Remembering singer/guitarist Leo "Bud" Welch on his birthday

Remembering gospel/blues guitarist Leo "Bud" Welch on his birthday with a few performances you may have missed.

James Hunter shares "Gun Shy" video from new album Off The Fence

James Hunter cut his new album Off The Fence at Daptone's Riverside studio but issued it via Easy Eye Sound. Photos: Jim Herrington

Off The Fence by The James Hunter Six

The James Hunter Six recently shared the music video for the band's lovesick single "Gun Shy" from their new album Off The Fence, out now via Easy Eye Sound. Co-written with singer/guitarist James Hunter and his bandmate Myles Weeks, "Gun Shy" illustrates the tongue-tied feeling of a new crush over a dance-floor-ready groove before ripping into a bluesy sax solo from Michael Buckley. The music video was featured at Relix, who said "Along with the music video’s nature, the song carries a sense of timelessness that might well appeal to Hunter’s 40-year tenure as a high mark of British soul and rhythm & blues." Watch the James Slater-directed video for “Gun Shy” following the Off The Fence track list below. Get a copy of the album via your platform of choice right here: https://ees.ffm.to/tjhs_offthefence. 

Says James Hunter about the new single: "I had heard the phrase 'gun shy' before but didn't know what it meant, although I assumed it had more than a literal application. When Myles Weeks, our bass player, mentioned he had a concept for a song with that title, he outlined the theme as being that of someone being nervously reluctant to declare their romantic intentions. I asked him if he minded if I wrote it, and he graciously said yes. As per my usual 'Thesaurus method' of song-writing, I threw a pile of ballistics-related terms on the table and set about arranging them into verses. Once I'd stuffed them into a spare tune I had lying around, we committed it to tape."

 "Then it was time to make the video," he continues. "One dark December evening, my wife Jessie accompanied me to a studio in a Victorian-era warehouse in Tichborne Street, in the North Laines, Brighton. Our director, James Slater, filmed me prancing about and lip-syncing on a big sheet of paper unfurled from a roller suspended from the ceiling. I had a blast."

Dubbed "The United Kingdom’s Greatest Soul Singer" by MOJO, the British singer, songwriter and Grammy-nominated James Hunter has been a legendary fixture in the scene for over three decades. His eleventh studio album delivers another dose of timeless rhythm & soul and marks 40 years since his recording debut. Featuring twelve self-penned gems, each song is delivered with Hunter’s customary blend of smooth vocal control coupled with heart-worn grit and wit.

From the infectious blues blaster "A Sure Thing" to the beautifully moving "Here And Now" and even a rare duet with his former employer, legendary Irish singer Van Morrison called "Ain't That A Trip," Off The Fence is the perfect amalgam of everything great about Hunter's songwriting, delivery and outlook. He is accompanied by a band of masterful musicians that includes Myles Weeks (double bass), Rudy Albin Petschauer (drums), Andrew Kingslow (keyboards, percussion), Michael Buckley (baritone saxophone) and Drew Vanderwinckel (tenor saxophone).

 James Hunter will be touring in the UK and Europe in early 2026. See a full list of dates below and find more information on his site: jameshuntermusic.com/tour.html

 

James Hunter Six – Off The Fence 

1. Two Birds One Stone

2. Let Me Out Of This Love

3. Gun Shy

4. Believe It When I See It

5. Here And Now

6. Off The Fence

7. Ain’t That A Trip (feat. Van Morrison)

8. One For Ripley

9. Trouble Comes Calling

10. Particular

11. A Sure Thing

12. Only A Fool

LINKS
Medium.com James Hunter chats with Jimmie Soul about Off The Fence

 

The James Hunter Six 2026 European Tour

January 26 – Glasgow, UK @ Òran Mór

January 28 – Newcastle, UK @ The Cluny

January 29 – Leeds, UK @ Brudenell Social Club

January 30 – Cambridge, UK @ Storey's Field Centre

January 31 – Birmingham, UK @ The Crossing

February 7 – Paris, FR @ New Morning

February 9 – Amsterdam, NL @ Paradiso Tolhuistuin

February 10 – Hamburg, DE @ Knust

February 11 – Berlin, DE @ Hole44

February 13 – Munich, DE @ Ampere

James Hunter previews new album for Easy Eye Sound with "A Sure Thing"

UK soul singer James Hunter is releasing "Off The Fence" on January 16. Listen to his Impressions-style swinger "A Sure Thing"

Here's the scoop from Easy Eye Sound HQ...

The James Hunter Six returns with their first Easy Eye Sound release, “A Sure Thing,” from the brand new album ‘Off The Fence’ available January 16, 2026. Streaming everywhere now: https://ees.ffm.to/tjhs_asurething

British singer-songwriter and GRAMMY-nominated James Hunter has been a legendary fixture within the scene for over three decades with his gritty voice and sharp songwriting earning him acclaim around the world. MOJO previously named him “United Kingdom’s Greatest Soul Singer.” Listen to the new song and pre-order ‘Off The Fence’ on vinyl & CD now: https://ees.ffm.to/tjhs_offthefence

Little Barrie & Malcolm Catto preview Electric War album with "Zero Sun"

Little Barrie & Malcolm Catto's latest album Electric War will be out April 18 via Easy Eye Sound. Listen to "Zero Sun" below.

Watch Robert Finley perform "Livin' Out A Suitcase"

Check out "Livin' Out A Suitcase" off Robert Finley's latest album Black Bayou (Easy Eye Sound) which you can get right here. 

One For The Weekend: The Velveteers

Check out "Go Fly Away" off The Velveteers' new Dan Auerbach & Pat Carney-produced album A Million Knives out February 14.

Here's the scoop from Velveteers HQ...

The Velveteers bring a visceral energy to their explosive sophomore album, A Million Knives, loaded with blistering rock anthems infused with melodic indie songwriting. With Grammy grabbing producer Dan Auerbach at the helm, the Denver, CO trio encapsulates the raw, forceful, and profoundly heavy power of their live performances and laser-focuses a spotlight on tightly crafted songs as they carve out their own distinctive niche.

Driving The Velveteers is the commanding presence of frontwoman Demi Demitro, a no-bullshit, five-foot-something spitfire with thunderous guitar riffs and soaring vocals, backed by the incendiary duo of Baby Pottersmith and Johnny Fig on drums. The band's signature dual drum setup creates a thunderous foundation that propels their gritty, dynamic garage rock sound. On A Million Knives, this setup melds seamlessly with a more modern indie rock influence–the attitude of Wolf Alice, the colossal sound of Queens of the Stone Age, and the singular lyrical voice of Hole.

The Velveteers have built a dedicated following through relentless touring and electrifying performances, sharing stages with renowned acts such as Smashing Pumpkins, The Black Keys, Greta Van Fleet, Guns N' Roses, and Des Rocs. With A Million Knives, The Velveteers offer a compelling testament to their rising stardom, a rock 'n' roll album as beautiful as it is electrifying. 

Catch The Velveteers on tour in October – see dates following the clip for "Go Fly Away." Read a recent Billboard article about The Velveteers by Gary Graff right here. 

 

The Velveteers on tour

OCT 11 – Kung Fu Necktie Philadelphia, PA w/ Alex Vile

OCT 12 – Warehouse XI Somerville, MA w/ Alex Vile, Exit 18

OCT 13 – Mercury Lounge New York, NY w/ Alex Vile

OCT 14 – Pearl Street Warehouse Washington, DC w/ Alex Vile

OCT 16 – Neighborhood Theatre Charlotte, NC w/ Alex Vile, Kadey Ballard

OCT 18 – The Masquerade (Altar) Atlanta, GA w/ Alex Vile

OCT 19 – The Whirling Tiger Louisville, KY w/ Alex Vile

OCT 22 – HI-FI Indy Indianapolis, IN w/ Alex Vile, The Orchard Keepers

OCT 23 – Cobra Lounge Chicago, IL w/ Alex Vile

OCT 24 – Shank Hall Milwaukee, WI w/ Alex Vile

OCT 25 – Underground Music Venue Minneapolis, MN w/ Alex Vile, Ghost Kitchen

You can pre-order a copy of The Velveteers new album A Million Knives from your platform of choice right here.

Hermanos Gutiérrez play the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, May 14

Don't miss this rare Toronto appearance of guitar duo Hermanos Gutiérrez at Queen Elizabeth Theatre on Tuesday (May 14).

Get tickets for the Hermanos Gutiérrez show in Toronto on Tuesday right here. 

One For The Weekend: The Black Keys w/ Noel Gallagher

Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney recorded "On The Game" with Noel Gallagher for their Ohio Players LP at Toe Rag Studios. 

Shannon & The Clams preview new album with "Bean Fields" video

"Bean Fields" is off the new Shannon & The Clams album "The Moon Is In The Wrong Place" out May 10 via Easy Eye Sound. 

You can pre-order the new Shannon & The Clams album "The Moon Is In The Wrong Place" right here. 

Take a trip down to the Black Bayou with Robert Finley

Here's a short video about the vinyl manufacturing of Robert Finley's new Black Bayou album and a couple of great new songs. 

Get a signed copy of Robert Finley's new Black Bayou album on swamp splatter vinyl from Easy Eye Sound right here. 

Robert Finley previews Black Bayou album with "Sneakin' Around"

Robert Finley's new Dan Auerbach-produced Black Bayou album – due Oct 27 – features the Black Keys' Pat Carney on drums.  

Here's the scoop...

Robert Finley has just released “Sneakin’ Around,” the second single to his highly anticipated fourth studio album, Black Bayou, due October 27 via Easy Eye Sound. Check out the accompanying music video directed by Andy M Hawkes, starring the 69 year-young Finley below. You can pre-order Black Bayou right here: https://click.ees.link/blackbayou

 

Finley recorded Black Bayou at Dan Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound Studio in Nashville. It’s the fourth time the duo have worked together, although for this record they did things a little differently. Rather than write songs beforehand—as they did on 2017’s Goin’ Platinum and 2021’s Sharecropper’s Son—they devised everything in the studio, with Auerbach leading a band of some of the finest players around: drummers Patrick Carney (The Black Keys) and Jeffrey Clemens (G. Love & Special Sauce), bassist Eric Deaton, and legendary Hill Country blues guitarist Kenny Brown along with vocalists Christy Johnson and LaQuindrelyn McMahon—who just happen to be Finley’s daughter and granddaughter. They worked quickly, devising their parts spontaneously and getting everything in one take.

 

Black Bayou, is a portrait of North Louisiana from an insider who’s lived there all his life. It coalesces all of the vibrant genres bubbling in the bayou from southern soul, jazz, folk, blues, rock and roll and more. A vivid collection of songs that depict life in North Louisiana, with Finley playing the role of charismatic and knowledgeable tour guide. Tales include surviving the jaws of an alligator on “Alligator Bait,” a true story of his grandfather using him as bait to catch an alligator when he was a child. “Nobody Wants To Be Lonely” is a poignant track spotlighting the generation forgotten in nursing homes across the nation. Songs like “Miss Kitty,” a  tale of lust and love are an instant induction into the canon of the blues tradition. In all, a collection set to establish Finley as perhaps one of the last true bluesmen of our time and a truly original Louisiana storyteller who evokes the place and its unique culture for the rest of the world.

 

“It’s amazing to realize how much of an impact Louisiana has had on the world’s music,” says Dan Auerbach, “and Robert embodies all of that. He can play a blues song. He can play early rock and roll. He can play gospel. He can do anything, and a lot of that has to do with where he’s from.”

 

If Finley’s previous albums established him as a formidable blues and soul artist - overcoming losing his sight in his 60s to become a music star - Black Bayou Finley hopes will help put North Louisiana on the musical map and launch the next generation of stars. Finley still plays small clubs around the region—even the occasional nursing home. Rather than move to where the music industry is, Finley is bringing the industry down to Bernice and working to boost regional acts and has plans for a new local recording studio in the works. “We got a lot of good talent down here in North Louisiana, but nobody’s really done much with it.” Finley stated, adding, “A lot of people just haven’t had a chance to record—or even just be heard. It worked for me, so I might as well try to help someone else get discovered, too.”

Watch the video for "Sneakin' Around" following his previous single "What Goes Around Comes Around" and the Black Bayou tracklisting. Check out Robert's tour dates for October and November below.

 

Black Bayou – Robert Finley

01. Livin' Out A Suitcase

02. Sneakin' Around

03. Miss Kitty

04. Waste Of Time

05. Can't Blame Me For Trying

06. Gospel Blues

07. Nobody Wants To Be Lonely

08. What Goes Around (Comes Around)

09. Lucky Day

10. You Got It (And I Need It)

11. Alligator Bait 

ROBERT FINLEY TOUR DATES

Thursday October 26, 2023 - New York, NY - Knitting Factory 

Saturday, 4 November 2023 - Groningen, NL - Take Root Festival

Sunday, 5 November 2023 - Brussels, BE - Rotonde @ Botanique 

Wednesday, 8 November 2023 - London, UK - Jazz Café 

Thursday, 9 November 2023 - Manchester, UK - Blues Kitchen 

Friday, 10 November 2023 - Pandrup, DK - Blues Heaven Festival

Tuesday, 14 November 2023 - Toulouse, FR - Salle Nougaro 

Wednesday, 15 November 2023 - Saint-Nazaire, FR - VIP

Thursday, 16 November 2023 - Amiens, FR - La Lune des Pirates

Saturday, 18 November 2023 - Šumperk, CZ - Blues Alive Festival

Monday, 20 November 2023 - Tourcoing, FR - Le Grand Mix

Tuesday, 21 November 2023 - Paris, FR - Maroquinerie

Thursday, 23 November 2023 - La Roche-Sur-Yon, FR - Quai M 

Friday, 24 November 2023 - La Rochelle, FR - La Sirène

Saturday, 25 November 2023 - Castres, FR - Lo Boegason

Sunday, 26 November 2023 - Saint-Etienne, FR - Le Fil  

One For The Weekend: Dan Auerbach

Watch the clip for Dan Auerbach's "Every Chance I Get" off the new Easy Eye Sound sampler "Tell Everybody!" out August 11.

Here's the scoop on Tell Everybody!

Recorded by Dan Auerbach at Easy Eye Sound studio, Tell Everybody! (21st Century Juke Joint Blues From Easy Eye Sound) spans the diverse blues spectrum, a payment of respect and admiration for the musicians carrying this American tradition into this century and beyond. Includes new recordings from Dan Auerbach, The Black Keys, RL Boyce, Gabe Carter, Robert Finley, Jimmy "Duck" Holmes, Moonrisers, Nat Myers, Glenn Schwartz feat. Joe Walsh, and Leo "Bud" Welch.  

Tell Everybody! 21st Century Juke Joint Blues From Easy Eye Sound

Side A

RL Boyce - Coal Black Mattie

Robert Finley - Tell Everybody

Moonrisers - Tall Shadow

Dan Auerbach - Every Chance I Get (I Want You in the Flesh)

Jimmy "Duck" Holmes - Catfish Blues (Mono)

Gabe Carter - Anything You Need

Side B

Nat Myers - Willow Witchin'

Leo Bud Welch - Don't Let the Devil Ride (Mono)

The Black Keys - No Lovin'

Glenn Schwartz - Daughter of Zion (Featuring Joe Walsh)

Gabe Carter - Buffalo Road

Glenn Schwartz - Collinwood Fire

You can pre-order a copy of Tell Everybody! directly from Easy Eye Sound right here. Watch the Ub Iwerks-inspired animated clip for Dan Auerbach's "Every Chance I Get" below.

 

Bluegrass great Del McCoury & Sierra Hull salute John Anderson

Listen to Del Mcoury & Sierra Hull's update "Would You Catch A Falling Star" followed by a 1983 John Anderson performance.

The new John Anderson tribute album Something Borrowed, Something New – produced by Dan Auerbach – is available here. 

Happy Birthday Jimmy "Duck" Holmes!

Celebrating the birthday of Bentonia bluesman and Blue Front Café boss Jimmy "Duck" Holmes with a couple of clips.  

Gillian Welch & David Rawlings cover John Anderson tune for new tribute album

Easy Eye Sound's new John Anderson salute, Something Borrowed, Something New is out August 5th. Pre-order it here.  

Something Borrowed, Something New: A Tribute to John Anderson

“1959” performed by John Prine

 “Years” performed by Sierra Ferrell

“Wild and Blue” performed by Brent Cobb

“Low Dog Blues” performed by Nathaniel Rateliff

“Mississippi Moon” performed by Eric Church

“I Just Came Home to Count the Memories” performed by Gillian Welch & David Rawlings

“Shoot Low Sheriff!” performed by Tyler Childers

“Seminole Wind” performed by Luke Combs

“When It Comes to You” performed by Sturgill Simpson

“You Can’t Judge a Book (By The Cover)” performed by Brothers Osborne

“Would You Catch a Falling Star” performed by Del McCoury feat. Sierra Hull

“Straight Tequila Night” performed by Ashley McBryde

“I’m Just an Old Chunk of Coal (But I’m Gonna Be a Diamond Some Day)” performed by Jamey Johnson

Hank Williams, Jr. previews Dan Auerbach-produced album

Hank Williams, Jr's ".44 Special Blues" is off Rich White Honky Blues out June 17th via Easy Eye Sound. Have a listen below. 

Here's the scoop...

Larger than life, capable of summoning “all his rowdy friends” with a couple crashing downbeats and a blaring guitar riff, Hank Williams Jr., has been one of country music’s truest outlaws for over half a century. But more than the swaggering singles, roughneck fantasy videos or relentless sense of blue-collar boogie, at his core, the 72-year-old legend is a bluesman. Pure, unqualified and unadulterated, the only son of Hank Williams has the same down low lonesome in his veins as the man Rufus “Tee-Tot” Payne taught to play guitar as a small child growing up in Greenville, Alabama.

 

With Rich White Honky Blues – set for release on June 17 – the second-generation Country Music Hall of Famer makes good on his legacy with a turpentine and rough wood take on the hill country blues that informed his father’s raw-boned style of putting his pain out there. GRAMMY-winning Producer of the Year, Dan Auerbach, recorded the set live, with a dozen songs reprising classics from Robert Johnson, Lightnin’ Hopkins, R.L. Burnside, Muddy Waters, Big Joe Turner and a few from Bocephus himself.

 

“The blues is where it all comes from,” concedes Williams. “It’s the start of everything musical in my family; everything starts with Tee-Tot and flows from there. I’ve always flirted with this stripped back blues – all the way back to the ‘80s. But I finally made an album that’s just that, and I like it.”

 

Blame it on the owner of Easy Eye Sound. Auerbach went straight to the essence. Assembling a wicked core band of electric slide guitarist Kenny Brown, claimed as “my adopted son” by R.L. Burnside, bassist Eric Deaton, who first toured with Fat Possum’s Juke Joint Caravan, backing up T-Model Ford and Paul “Wine” Jones, plus drummer Kinney Kimbrough, son of North Mississippi blues legend Junior Kimbrough, they tapped into the lifeblood of the blues at its most randy.

 

It started with a phone call, discussing what these sessions could be. Nothing definitive, no commitments made. But then Auerbach started receiving text messages the week leading up to the dates: pictures of Hank Williams, Jr. stationery, each with the title of a song he wanted to sing. Back and forth. Songs. Influences. Touchstones to draw upon.

 

And then it was Day One.

 

“First thing he said to me when he walked in was, ‘I don’t really feel like fucking with this shit!’,” Auerbach recalls. “And he walked into another room.”

 

Undaunted, the producer had the band start playing; grindhouse blues, sweltering hill country shuffles, juke joint altar calls. Before too long, the man whose alter-ego is Thunderhead Hawkins emerged, curious and hungry.

 

“If you wanted to play this kind of music, you couldn’t have better players,” Auerbach explains. “The first time I ever saw Hank Jr. on TV, I was a kid raised on Robert Johnson and Hank Williams, Sr. records, and those things came through so clearly watching him. So, I tried to assemble the right parts to just sit in that piece of who he is.”

 

Over the course of just three days, Rich White Honky Blues was done, with Williams punctuatingly declaring “I hope you got all of that. I bet YOU did. I’m going to listen – and smoke...”

As Williams prepares for the release of his 57th studio album, his family has been struck by tragedy with the sudden passing of his wife of 31 years, Mary Jane Thomas. While Williams considered delaying the project’s announcement, time with his family led to one conclusion: music offers solace in the most difficult times.

 

In this sense, it seems almost predestined that Rich White Honky Blues ends with a prayer for redemption as Williams invites the Savior to bring whatever grace He might have, to sow solace and forgiveness, suggesting the larger than life amongst us transcend mortal limitations. After all, Country blues informed his father’s raw-boned style of putting his pain out there, epitomizing the unquestionable truth that there is always a time for music in moments of need.

Check out ".44 Special Blues" following the track listing for Rich White Honky Blues which you can pre-order right here. 

Rich White Honky Blues – Hank Williams, Jr.

1..44 Special Blues

2.Georgia Women

3.My Starter Won’t Start

4.Take Out Some Insurance

5.Rich White Honky Blues

6.Short Haired Woman

7.Fireman Ring the Bell

8.Rock Me Baby

9.I Like It When It’s Stormy

10.Call Me Thunderhead

11.TV Mama

12.Jesus Will You Come By Here 

 

One For The Weekend: Ceramic Animal

"Tangled" by Philly's Ceramic Animal is off their new Sweet Unknown album for Dan Auerbach's Easy Eye Sound label. 

Watch the new video for Son House's "Empire State Express"

"Empire State Express" is off Son House's forthcoming album Forever On My Mind out Mar 18. See that clip and the title track.

Unissued Son House recordings to be released as Forever On My Mind in March

Listen to "Preachin' Blues" off the forthcoming Son House album Forever On My Mind out March 18 via Easy Eye Sound. 

Here's the scoop...

On the evening of June 23, 1964, a red Volkswagen Beetle bearing three blues enthusiasts arrived in Rochester, N.Y. The young men were following a trail of clues in their search of a legend, and they found him sitting on the steps of an apartment building at 61 Greig Street.

 

“This is him,” Son House said.

 

Born Eddie James House, Jr. in Lyon, Mississippi in 1902, Son House at that time had not played music for more than two decades. But the re-release of his early work — commercial 78s issued by Paramount Records in 1930 and two field recordings by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress in 1941-42 — by Origin Jazz Library and Folkways Records had excited fresh interest in a growing community of blues aficionados. Within months of his rediscovery by Dick Waterman (who became House’s manager and handler), Nick Perls and Phil Spiro, the once-obscure 62-year-old musician was thrust into the public eye by a story in Newsweek magazine and a series of performances at folk music festivals and college campuses around the country.

 

Forever On My Mind, the new album of previously unreleased Son House recordings from Easy Eye Sound, the independent label operated by Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys, is the premiere release from Waterman’s personal cache of ’60s recordings by some of the titans of Delta blues. His collection of quarter-inch tapes — which are being restored to remarkable clarity by Easy Eye Sound — have gone unreleased until now. The collection is due out March 18, 2022 and comes in a variety of limited edition vinyl colour choices available at different outlets (see the helpful guide).

 

Waterman says, “I always knew that I wanted this body of tape that I had to come out together, as The Avalon Collection or The Waterman Tapes, as sort of my legacy. They were just here at my home, on a shelf. I had made a few entrees to record companies, but nothing had really come through. I thought that Dan Auerbach would treat the material with reverence and respect.”

 

Auerbach says, “Easy Eye Sound makes blues records, and not many people make blues records anymore. This record continues where we started off, with our artists Leo Bud Welch and Jimmy ‘Duck’ Holmes and Robert Finley. It also is part of my history — some of the first blues music I heard was Son House. I was raised on his Columbia LP, Father of Folk Blues. My dad had that album and would play it in the house when I was a kid, so I know all those songs by heart.”

 

Forever On My Mind is the earliest issued full-length House solo performance recorded after his rediscovery, at an appearance captured on November 23, 1964 at Wabash College, a small men’s school in Crawfordsville, Indiana. In terms of power and intensity, it rivals, and in some cases surpasses, the Columbia album, cut five months later in a New York City studio. It also reflects a sharp musical focus that diminished in House’s later concert appearances and recordings.

 

“As he toured in ’65 and ’66 and ’67,” Waterman notes, “he developed stories — they were self-deprecating stories, with humor and things like that. So, he became sort of an entertainer. But these first shows in ’64 were the plain, naked, raw Son House. This was just the man and his performance. He didn’t have any stories or anything to go with it.”

 

In the wake of his rediscovery in Rochester, House — who had labored as a foundry worker, railroad porter and cook, among other jobs, after moving from Mississippi to New York in 1943 — decided to make a return to music at the urging of his enthusiastic young fans. Waterman explains, “He had been living in a [retirement] home with his wife, and they weren’t doing anything but living on Social Security. So, it was the opportunity to make some money that put us out on tour.”

 

House was outfitted with a new steel-bodied National resonator guitar, the instrument he had played on his early recordings, and Alan Wilson, later famous as the guitarist and singer of the Los Angeles blues-rock band Canned Heat, gave the sexagenarian musician a refresher course in his own music.

 

“Son and Al would play knee to knee with the guitar,” Waterman says. “Al would say, ‘This is what you called “My Black Mama” in 1930,’ and would play it for him. And then he would say, ‘This is what you called “My Black Woman” for Lomax 12 years later,’ and he would play that, and Son would play along with him until the two of them were really rollicking along. And Son would say, ‘I got my recollection now, I got my recollection now.’”

 

House, who to date had only performed before Black audiences in Southern juke houses, would now be introduced to a young and entirely new group of listeners. Waterman says, “He hadn’t played in front of white people at all.”

 

After some initial appearances that summer at the Unicorn coffeehouse in Cambridge, Mass., then a center of the American folk music renaissance of the ’60s, and an August 1964 set at the Philadelphia Folk Festival, House and Waterman set off on a modest tour of Midwestern campuses in November in the manager’s new Ford Mustang. The manager recalls, “I wrote letters to [university] student activities committees, one after the other after the other. So we went out, and the first date, I remember, was at Antioch in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and then Wabash was one of the first ones after that.”

 

The college engagements included Oberlin College in Ohio, Shimer College in Mt. Carroll, Illinois, and the University of Chicago, where local blues fan Norman Dayron recorded at least part of the November 21, 1964, show; a single track later surfaced on the 1980 Takoma Records LP Rare Blues. But the Wabash College appearance two days later was caught on tape in full.

 

“Wabash did the taping, and then they later gave me the reel-to-reel tape,” Waterman remembers. “The show was held in kind of an assembly hall. There were a few dozen [in the audience] — there may have been up to 50 people, something like that. They were quiet and polite during the performance … There were no barriers, there were no filters between him and the audience. He was just giving them the plain, unvarnished Delta material, as he knew it and as he sang it.”

 

Five of the eight songs heard on Forever On My Mind were later released in studio versions on House’s Columbia LP. Another two songs that he played at Wabash College, renditions of his Delta contemporary Charley Patton’s “Pony Blues” and the gospel blues standard “Motherless Children,” were recorded by the label but went unreleased until 1992. The first number heard on the Easy Eye Sound release, the titular “Forever On My Mind,” was never attempted in a recording studio, but it would be essayed from time to time in House’s concert performances; there is film footage of him playing it at the 1966 Newport Folk Festival. On the present album, the song, which contains snatches of his friend Willie Brown’s classic “Future Blues” and his own “Louise McGhee,” serves as a living lesson in the improvisatory Delta blues tradition. 

 

“There are certain songs that he would play, go into an open G tuning,” Waterman says, “and just play things in a certain meter. And some of these songs borrowed verses from each other.”

 

House’s 1964-65 live appearances and his Columbia album placed him in the pantheon of such other great, recently rediscovered Delta blues musicians as Skip James, Mississippi John Hurt, Bukka White, and Rev. Robert Wilkins. Forever On My Mind now re-introduces House at the height of his renewed powers in an essential, previously unheard document of unique force and sonic clarity.

 

Says Auerbach, “He sounds like he’s in a trance, and his singing is so nuanced here. He’s very playful with his phrasing, just right on the money with his singing and playing. It sounds so right to me — top form Son House.”

 

“The late-’64 stuff is as good as it’s going to get,” Waterman says. “I have great love and great respect for Mr. House, and I hope that this legacy stands up, for all that he meant to me and all that he meant to the music.”

 

LINKS

Rolling Stone After 60 years on the shelf, a trove of unreleased Son House recordings are finally coming out

Watch Robert Finley's video for "Sharecropper's Son"

"Sharecropper's Son" is the title track off Robert Finley's new Dan Auerbach-produced album out May 21st via Easy Eye Sound.