Brint Anderson is a contemporary blues player with his feet firmly planted in the rich blues of the Delta mud and Notes from Clarksdale is a bold excursion back to the basics. He is no imposter…Mississippi is his land too (he hails originally from Natchez) and this influence percolates under all his playing, from funk to rock. As with his first release, Homage to Elmore, he again walks down to that lonesome crossroads where Highway 61 meets 49, and pays loving homage to the Delta blues masters who gave America so much music.
“Frankly, I’m tired of all-electric blues,” said the eight-year New Orleans resident. “I wanted to create more of an acoustic, Delta blues sound. Clarksdale’s the cradle of that music and there’s no better place to throw a party than [at] Hopson.”
The CD was recorded live in the commissary at Hopson’s Planting Company just outside Clarksdale, Mississippi on November 4, 1998. Sprinkled among his original compositions are inventive covers of diverse classics by Mississippi musicians such as Mose Allison’s “Everybody’s Crying Mercy,” Robert Johnson’s “Last Fair Deal Gone Down,” Muddy Waters’ “Canary Bird,” and a spine-tingling rendering of Son House’s “Death Letter Blues.” His originals are equally powerful. His affectionate paean to the place where he recorded the CD celebrates the ambience of and the characters who populate it in “Hopson.” “Mess and A Half,” his tribute to wife Liz, is no mushy love song. It is instead a realistic take on the wisdom of accepting (with humor) our human eccentricities and craziness—an absolute necessity in a real relationship. The beautifully told story of the loss of his father at a very young age makes “Four Year-Old’s Blues” one of Anderson’s most intimate song-portraits. His talent for nuance and dramatic storytelling is used particularly well here when singing the line, “…and still this child was happy, unsuspecting that my daddy….” Instead of singing the unspeakable thought, he uses the traditional blues call and response technique often employed by Son House and other delta bluesmen and lets the slide on the strings finish the line.
Anderson’s soulful and unaffected voice uncannily evokes the spectre of the dead Delta troubadours while his extraordinary guitar playing alternates between hot on fire, light as a feather, and painfully deep. His playing is colored equally by Hendrix and Stevie Ray as it is by Elmore, Son House and Robert Johnson. Anderson also knows to surround himself with the best and most complementary musicians and John Fohl’s accompaniment on dobro is sensitive and adds to the authenticity of the sound. Fohl also contributes his songwriting and singing talents on “Blame It On Cain.” Jeffrey Alexander and Jim Markway, also from New Orleans, admirably hold down the beat and the bottom respectively on drums and acoustic double bass.
Anderson’s CD release party for Notes from Clarksdale took place at Hopson’s on April 22, 2000. Brint brought John Fohl with him and New Orleans stalwarts Jimmy Messa on bass and Mike Barras on drums. The band deftly handled material off all three of Anderson’s releases (the second was I Knew This Would Happen, also on Toulouse) while the crowd drank beer, ate grilled butt and sausage, and audibly appreciated the great music. Hopson’s Planting Company is one of the few pieces of real Delta history and culture left intact in the area. There’s a real symmetry between Notes from Clarksdale and Hopson’s…when you listen to Anderson’s music, past and present merge and you realize on one level that the inner human condition really hasn’t changed all that much. In spite of all the speed, technology, money, and power, emotion and grace remain the same.
