Concert Review: T-Model Ford at Davey's
Some folks have mantras. And others have mantras.
Baby, look what you get if you don't clown. But if you clownin', you don't get a doggone thing.
This, evidently, is the mantra -- emphasis on the first syllable -- of 89-year-old bluesman T-Model Ford. He uttered some variation of this maxim at the finish of the songs he played during his two-hour set last night at Davey's Uptown Ramblers Club.
Those words represented a good portion of the lyrical/spoken side of T-Model's performance. Grinning under an FBI ballcap and holding his guitar in his lap, T let his hands do most of the talking -- hands that once held a switchblade that put a man in the ground, and, for two years after that, held pickaxe and shovel on a chain gang. James Lewis Carter Ford is the real deal.
You wouldn't know to watch him play and sing, but he didn't take guitar in hand until the age of 58.
Now, with the legend "T-MODEL FORD TALEDRAGGER" emblazoned on the body of his strangely hair-metal-looking Peavy Razor guitar, Ford flicks his fingers across the strings, alchemizing up sharp, jagged and heavy Mississippi Hill Country juke-joint blues that shatter on the dance floor like chunks of auditory shale.
Representative footage:
He didn't sing much. When he did unleash his time-worn croon, it was usually to sing something about loving a woman and the trouble it brings. Though it was hard to discern what exactly he was singing -- i.e., whether he was doing actual songs or just rocking along -- I'm pretty sure he sang "Sallie Mae," "Big Boss Man," a song about seven doctors declaring his infant self lucky on the seventh day, and I know he did his famous "Chicken Head Man."
The rooster is very much alive in T-Model's nearly 90-year-old frame. After his touring drummer, a white guy in his 20s, toasted T's recent 89th birthday, the old blues man announced, "I'm still a ladies man. And that's for God damn sure!" The crowd loved it.
Only about 25-30 people were in attendance, which, of course, chapped my hide, given all the harping that KC Blues Society types do about how Kansas City is a blues town. I don't know, maybe there were a few reps from the KCBS there. I didn't recognize many musicians (there were a few) from the core local blues bands I'm familiar with. Or radio personalities or old rockers etc. What I'm saying is, this show should've been a must-see for serious music fans -- especially considering we gave you ample notice -- but as it was, the crowd, though small, remained completely engaged from T's first call of "Wake up, everybody!" to the last cymbal clash two hours later. They got their money's worth, for damn sure.
They did some drinking, too, and as the night wore on and T-Model and his drummer's beatdown rumbled on, people began to dance. Girls, mostly. There were more women at this show dancing than I've seen at most weeknight indie shows. (Admittedly, that's not saying much.)
Because that's what this is -- dance music. It's that lowdown, percussive, trance-inducing gutbucket stomp they tried so desperately to recreate in Black Snake Moan. But this night wasn't some chintzy, dressed-up, slow-motion Hollywood clownin'. This was a few dozen comfortable, young, inexperienced, stupid, naive, innocent, technology-added, not-soulful, mostly white people getting a glimpse of something old and real and deep, and, only by the grace of T-Model Ford, getting to revel in it for a night.
For an idea of what it would be like taking to the road with T-Model Ford, read this arresting and moving blog entry. It was written by a member of the band Gravel Road, which has been backing T-Model on the road since last June.
I'm not sure if the blog's author is the drummer who was there last night, but it probably is. The young man, apart from being attuned to every nuance communicated by T's guitar (how the drummer knew when songs were supposed to end was downright mystifying, but he did), was also clearly a devoted fan and, in a sense, servant to the old man. "We'd all be lucky to be doing so well at 89," the kid said.
Or, for that matter, at any age.
1 comment(s) / Post a Comment
