It’s
very interesting because every interview I do starts out like this,” says Steve James, “with an
extensive discussion of Mississippi John Hurt. If I was a sax player in an
R&B band, would the discussion of my playing start with Frankie Trumbauer
or Coleman Hawkins? No, those guys never get asked about that stuff, even
though their playing is as basic to the creative style that they’re involved in
as Mississippi John Hurt is to mine, but for some reason, people are absolutely
fascinated by Mississippi John Hurt.”
To aficionados of fingerstyle acoustic steel string guitar in particular, and
the vibrant guts of what has come to be called American “roots” music in
general, New York native and Austin resident James is a rather fascinating
character himself. Over the course of three albums, the recently released
Art and Grit and its two wonderful predecessors, 1993’s Two Track
Mind and 1994’s American Primitive, James has staked an impressively
large claim to the legacy of Hurt and other pioneers, sustaining glories of the
past which have so often been neglected outside the cultures of their initial
creation.
Fortunately, records preserve a substantial, if hardly comprehensive, part of
this musical legacy and a discernible process of “rediscovery” and a
concomitant dissemination has been going on since at least the Forties, when
pockets of white hipsters started trawling around for Southern hillbilly and
blues sides of the Twenties and Thirties, which could then be compiled and
reissued to the revelation of many who wouldn’t have otherwise come across such
sounds.
Not that records are everything, of course, but it is equally important to
remember that even if the folk process could have sustained the songs of a
Blind Lemon Jefferson, Willie Johnson, or Henry Thomas (to name the three men
upon whom the legacy and history of Texas blues largely rests), who could sing
or play just like they did? No one did, and no one can, of course, but it’s
some small blessing of speculative capitalism that such fervent and indivisible
examples of native musical genius were preserved for the potential elucidation
of the ages. Imagine trying to explain Jimi Hendrix by words or even example
and be gladdened that we can at least listen to what Charlie Patton, Luis
Russell, and Charlie Poole actually once played.
The breadth and depth of James’ repertoire both live and on record is a
remarkable testament to this fortunate fact, as are many of the musical
sympathies of his audience. Bluesmen don’t play on street corners anymore and
even if they did, you probably couldn’t hear ’em over the blare of car stereos
at stoplights. The specific excitement of James’ performances ought to be
enough to convince anyone that here is something real, something unfeigned,
something so vital that in the hands and throat of a master like James, it’s
still fresh, still original, and still an incredibly exciting rush of timeless
re-creation.
James is at great pains, however, to distinguish between “rediscovery,” by
people who may never have been exposed to certain forms, and “revival,” which
implies that something is dead only because someone may not know about it. “A
lot of people say, the blues is dead, and so-and-so revived these traditions,”
explains James, “but the way I see it, they never really died. They were always
real powerful to me, and they always moved me in my life as something that was
happening here and now, not as something that I had to exhume, but as a living
and breathing part of American life.”
A similar analogy can be drawn in any number of musical forms. Jazz did not
perish with swing, bebop, hard bop, third stream, or what have you, and press
clips to the contrary, neither did it die between Coltrane’s flameout, the dire
rise of fusion, and the neoconservative mewling of a dead-ass stiff like Wynton
Marsalis. Likewise, bluegrass was not in any danger of perishing before the
bland chops of good girl Alison Krauss captured the hearts and money of so many
who’d rather not suffer the plangent harmonies of a Bill Monroe. The story of
acoustic fingerstyle blues is a little different, perhaps, because its
commercial decline can be traced simultaneously to the Depression and the
electric guitar, but nonetheless the style evolved, sustained itself, and
continues with undimmed brilliance through innumberable permutations and
innovations, whether by J.B. Lenoir and John Fahey or John Jackson and Wizz
Jones.
“By the time I was 14, I was really set about learning all those styles,” says
James, referring to the great formal diaspora that is fingerstyle blues, “and
you have to understand that those styles are very inclusive. If you say how
does somebody learn to play fingerstyle blues, well, if you’re talking about
playing like Merle Travis, Doc Watson, Blind Blake, John Hurt, or King Solomon
Hill, well, that’s a lot of territory, dude. That’s a whole bunch of stuff.”
James was fortunate to come of age at a time and place — the New York City of
the mid to late Sixties — where a fair lot of that stuff and much more could
be seen in person. “It was New York, it was 1965, I don’t have to draw you a
picture. It was incredible, absolutely incredible,” says James. “I can’t
believe it. I mean, by the time I got out of high school, I’d seen every
contemporary rock & roll, blues, country, bluegrass thing that was
happening — from Jimi Hendrix to the Stanley Brothers. I just sat right in
their laps, that’s the way it was.”
Although largely self-taught, James credits Joseph Williams, a black gospel
player from White Plains, New York, who augmented his income by giving guitar
lessons, as being “the first guy who said don’t play with a pick, play with
your fingers.” Beyond that, James says, “I started playing guitar when I was 12
years old, and have been playing it ever since.” Yet for all the reverence for
his forebears, James is eager to stress that “my experience is a contemporary
experience. Gimmert Nicholson was just as big an influence on my guitar
playing, probably even more so, than John Hurt, or Danny Barnes is just as big
an influence on my music as Furry Lewis.”
As anyone who has heard James’ hilariously sad and touching “My Last Good Car”
(from American Primitive) can surmise, traveling has also been a part of
James’ life education. “In 1970, I first went to Tennessee, which would put me
at the end of my teens, near 20. I went to join a friend of mine who lived in
the eastern part of the state, the tri-cities area (Bristol, Johnson City, and
Kingsport). I spent a little while down there and then went back to New York,
which started this whole process of going down south and going back northeast
and every time I would go, I would spend less time up north and more time down
south. Finally, after a short time, I just never went back north any more.”
James spent the better part of the next seven years in Tennessee, first in
Bristol and then in Memphis, playing a variety of musical styles, always
learning, always assimilating more of what he’d seen and heard into his own
personal form of expression. It was during this period as well, that James
become interested in luthiery. “I’m self-taught, and I have a tendency,
laudable or not, to take a holistic approach to my music, and so at one point I
decided if I knew how guitars were made, then I would be a better guitar
player. So I set about to learn how to build guitars, what guitar construction
was, and I built a lot of guitars and other instruments. I guess it probably
worked — I did learn something,” says James, laughing, “but that’s pretty much
that. Right now, what I do with luthiery is I maintain my own instruments, of
which I have a number.”
In 1977, James relocated to San Antonio. “What made me move down here was I
heard about a job that was available for a musician who could do concerts and
musical interpretive programs, and I moved down here to see about that job and
I got it. And then after I got through with that job I stayed here. I like it
here. It’s fun.” James played with a wide variety of people in the Alamo city,
and even had a dance band for a few years with R&B sax legend Clifford
Scott.
Four years later, James moved to Austin. “I like it here, Austin’s a great
town. It has great residential qualities for a city its size, a tremendous pool
of highly creative musicians who aren’t iron-bound stylistically, and a lot of
my friends live here.”
It was 1993 when the Antone’s label finally released Two Track Mind,
James’ almost-all-solo debut, most of which had been recorded as a
do-it-yourself project in the late Eighties. It remains a fairly stunning
demonstration of James’ range, from Charlie Poole to Mance Lipscomb and the
wholly traditional “Spanish Fandango” to the twisted new traditionalism of
“Don’t Seem Right,” by legendary New York fingerpicker Luke Faust.
“I was making a living from music-related activities since I was in my
Twenties, which included luthiery, musical writing, playing gigs, and all kind
of stuff. But I would say, certainly, that the complexion of things changed
when I got my first record out on the Antone’s label, and it was `Steve James,
Antone’s recording artist from Austin, Texas.’ That definitely got me out
there.”
“Out there” turns out to have been many many places. James estimates that he
plays around 150 shows a year, not including guitar clinics and demonstrations
for Collings and National guitars. “I’ve had really good fortune, I’m very
lucky. I’ve had a positive response to what I’m doing pretty much everywhere
I’ve been, which is now all over Europe, down to South America, coast to coast,
and up into Canada. If I singled out some places I liked to play it would be
more because they’re places I like, places like Tuscon, Arizona, or
Amsterdam.”
Each of James’ two succeeding albums displays that same vivacity, range, and
wit as the debut, flashing from brilliance to brilliance without the slightest
hint of caprice. On a number of tracks, the guitarist plays with a wailing band
consisting of the rhythm section of Danny Barnes (numerous stringed
instruments), Mark Rubin (bass, tuba), and Gary Primich (harmonica), with
additional contributions on Art and Grit coming from such slide guitar
luminaries as Bob Brozman and Cindy Cashdollar. “It’s an interesting sound,”
James explains. “It’s a string band, but at the same time we’re playing
Dixieland grooves, and we’re applying ourselves to country blues-style material
but there’s a palpable gospel influence there. A lot of the songs are original
songs, I wrote ’em, so it’s not like we’re just imitating someone else’s
arrangements.
“Here’s what it is,” James adds. “It’s really funny, because being an acoustic
fingerstyle guitar player whose mode of operation is playing slide guitar and
fingerstyle steel string guitar, the harmonizations I use are blues, and the
rhythms I use are largely syncopated, 2/4, and stomps, although my highly
touted blues records also have waltzes on them. But I didn’t set out to imitate
anybody and I didn’t set out to go anywhere riding on somebody’s back. From the
very get-go, I was just completely jazzed by a certain intangible style that is
now called `roots music,’ and I really dug it. And when I heard it, I
gravitated towards it, and I’m still doing that. I’m exactly the same as I was
when I was 14.” n Steve James celebrates the release of Art and Grit at the Cactus Cafe,
Saturday, October 5.
This article appears in October 4 • 1996 and October 4 • 1996 (Cover).