The Mississippi River doesn’t run past Paul Cowley’s granite barn in the rolling French countryside but his acoustic country blues flow deeply there just the same.

When Paul says his love of one of the most basic and beautiful of all blues styles grew out of his life in Birmingham, he’s talking England, not Alabama.

The blues came late. In his early 40s, with his jazz-guitarist uncle’s steel-string guitar, inspired by Lightnin’ Hopkins’ Coffee House Blues album. “It was like flipping a switch,” he says, on hearing Hopkins’ music, and the hard-wiring that had been part of his early trade as a builder now carried the musical currents of the Delta. [read more]

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