TheBluesBlast.com CD review 7 of 7 Rambling Steve Gardner HESITATION BLUES May 23, 2013

[Rambling Steve Gardner]

Issue 7-21, May 23, 2013       Featured Blues Review 7 of 7

Rambling Steve Gardner – Hesitation Blues Blues Cat Records (Tokyo) www.stevegardner.info 20 songs – 1.2 hours Rambling Steve Gardner is a fascinating character. Born in Mississippi in 1956, he learned the blues from (and sometimes played with) the likes of Sam Chatmon, Jack Owens and Jessie Mae Hemphill. His work as a photographer took him to Japan in 1980, where he still lives but where he now focuses on playing and teaching the music, songs and stories of late 19th and early 20th century American music. Recorded in July 2012, Gardner’s new CD, Hesitation Blues, is his sixth release for Blues Cat Records (Tokyo) and his fourth solo recording project. Hesitation Blues is a collection of 20 acoustic tracks, some performed solo by Gardner, some featuring duo and trio arrangements, but also three full band pieces. Other than the occasional use of B-3 organ, this album could have been recorded before the invention of electric instruments. In addition to singing in his rough-hewn but versatile voice, Gardner plays steel guitar and harmonica and adds hambone percussion. Bill Steber contributes saw, banjo ukulele, mandolin and steel guitar. Hisa Nakase plays up-right bass, Yu Ojima plays drums and Gardner’s co-producer, Nick Vitter, adds up-right piano and organ. Other featured instruments include the accordion, tuba, trombone and fiddle. The musicians also add claps, hollers and stomps in addition to backing vocals. Gardner is a fine finger-picker on his National Reso-Phonic guitar, equally adept with a bottleneck on pieces like “St Louis Blues”. He also wrote two songs for the album, “Mississippi River Blues” and “Bill Bailey Rag”, both of which sit comfortably with the cover songs (which were themselves all written before 1946 and several of which date to the 16th and 17th centuries). A number of the cover songs are very well known indeed (“House Of The Rising Sun”, “Froggy Went A-Courtin’”, “Love In Vain” and “I Shall Not Be Moved”), but Gardner gives many of them a fresh re-working. For example, “Hesitation Blues” sounds nothing like the Reverend Gary Davis or Hot Tuna versions, but does sound like it has been given a serious bath in New Orleans waters. Equally, “House Of The Rising Sun” sounds like a wholly new song, with a funky drum beat, lonesome trombone and driving bass. At times I found myself wondering if Gardner was deliberately re-interpreting the songs to give them a different (and more modern) perspective, or whether his arrangements are actually closer to how the “original” versions might have been performed. One of several highlights on the album is “I Shall Not Be Moved”, which opens with Gardner’s solo National guitar, before he is joined by a full band including accordion and trombone and a lovely gospel chorus. Gardner is an educator as well as a musician, running workshops and seminars on American roots and blues music, often sponsored by educational institutions in the USA and Japan. Hesitation Blues is a musical companion to those seminars and workshops. As such, it is not surprising that Gardner has selected so many pieces that are central to the evolution of American (and world) music, and hence also extremely well-known. In some ways that could be seen as the raison d'être of the album: to point listeners towards the giants who first created this music. But this album is not a dry, dusty exercise in academia. It is immediately obvious from the music that the musicians had a blast playing together and, despite the absence of electric instruments, the rhythm and groove established on several songs rock at least as hard as many “modern” bands. This is not a cautious, overly-worthy homage to the past. It is an invigorating reminder of why early American music has had such long-lasting and far-reaching influence. It is a celebration of some wonderful songs, played and sung with real power. If you are a fan of other modern National guitar masters, such as Steve James, Paul Rishell or Terry Garland, you will thoroughly enjoy this album.! Reviewer Reviewer Rhys Williams is a blues enthusiastic based in Cambridge, England. One of the few times his children have seen him cry was when his then-two-year-old son knocked over his prized National guitar, breaking the headstock clean off. For other reviews and interviews on our website CLICK HERE