Deep Blues video roundup, July 18

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 Saturday's Cabooze lineup, which starts at noon with 34 performers on two stages.

Part of the whole point of the Deep Blues Festival is keeping the connection to the past alive—of course, that's part of the whole point of being a blues fan in general, going back to the days 60 years ago when John and Alan Lomax went around the South recording folk songs that were, even then, ancient. And even now, the best blues musicians, no matter how young or how inspired by newer sounds, are historians of the music. Mississippi record label Fat Possum has done more than almost anyone in the last few years to give aging but still vital bluesmen a spotlight, most prominently with the late R.L. Burnside but also several of this year's Deep Blues performers. Robert Cage grew up playing acoustic country blue in the pre-war style, but went electric after hearing John Lee Hooker in the late 1950s, and fronted his own rock-leaning combo, The Impalas. When that crashed and burned, Cage left full-time music behind, got a job as a mechanic, and played the occasional solo set at parties. Fat Possum recorded a new set of tunes, Can See What You're Doing, in 1998. He'll perform at Deep Blues Festival with another Mississippi vet, drummer Hezekiah Early. Here, Cage talks about his past and plays "Bundle Up And Go":

Early also will perform Saturday with guitarist Elmo Williams, a mainstay for years at clubs in Ferriday, Louisiana, a town most famous for Jerry Lee Lewis. Williams and Early were teamed up by Fat Possum on 1998's It Takes One to Know One, an album of rough-and-ready down-home electric blues; the label also released a 7" single that year featuring Williams on "Gonna Leave," which can be heard below:


CeDell Davis created his unique style of guitar playing out of drastic necessity—partially paralyzed by polio at age 10, he uses a table knife in his left hand to slide over the strings, unable to grip the guitar neck the way another player would. (To make things worse, in 1957, a stampede during a police raid on a club where he was performing left his legs so badly broken that he's been wheelchair-bound since.) His idiosyncratic style uses nonstandard tunings and an unusual sense of timing; his music can sound out of tune, but it's really just following a path that makes its own kind of sense. Blues authority Robert Palmer produced his 1993 solo debut, Feel Like Doin’ Something Wrong, which led to a further spate of recording and touring and recording; in 2002, members of rock bands R.E.M. and Screaming Trees played on his most recent release, 2002’s Lightning Struck The Pine.

Back when Black Diamond Heavies was a trio, the band described its sound as “three gorillas on crank”—though the bluesy Southern rock on 2007’s Every Damn Time and last year’s A Touch Of Someone Else’s Class slows down and smears BDH’s garage-rock tendencies into a simmering, soulful growl indebted to Joe Cocker at his best. In fact, in between fierce pounding sessions, vocalist-keyboardist James Leg and drummer Van Campbell occasionally summon gospel-gothic ballads that prove downright elegant. Both sides of the band’s personality made it click nicely on a run of dates opening for Nick Cave last year.

Spider John Koerner is a tall, lanky legend around the Twin Cities—solo and as part of the trio Koerner, Ray & Glover, he was one of the most important musicians in the early 1960s revival of folk-blues, not to mention an early link in the musical evolution of Bob Dylan. Though Dave Ray died several years ago, Koerner and partner Glover are both still active musicians, and released a duo album, Live @ The 400 Bar, earlier this year.

North Carolina's The Moaners are another fiery guitar-and-drums two-piece (see also: The White Stripes, The Black Keys, The Black Diamond Heavies), though instead of a gruff growl, the band’s music features the sultry rockings of Melissa Swingle, formerly of Trailer Bride. The duo’s most recent album, 2006’s Blackwing Yalobusha, is a crazed, bipolar cacophony of racket-rock; together with drummer Laura King, Swingle makes a pleasing mess that comes across even better live.

Minneapolis octet Chooglin' has a sound that's heavy in more senses than one, considering the band's hefty horn section. Their new album, Sweet Time, came out eaerlier this month on Fat Possum Records' sister label, Big Legal Mess; see The A.V. Club's recent interview with the band for more. Here, they play "Tonight, Alright" on 89.3 The Current's The Local Show:

Also of note: Bluesboy Jag, Bloody Ol' Mule, and Black River Bluesman, playing Saturday afternoon, were covered in Wednesday's roundup.