African music, or Tyrone Davis mixed with the Beatles, or doo-wop mixed with The Band. We're combining things naturally, which is, I think, what you're supposed to do. I'm tryin' to get to that point where it's all blurred together, just American music filtered through me.

When we last talked, you mentioned that one of your goals was to develop your dynamics as a performer. What kind of strides have you made?

At the peak of my career commercially, I was young, and I had gone from playing little bars to playing big stages. I remember being really anxious. I'm not so nervous anymore. I've been watching people, and I've been smart enough to take what I can use from them. I'm more in shape musically. For a long time I was so busy with my own band that that's all I did. But now I've been playing guitar for other people on gigs in various styles, so I'm more adept at my instrument, my singing.

I've become a more confident person. And this time, if I catch the same kind of break I caught when I was 20 or 21, I'm ready to go, and the band's ready to go, 'cause we've been hammering it out for no money for a while. So if we get any sort of a break at all, I mean, I would be scared to have us open for you! We're hungry, man; we're ready to go.