| Lewes
Blues Festival to debut By Bruce Pringle Delaware Beachcomber |
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Tom Larsen may have learned to love the blues by listening to the
early-20th-century musicians, such as Blind Lemon Jefferson and Robert
Johnson, who pioneered the genre. But he learned to make a living
in the blues by mixing traditional and more recent blues styles with
generous dollops of decidedly non-blues elements.
“I tried to work out a way to play blues music, but for people who don’t know blues,” he said last week.
“I’ve never played the blues straight. I’ve always spiced it up with rock and, especially, funky stuff.”
Larsen will display this mix in four different performances at various venues during the April 24-27 Lewes Blues Festival.
The combination of music styles seems to have worked for Larsen’s audiences, whose enthusiasm has kept the band
busy for 24 years. Larsen, an Eastern Shore native who combines a swaggering voice with an explosive guitar style, has
led a succession of flamboyant bassists and aggressive drummers up and down the Delmarva Peninsula and into neighboring
states.
He has recorded nine albums on his own labels, played some of the nation’s better-known blues festivals and authored an
album track, “Lookin’ for Trouble,” by another audacious singer-guitarist, Johnny Winter. But he keeps getting busted by the “blues police,” his term for music writers who accuse him of polluting the blues by
rocking too outrageously. A national blues magazine dismissed his playing on an early album as “over the top.” A regional
blues publication, he said, referred to his band’s performance at a Washington, D.C.-area festival last summer as
“heavy-metal blues.” Now, though, he’s getting even. His new album of self-penned tunes, “Wrong Side of tha Blues,”
taunts such detractors: So you read a few books and buy some CDs I guess that makes you an expert with a blues degree. There’s just one thing
that the books don’t tell you ‘bout: That I lead the life that you just read about. Not surprisingly, the song is called “Blues Police” and its melody packs a punch to which Larsen loyalists are accustomed, as
does much of “Wrong Side of tha Blues.” (The CD is available at www.tomlarsenband.com and will be sold at Larsen’s shows during this weekend’s Lewes Blues
Festival, a loosely organized collection of performances in bars and restaurants by local and regional acts.) But some of “Wrong Side” not only is likely to keep Larsen on the wrong side of certain critics; it also might annoy
certain of his fans. Any Larsen diehards who ever declared “I can’t stand rap and hip-hop” should be forewarned that their hero’s new
CD reveals that he doesn’t share that sentiment. One cut in particular, “Got Your Back,” could prompt some hard-core
rap-haters to reach for the “delete” button when they program “Wrong Side.” Larsen, though, describes the departure as just another phase in his ongoing effort to flavor the blues. “It reflects that
it’s now 2003, not ‘93 or ‘83,” he said. “With the hip-hop stuff, there’s a lot of new rhythms.” If you think Dr. Dre, Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls — rappers he acknowledges as influences — are blasphemously far
from blues tradition, you may be missing what Larsen hears. He likens those artists to Muddy Waters. From Muddy to Nelly, he said, “I hear the same basic attitude running through this stuff. How would I describe that
attitude? Truculent. One word: truculent. Everybody can get out their Merriam-Webster's and look that up.” “Fierce,” “cruel” and “aggressively hostile” are among dictionaries’ definitions of “truculent.” None of those descriptions, though, applies to another “Wrong Side” departure from the Larsen norm. “Lazy Sunday” has Larsen, bassist Charles Calloway and drummer Mark Vance setting aside their usual
house rocking for
four minutes, 35 seconds of mellow rhythm and blues. Larsen said “Lazy Sunday” was inspired by a day spent with a
female friend with whom he relaxed to tunes by the likes of Al Green and Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes. The song might fit seamlessly into the repertoire of a smooth soul-blues vocalist like Johnny Rawls, a regular at Sydney’s
Blues and Jazz Restaurant in Rehoboth Beach. Rawls is a favorite among some of the world’s most prominent blues critics.
“Lazy Sunday” is one Larsen song that could make the blues police put away their guns. |
