Seasick Steve review - I Started Out With Nothin' and I Still Got Most of It Left

The blues in Britain has always been derivative. It was appropriated mercilessly in the 60s of course by the likes of the Rolling Stones and Cream, but the innovations of those artists took the music sideways into the kinds of rock stylings that spawned Led Zeppelin and 'eavy metal.

Even the most 'authentic' (whatever that slippery word is supposed to mean) of the British blues artists, such as John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, although capturing reasonably accurately the sound of indigenous American blues, missed out on the penumbra of the music, the undercurrent of feeling and experience given by the culture from which it came. London is not Chicago or the Mississippi delta; imitation is not immersion, it is at best respectful homage.

Inevitably, perhaps, the blues scene in America itself seemed to follow a similar trajectory, at least the parts of it that lapped up on these shores. Electric blues was an innovation in the genre, but it was intimately tied to the great social upheavals of the 30s, and as the music became more distant from those seismic events, it departed from the tradition or simply repeated it. The upheavals of later decades created funk, soul, acid rock; Chicago is to the blues today what New Orleans is (or until recently was) for jazz - museum and theme park, still vibrant and alive, but too concerned with, too respectful of, the expectations of the cultural tourist to take the music forward.

Which is why Seasick Steve is such a joy. Unconcerned with the dictates of the blues police (self-appointed guardians of the flame), playing for kids who have never heard of Son House and only care whether the music rocks, he is free to play the blues in a way which should expunge forever the memories of dreary Sunday afternoon pub blues bands or Robert Cray.

Let's be clear - in any terms, 'I Started Out With Nothin' And I Still Got Most Of It Left' is fantastic (the opener "Started Out With Nothing" and "Thunderbird" rock like hell; "Walking Man" doesn't rock, it lilts and breaks your heart); in blues terms, it is a great, glorious anomaly - recorded in Norfolk, featuring Nick Cave and Grinderman as guest artists, it is both rooted in the tradition and subversive of it. His guitar lines recall Taj Mahal, John Lee Hooker, even on "Prospect Lane" JJ Cale, his vocals veer close on occasion to Beefheart and Howlin' Wolf, without ever being anyone else but Seasick Steve.

The songs are new and fresh, narrative gems, deeply personal yet universal, howls or whispers of joy and despair, and although they are always blues songs (the least successful song on the CD to my mind, "Just Like a King", is the song that strays the furthest from the blues structure), they are as far from the woke-up-this-morning, last-refuge-of-the-uninspired-musician 12-bar jam as it is possible to get.

The production is fantastic too. We hear Steve introduce the songs, we hear the creaking of the chair as he leans back, the fingers on the strings, he admits on the intro to "Chiggers" that he ought to have got rid of the guitar he is playing years ago; in short, we are in the room with the musicians, listening to them do their thing, the production values so appropriate as to be invisible. It is good to know that a major label can still recognise when to butt out and let an artist be themselves.

Beefheart took the blues and produced psychedelic nightmares; the Rolling Stones took the blues and produced raucous pop; Robert Cray took the blues and should have given it back; Seasick Steve takes the blues and produces the blues. Rock on.

Track Listings:

1. Started Out With Nothing
2. Walking Man
3. St Louis Slim
4. Happy Man
5. Prospect Lane
6. Thunderbird
7. Fly By Night
8. Just Like A King
9. One True
10. Chiggers
11. My Youth

Set for UK release 29 September 2008 on Warner Bros. Records.

I Started Out With Nothin' and I Still Got Most of It Left on amazon.co.uk

Seasick Steve - amazon.com

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Seasick Steve Official Website

By: Jim Driscoll

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