Jim White, Blues Roadhouse

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It’s been a while since I heard a Paul Cowley album, so it was a real pleasure to receive a copy of Stroll Out West, his new album due for release in February 2023. Paul Cowley is my kind of blues player: respecting his sources but not a slavish copyist, a guitar stylist whose accompaniment serves the song rather than vice versa, owner of a vocal style that combines country blues feel with a slightly Mark Knopfler-ish folk sensibility, and a writer of songs that sit very comfortably in the company of the classic blues tracks on this album. Paul’s guitar, slide guitar and vocals are augmented on many tracks by Pascal Ferrari on various instruments including bass, percussion and electric guitar.

Here’s the track list.

1. ‘My Kinda Girl’ (Cowley) is an easy-going, easy on the ear 12-bar, underpinned by a walking bass line and light percussion, with some tasty guitar fills.
2. Dropped D tuning gives ‘On My Way’ (Cowley) a more modal but no less bluesy feel, with unobtrusively layered guitars. I might be tempted to learn this one myself.
3. ‘Nosey’ (Cowley) has a sprightly old-timey feel that reminded me a little of Fiddlin’ John Carson or Charlie Poole. Nice.
4. ‘World Gone Crazy’ (Cowley) is a long meditation on “mankind’s continued sleepwalk into its own demise!” Not as depressing as it sounds, and in any case no one said that a blues song couldn’t address contemporary issues.
5. ‘Special Rider Blues’ – while this is recognizably the Skip James classic, Paul puts his own stamp on it by taking it much lower (both on guitar and vocal, breaking up the rhythm and inserting some slide. It’s a very effective interpretation.
6. ‘Tracks Of My Tears’, Smokey Robinson’s song for the Miracles (co-credited to fellow band-members Marv Taplin and Warren “Pete” Moore), is a surprising but not unwelcome addition to the track list, even if, as Paul says, it “stretches the credibility of a bluesman”. It really works rather well this way, and after all, no one complained when Buddy Guy recorded ‘Money’…
7. ‘Songs Of Love’ (Cowley) picks up the pace and the mood nicely. Since Paul credits Jim Crawford as having inspired this song, it seems appropriate to link below to a live performance by the two of them together.
8. ‘Life Is Short’ is another of Paul’s songs, a gentle, sensitive reminder of “just how fleeting and precious life is.”
9. ‘Stagerlee’ – also known by the names ‘Stagolee’, ‘Stack Lee’ and other variations, is based on a real killing in St. Louis in 1895. Paul’s version is essentially his arrangement of a version recorded by Mississippi John Hurt: he takes it a little slower and sparser than Hurt’s 1928 recording, with a more consistent alternating bass, but all that does this version no harm at all. In fact, his vocal here is quite reminiscent of Hurt’s characteristically smooth vocalizing, perhaps with more light and shade. While I’ve always sung a quite different version learned from a 60s recording by John the Fish (whom we lost just a few days before I received this album, sadly), I’m very glad to have come across this version again. Nice job, Paul.
10. ‘Whatever It Takes’ is the last of Paul’s songs on this album: Pascal Ferrari’s bass and square-on-the-beat percussion give this a little of the feel of early Chicago blues, which is fine by me.
11. ‘Catfish Blues’ – while little known of Robert Petway, his seminal version of this song provides the title for this album. While this version preserves some of the hypnotically repetitive guitar feel of Petway’s recording, slide and a hint of electric guitar give it more of the ambience of the Muddy Waters classic ‘Rollin’ Stone’, actually derived from ‘Catfish Blues’. I could cheerfully hear more in this vein.
12. ‘Preachin’ Blues’ (also known as ‘Up Jumped The Devil’) apparently nearly didn’t make the album. I’m glad it did, not only because Paul certainly does it justice, but also because there just aren’t enough versions of Robert Johnson’s songs enough in the world, and the eerie lyric of this one deserves to be heard.

Once again, Paul Cowley has dipped into the waters of the Mississippi and emerged with a satisfying blend of classic country blues and his own songs that is uniquely his own.

David Harley, Folking.com

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As the blues sounds of the Delta and the Deep South emanate and sink into your soul from Stroll Out West, you’d be hard pressed to know that Paul Cowley is an Englishman living in the heart of the French countryside.

In this, his fifth album, Cowley digs deep into classic acoustic blues territory with songs by Robert Petway, Mississippi John Hurt, Skip James, and, of course, Robert Johnson. The rest of the twelve-song set, bar one are Cowley originals, but you’d be hard pressed at times knowing they didn’t come from some obscure part of the history of the blues. Paul Cowley’s  drink from the deep well of the blues has been long and full, and this rich potion flavours each of the original songs.

These are not, however, stuck in the past. Although we get songs with the typical blues subject matter or lost love, Cowley laments the current state of the world in World Gone Crazy and meditates on the fleeting nature of life in Life is Short, a tribute to his father.

There’s humour too, in Nosey, a jaunty and mischievous song about a neighbour, which beautifully captures the spirit of John Hurt. These are strong songs, all catching the acoustic blues vibe, and all beautifully arranged.

Multi-instrumentalist Pascal Ferrari was an important contributor to the album, again working with Paul on the mixing and mastering, and he contributed to several tracks with drums, guitars and a few other instruments.

The album, as have the previous six (go check them out – you can find reviews and interviews with Paul here at Down at the Crossroads), features Cowley’s outstanding guitar picking and tasteful slide guitar work. As well as that treat, Cowley’s voice, deep gravelly, expressive, perfectly matches the feel of the songs.

Previous albums have featured just Paul and his guitars. Here, with Ferrari’s help we get a number of songs more fully orchestrated. Songs of Love is a good example, where Cowley’s opening acoustic guitar riff is joined by drums and a colourful bass backing. This very satisfying song, dedicated to Jim Crawford, a very fine guitarist and singer, also sees Cowley work his magic with some tasty slide guitar.

It’s always a pleasure to find a Mississippi John Hurt song on an album. Cowley chose Stagerlee, a song about a barroom fight in St. Louis, which has become something of a standard and has been recorded by just about everybody. Cowley brings his own nuances to the song, however, and his occasional non-singing, growling of the lyrics works a treat.

The album’s title is taken from Robert Petway’s Catfish Blues, reflecting Cowley’s westward orientation with his music. Cowley takes it at a slower pace than Petway’s original, finger-picking a solid groove on his resonator over his gnarly vocals.

Robert Johnson famously told us “the blues, is a low-down shakin’ chill,” it’s an “achin’ old heart disease” and Cowley closes the album with the song that contain these classic lyrics. Cowley, sensibly, does not try to out-Johnson Johnson on Preachin’ Blues, but gives his own sound, rooted in the past, but clearly that of an able and modern exponent of the blues.

This song, apparently, nearly didn’t make the cut, but it’s an admirable way to finish the album. At 52 minutes, it’s great value for money, it’s hugely enjoyable, and if you like acoustic blues, this is one you must listen to.

Down At The Crossroads

 

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I’m a big fan of old acoustic country blues. So when an email came into the Roadhouse recently asking if I was interested in a new album of exactly that, I couldn’t turn it down. I’m glad I didn’t.

The offer came from Paul Cowley, an Englishman living in France who just happens to have an uncanny talent for writing and performing one of the most basic and beautiful of all blues styles. Add to that a sense of traditional folk music, throw in some Americana, and you have his unique approach.

So I’ve been listening with great pleasure to the album, his sixth, titled Long Time Comin’. And then you learn that he didn’t really have much of a musical life until he was in his early 40s, when he was given an old Yamaha steel string guitar,

Since then, he has spent about 20 years since perfecting his unusual craft, and it makes his music an impressive accomplishment.

It’s even more impressive when you hear how he has created his own songs. It’s one thing to learn to play the music of others (and do it this well), but it’s a completely different level to be able to write the lyrics and music in the same spirit. Cowley makes it all sound easy.

That isn’t to say his music sounds old-fashioned or out of date. There’s a lyrical sophistication here, which, when coupled with his elegant guitar work, weaves a tapestry of highly personal, contemporary acoustic blues.

This new album is just Cowley on guitar (plus some percussion), six finely crafted originals and five great old tunes — Blind Boy Fuller (Lost Lover Blues), Charlie Patton (Screamin’ and Hollerin’ the Blues), Mississippi John Hurt (Louis Collins), Ray Charles (Confession Blues) and Blind Willie McTell (Love Changin’ Blues)

As he sings on the title track, “I got my mojo, I found my voice, I’m singin’ the blues…”

And it certainly sounds as though he has. As he told Gary Burnett of the blog Down at the Crossroads, “I’m most pleased this time, because this time in the recording process I found a new level of certainty. So yeah, long time coming, I do feel I’ve got my mojo and my voice and I’m happy!”

Jim White, bluesroundhouse.com

 

Long Time Comin’ – but more than worth it

Paul Cowley upends everything you might expect of an acoustic country bluesman. He’s never been to Mississippi and says he has no desire to go; he’s a white English guy living in the French countryside; he heard the blues for the first time when he was about 40; and he started playing the guitar late in life because an uncle had left him on in his will.

And yet… Paul Cowley is an outstanding musician, a fine guitarist, has a deep appreciation for the acoustic blues tradition and has become an outstanding exponent of that tradition, whether it’s re-interpreting songs from the past or writing his own.

He has five albums behind him and we thought his 2018 Just What I Know was outstanding. He has now released Long Time Comin‘, with twelve acoustic blues songs, five traditional songs from the likes of Charlie Patton, Blind Boy Fuller and Blind Willie McTell and seven originals. This one’s even better.

I review a lot of albums, some of which I like, some not really so much, some of it very worthy, great musicianship, maybe important lyrically – but it’s always good to listen to something that is just…well…enjoyable. And that’s what you’ll find with Long Time Comin’.

I got talking to Paul in his home in Brittany about his music. I asked him first of all about the album’s title – in the title track he sings, “I’ve got my mojo, I’ve found my voice.”

“Yeah,” he replied, “For many years I’ve questioned what I do, how I sing, how I play. Should I do something different? But over more than a 20-year period I’ve now arrived at this point with age, wisdom and all the rest of it. And actually, it’s just me being me, and I can’t do any more than that really. I’ve always wanted to be authentically me. I don’t want to study John Lee Hooker for ten years and become a fantastic interpreter of John Lee Hooker. I’ve done what I do long enough that I have my own unique style and take on this music. So over a period of time, it’s become a sort of definite style. The songs I write, you can recognize it’s me.

“But I’m most pleased this time, because this time in the recording process I found a new level of certainty. So yeah, long time coming, I do feel I’ve got my mojo and my voice and I’m happy!”

Paul is the most refreshingly unassuming professional musician you could meet, but I put it to him that what he does in taking a traditional song that everybody knows, like Louis Collins, which appears on the album, and reinterpreting it, not playing note for note John Hurt’s version, say, seems to me, takes quite a bit of skill and ability.

“When I begin with a song, I almost always start trying to play the original, the “proper” way, but it’s never right. So, somehow it kind of gets massaged and changed and I think, well, it’s nothing like Mississippi John Hurt anymore, but it feels right for me. I’m not a technical musician, it’s all by feel and instinct. But over the years, there’s a bit of experience built up as to how one can flesh out a very simple arrangement. If you can move the chords up and down the neck, you get these different dynamics, I’m never stopped learning. I’m more interested now than ever in learning things that can just expand my options.”

In Cowley’s hands Louis Collins isn’t the rather jaunty version you often hear, which maybe doesn’t do justice to the song’s terrible story. He slows it down and adds some very cool slide guitar, and it becomes, fittingly, a bit more sombre, but at the same time, it never gets morbid. It’s a great version.

There are a half a dozen Paul Cowley originals on this album. As with all the songs, it’s mostly Paul singing and accompanying himself, picking acoustic guitar and adding some delicious and judicious slide here and there. I asked him about the song writing process.

“The first album I recorded here in France was a hundred percent original songs. I don’t have a problem coming up with original songs, and I love the album and I’m proud of the songs, but I think my audience likes a little bit of something they recognize as well.

“But the song writing process – I’ve got a studio across the yard in the barn upstairs. I never think I’ll go and write a song. I play guitar generally speaking, twice a day, couple of hours in the morning, a couple of hours in the evening. And almost without fail, I will find something on one of the guitars, just a simple phrase, two notes or two chords or some chords other people don’t tend to use, but there’ll be a feel or a timing to it. I do that frequently and often it goes no further than that. But sometimes I come up with that little phrase or whatever it might be, maybe three words that suggest the lyrical subject or topic, and that’s how they come. I can’t predict when that will happen, but when it does happen, very rapidly the song comes together.

“With the guitar part, that hook thing or whatever it was, there’ll be this period of embellishment, maybe I play it for two years and a few more bits and bobs come in, so songs are constantly changing and evolving. So – simple!”

One thing you’ll notice when you listen to the album, is the sound quality. It sounds like Paul is sitting right in your living room playing for you. It’s crystal clear and the instruments and vocals are perfectly balanced. On the album liner notes. Cowley says that, although he recorded the album in his barn/studio, he’s “low tech.” Yet the sound on the album is superb.

“Well, my background is I’m a builder, so there’s a little bit of understanding of buildings and shapes and materials. I’ve got this studio over in the barn upstairs with sloping ceilings, oak rafters, beams, chestnut flooring – all cobbled together from materials left over from renovating the house. Think of the Robert Johnson thing where he turned his back and played into a corner. and the sound was remarkable.

“I’m comfortable here at home, fleshing out these ideas on my own, nobody around me. If I was in a studio, however nice the engineer might be, I’d be wanting to play the song again and again because I’m not quite sure whether that was the right take. And he’s looking at the wall. I don’t like any of that.

“But the stroke of luck that I’ve had is called Pascal Ferrari. He’s a musician from Marseille, really high calibre. He’s a guitarist, a bass player, and he’ll pick a trumpet up. His musicality is quite remarkable. I met him five years ago, and we’ve done some gigs together and he’s fantastic in the studio. So I did the recording here straight, no effects whatsoever, into a fairly dated Korg mini recording machine. And then I physically carried that across Brittany to Pascal’s house. He then, transferred this into his computer and he’s a really very talented mixer. And then he sends that to his friend and they listen to it on some big, serious equipment, and tweak it from there. So I feel very fortunate that I’ve stumbled across Pascal!”

It’s pretty unusual to find a traditional blues picker living in the French countryside, instead of in a big city or somewhere in the Southern United States. I wondered how that worked for Paul in terms of performing his music – granted that the last year has been more than a bit unusual. He told me how he’d been building up his gigs across France and then popping back to the UK for small tours – and along the way discovering that French hospitality for the traveling musician is so much better than what he often gets in England.

I wondered also what attracts Paul to this traditional country blues music. Here he is, an English white guy based in the French countryside playing the blues of African-Americans from a hundred years ago – it all sounds a bit unlikely. But perhaps it says a lot about the universal appeal of the blues. Paul began to tell me about his own journey.

“I discovered this music relatively late in life. I’d had a few Spanish guitar lessons in my early teens and I love the sound of an acoustic guitar. But my teacher didn’t inspire me and I stopped playing music for 20 years. I became a self-employed builder, but I never stopped listening to music. But when I was 40 my wife Diana bought me for my father’s day present from the kids, Clapton’s Unplugged. And I remember, I was decorating the room and I put the CD on and Signe and Before You Accuse Me came on and it was instantly like, “What’s this?” And there was this lush interpretation of Walking Blues, just a beautiful sound and Clapton’s softer kind of vocal style and I thought, this is marvellous! And then I thought, well, I wonder who is that Big Bill Broonzy bloke that does the song. Hey, Hey? Well, I looked into that, and it was a delight.

“And then I was given a guitar. My uncle died. I probably wouldn’t have bothered to go out and buy one, but I got this steel string guitar. And I got a very basic blues tutorial book with the tab and I thought, I can play this – it wasn’t fantastic but it was delightful to me. And I’ve never looked back.

“The Clapton album made me want to get some proper old blues to listen to. So one Saturday I went into Cobb Records – an old-fashioned record shop – to the blues section, maybe 20 CDs in all, if that. And I leafed through and I didn’t know any of those names at all, but on the one towards the front, there was this picture of a very cool looking black guy, hat on, guitar in hand, looking exactly like what I expected a blues player to look like, and he was Lightnin’ Hopkins.

“Coffee House Blues was the album and we put this on in the car on the way home and played it for two years. He’s important to me because it was him that got me into this…fantastic voice, proper steel string, acoustic guitar. I just love that and still do to this day.”

Paul has worked hard at honing his guitar chops over the years and explained that one formative stage in his development as a guitarist came at a Woody Mann workshop he attended in Liverpool.

“Woody Mann gave us a general philosophy about how to go about getting better. He talked about keeping the repertoire relatively small but well played, and effective use of your time. And because I went home on the train alone, I made all these notes of the key points. You don’t get good at anything without applying yourself hard to it. And to this day, I’ll get up, I have breakfast and I go and play for maybe two hours. I try and pick the guitar up again during the day for a few minutes. And then I’ll play a couple of hours in the evening, But that’s nothing compared with some guys – we had Steve James staying here, and he plays six hours a day – for the past 50 years!”

To start with, Paul never thought he’d perform publicly, but from first steps playing in the round with friends at his local blues club back in Birmingham, he’s developed into a fine acoustic blues artist and song-writer with serious guitar chops. Ever self-deprecating, he told me, “I’m quite surprised that I do it, but I love it!”

As well as Paul’s own songs, Long Time Comin‘ has songs by Blind Boy Fuller, Mississippi John Hurt, Charlie Patton, Blind Willie McTell and Ray Charles. But I wondered if Paul has any artists that he’s particularly fond of?

“I love Lightnin Hopkins. I find Mississippi John Hurt songs come into your repertoire, whether you want them to or not. His music is so playable, they’re great songs and I love his music. I like Blind Willie McTell, I’d like to do more of his. A long time ago I heard his Love Changing Blues on the radio played by John Hammond and I never in my wildest dreams when I took my sandwich that lunchtime listening to that, thought that one day I’ll be able to play that kind of stuff! And I love Fred McDowell’s stuff – there’s just something about him.”

It’s fair to say that Paul Cowley’s been smitten with the blues. And if you get yourself a copy of his Long Time Comin’, you will be too. This album is one of the best acoustic blues albums you’ll hear this year – check it out www.paulcowleymusic.com or Bandcamp.

And if you’re in Southern Brittany sometime when this pandemic has passed us by, listen out for the sounds of the Delta where you least expect it.

Down At The Crossroads

 

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