Deep Blues video roundup: July 17

More than 70 blues acts will converge on Minnesota this week for the five-day Deep Blues Festival, representing a wide array of styles within the underground side of the genre. Different as they are, they all share a passion for the unpolished, uncommercialized, and primal side of the blues. The A.V. Club takes a look at a few of the notable performers in Friday's Cabooze lineup, which kicks off at noon with 30 performers on two stages. Check back later for a preview of Saturday's show.

Sometimes it takes a member of the old guard to blow into town and school the natives on how to really play the blues. This year's Deep Blues fest features several vets, including CeDell Davis, Elmo Williams and Hezekiah Early, and Robert Cage (who all play Saturday), and Friday's T-Model Ford. This 84-year-old Mississippi lynchpin is just the man for the job, as he eschews cavalier blues scales for the kind of searing guitar work that made him an acknowledged master of “Mississippi heavy-metal blues.” He also has the good sense not to gussy up his albums with unnecessary elements: It’s just him, his guitar, and sparse drumming courtesy of Spam (a.k.a. Tommy Lee Miles) on quirky but devastating songs like “Happy Go Lucky Psychopath” and “Ugly Ass Grin” off last year’s Don’t Get Out Talkin’ It.

Raised by fundamentalist Christian missionaries on an American Indian reservation, Denver’s Brent “Reverend Deadeye” Burkhart draws from a deep well of spirituality. But the one-man, hellfire-and-brimstone blues act simultaneously slays and celebrates the tenants of holiness. Sleazy, righteous, and oozing Delta sludge, the Reverend picks up the shtick first laid down by Bob Log III and ass-kicks his way halfway to heaven with it. In addition to playing slide-guitar and howling into homemade, tin-can microphones, Burkhart is his own percussive accompanist—but even with every limb shackled to an instrument, he never fails to morph into a sweat-soaked fallen angel onstage.

Cincinnati blooze band Pearlene resembles the hip-shaking sound of Exile On Main Street-era Rolling Stones and early Joe Cocker, though Pearlene plays darker and heavier, and covers nearly every song on 2007's For Western Violence And Brief Sensuality in a thick, druggy haze. Epic workouts like "Watch The Way" and "High And Dangerous" take a low-to-the-ground approach, but the results are grandiose, as ominous organ and echoing guitars fill the room like a static charge. Pearlene strives to keep a vamp rolling as long as possible, and when it works up one as loose and raw as the album-opening "Hosannah," it feels like it could go for days.

Formerly the third leg of Black Diamond Heavies (who play Saturday), Mark "Porchop" Holder went his own way in 2006. The amicable separation seems to have done neither side any harm musically, as the Heavies now rock harder than ever and Holder, playing solo, creates fiery, furious traditional country blues that needs no embellishment other than what he can provide. And he can provide a hell of a lot: Making a big noise to match his ample frame with a steel guitar, harmonica, and stompboxes, Holder plays like he's wrestling with the devil for the thrill of it. He knows and clearly loves the old blues canon, slamming out terrific covers of tunes by Robert Johnson and Blind Willie Johnson, not to mention a scorching take on Johnny Cash's "Delia's Gone." His latest disc, Fry Pharmacy, was produced by Deep Blues fest organizer Chris Johnson, and keeps things raw and simple—one-take recordings of songs he's been perfecting on Nashville street corners. Here he is on a killer version of Robert Johnson's "Possession": 

There’s no instrument as closely tied to pre-WWII country blues as the distinctively twangy National steel guitar, which not only was loud enough to be heard above the juke-joint crowds in the days before amplification, but could also (according to legend) stop a bullet in case the crowd turned ugly. The latter quality isn’t such an issue anymore, but the sound of a master fingerpicker on a resonator is still something special. Local guitarist Steve Kaul has a way with the instrument, and his trio Brass Kings plays the old-time angle further with the addition of washtub bass and washboard. (No, they won’t do your laundry after the show.) On their 2006 self-titled disc and last year's Washboard Rope Guitar, the trio plays world-weary blues that pays homage to classics like Jimmie Rodgers’ “Muleskinner’s Blues” and keeps up the pace with Kaul-penned originals inspired by the grittier side of street life.

Local quartet A Night In The Box plays a blend of American genres—rock, blues, folk, bluegrass, gospel, country—with ferocious energy. A trio on their rollicking 2006 debut The Hustle, The Prayer, The Thief, they broadened their sound with the addition of violinist Kailyn Spencer on last year’s Write A Letter.

Quillan Roe first made his name in the Twin Cities music scene in the mid-’90s as lead singer of Accident Clearinghouse, a group that played straight-up old-school country music long before it was safe to take the prefix “alt” off the genre and explore traditional sounds again. These days, he fronts Roe Family Singers with his wife Kim. The Singers deal in backwoods-style country on banjo, autoharp, and saw that’s both invitingly sweet and a bit eerie—the more so when the excellent new The Earth And All That Is In It turns topics like cocaine addiction and being torn apart by starving wolves. Fans of The Handsome Family should take note.

Also of note: Australia's The Kirk Special One-Man Band and Italy's Dirty Trainload, playing Friday afternoon, were both covered in Wednesday's roundup.