T-MODEL FORD (USA)

While his contemporaries have been content to mill around nursing homes awaiting death, the 78-year-old James “T-Model” Ford, no stranger to adversity, has been working like a fiend-- and it is paying off. The tentacles of Mr. Ford’s influence reach way beyond that of his hometown, Greenville, Mississippi.

James “T-Model” Ford cannot read these notes. He has been shot, stabbed, and poisoned. His ankles wear the ragged scars of chain gang shackles. He learned the hard way.

Rhythmically joined at the hip with drummer Spam, he plays the north Mississippi hill country hypnotic boogie-groove like nobody else on earth. His music is not a complaint of self-pity, but a celebration of life. He moves you to rejoice with him, not sympathize with some pitiful condition of lost love or injustice. Not a relic of the past or a remnant of vanishing culture, T-Model Ford and Spam are in the moment like few other blues artists. Out on the edge of the cliff where most fall to the rocks below, T-Model Ford takes off and flies - the existential hero. He drops beats. He adds phrases - unfettered by twelve bars or AAB. He pays tribute to the greats - Muddy, Hooker, Lightnin’, and Wolf, but beyond pure tradition he has been influenced by what he hears in the chaos of today, as if the great Jimmy Reed were playing with Ornette Coleman. In violation of conservative form, he erases the bar lines and plays every note like a new down beat - no rigid four, no neo-African polyrhythmic syncopation. It’s straight ahead stomp, the endless boogie, a deep furrow stubbornly plowed through the black dirt.

So lace up your boots, put some gin in your glass, and get ready for a good time. In the immortal words of Howlin’ Wolf, “Everybody digs it when it’s in the groove.”

 | Thursday Harry's 22.00 |