Sophie Gault – Merlot Dodge Dart
Have you ever lived next door to a great blues guitar player, and did you ever hear them howling out songs during the night? I sincerely doubt that. And, have you ever been asked to visit the house of a great musician whom you’d met because you were both employed at the same firm? If you claim that you did, I’d have to say that I find the story very unrealistic.
I’m not here to suggest that, like the old folk tales, blues musicians merely awake at midnight and take their supper at the crossroads in the presence of the Devil. However, at their best, the blues musicians sound as if they’re singing of a world that they see merely as shadows. They understand exactly what’s going on, but just can’t reach out to touch it. And Sophie Gault’s songs capture some of those ghostly qualities.
The blues-rock penned and performed by Sophie Gault sound like memories of worlds that the artist didn’t inhabit for long before deciding to skip town some night. “Merlot Dodge Dart,” a title cleverly inspired by one of Townes Earl’s greatest times, feels like the music that follows a swift escape, the decision made after a few too many glasses of wine. It’s a blues about feeling forced to choose freedom over commitment every time.
Robert Connely Farr – New Land Blues
Less can be more, and, in the case of pure blues music, less can be devastatingly too much if the right emotions are part of the sound. And, in many ways, therein lies the problem and the potential of this kind of music.
It’s no coincidence that many modern genres are directly sprung from the old American blues, or that the art itself is rooted centuries back. Perhaps that is the reason why soulfulness and the ability to express doubts, melancholy and sadness are, typically, the things that set up a great blues musician from just another hack.
Robert Connely Farr doesn’t just play the blues. He knows that’s not enough. After all, across this great, big world, there are millions of guitarists jamming endlessly on blues scales and rarely getting anywhere.
In fact, Farr doesn’t even need the sound of the electric guitar or a full band accompaniment anymore. No, the performer is confident enough in the truth behind his music that “New Land Blues” is sparse, cold, and its highlights lie hidden in between the silences. But you can almost hear them, almost touch them. They’re there! They can’t be expressed merely through sounds or musical notation. It’s in the sorrow that the blues man can carry with themself through song.
