On
Lost & Found, his debut album on
Delta Groove Records (an earlier demo-styled cassette release,
Long on Blues, was released independently in 1999),
John Long has stunningly re-created the sound of a pre-war
country blues player, right down to the little
Tommy Johnson-like upward vocal swoops he takes at the end of phrases. What sets
Long aside from simply creating an elaborate facsimile of the style, however, is that the songs he does are not ancient
Delta pieces, but originals written by himself and his brother
Claude Long, each one done in the template of an old
blues 78 from the 1920s or 1930s. The obvious question, though, is why bother making this kind of music in the 21st century when there is easy access to digital renderings of those original 78s? The answer is simple. You have to love the music enough to want to live inside it and use it for a personal means of expression, and you have to respect it enough to stay inside the framework, right down to the least slide slur on the guitar. All of this
Long does, and he doesn't attempt any kind of postmodern update of the
country blues, which, ironically, makes what he does all the more postmodern, since by changing little,
Long makes the style sound almost radically new.
Long doesn't sample the old
country blues; he inhabits it, which is why he isn't a revisionist in any shape or form. Yes, he's derivative, but so was
Robert Johnson and everyone else who has ever played the
blues, because the
blues demands it. The
blues demands you take what has already been done and said and put your own personal spin on it, but by the same stead, you have to work between the lines, because the
blues is an incredibly conservative form. Break the pattern and it isn't the
blues anymore. That's why so many of the songs here sound familiar. They're drawn from familiar templates. That's also what makes these songs work, because while sounding familiar, they're also eerily fresh, as well. It's a difficult walk to pull off, to sound like something from the past in the present, knowing full well the future is going to sweep it all up together soon enough. Lost and found, indeed. Highlights include the opening track,
"Hokum Town," the acoustic funky
"Pressure Cooker ('Bout to Blow)," the moving
"Healin' Touch," and the piano version of
"Leavin' St. Louis" that closes out the set. ~ Steve Leggett
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