Maybury/Lamar Blues residency Hotel Cafe
Coming from Nashville, Tennessee, I’m spoiled. I’m used to the highest quality studio musicians populating every bar on lower Broadway.
I’m used to barhopping from old country to southern rock to blues to jazz to bluegrass to experimental industrial all in a night, not to mention the late night jam sessions into the a.m.
When I hear Nick Maybury and David Lamar revive an old blues sound on the sacred stage of Hotel Café, I feel they are propelling a blues renaissance in Los Angeles. Hurricane Katrina caused a diaspora of great Louisiana blues and jazz talent to scatter to the furthest endpoints on the map. When I hear Nick and Dave, I hear an old time music, made with reverence for and dedication to the past.
To talk blues or Maybury, we must first talk the origin of the proto-guitar 5, 000 years ago in Africa or Asia, or the modern evolution to electric in the 1940’s. Electrification lit up a blues which nourished a people oppressed by centuries of racism in America.
The blues were blue for a reason. Miles Davis was Blue. Maurice Ravel named the second movement of his 1927 sonata No. 2 in G for violin and piano “The Blues” as blues became an international phenomenon made available by the early phonograph records. This work predated Ravel’s first trip to America. The blues traversed the world as a result of industrialized music distribution.
Even the shamisen and a vocal layer, might sing something universally experienced beyond Americana and its sphere of influence. What is the blues if not folk music, in the sense of “volk”—a people? And indigenous blues, as spontaneous sorrow, sprouts anywhere there is a human soul.
When Nick touches the guitar, Nashville greats come to mind. Kenny Vaughn play live and in studio, and is perhaps the most mind-blowing lead guitar player alive.
I first knew him as the show-stealing lead for the Greg Garing old country revival experience, which quickly traversed genres old country to swing to surf rock to jazz and back to rock and country again. Watching Vaughn and Garing get lost in a dueling lead guitar solo conversation was a gripping, mind bending, edge of the seat experience. Kenny Vaughn played with many bands and sessions in Nashville and can be seen on YouTube. My own best friend David Soldi came from a family of music royalty. His great grandfather, fiddle player “Cactus” Soldi from Sicily holds a spot in the Bluegrass Hall of Fame, and his dad played lead guitar for Johnny Cash. When his dad was on tour, Soldi (which means “cash” in Italian) would sneak into the guitar vault and teach himself. Soldi was a ringleader for Black Label Empire’s best bands of the early 2000’s Nashville music scene, orchestrating the sonic splendor of Communist, Fun’iki, The Brian Kotzer Band, and serving as resident lead guitar wizard muse for a host of creative people that coalesced around dive/audioparadise Springwater tavern’s music scene and the Elliston Place bar crawl.
Before my father’ slide into complete dementia, he pioneered a crusade to get Deford Bailey, the first African-American to play the Grand Old Opry into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Deford was the grandson of slaves.
My father was in love with the blues sound of the fifties which directly flowed out of the American slave system. In the 1950’s, Steve, my father would walk the line of racist segregated Blues in Washington D.C. and cross over into the club scene as a teenager.
So blues are in my heart and blood and DNA. And what was rock-and-roll , especially early Beatles and Presley but a repackaging of indigenous Blues into an acceptable format for a racist zeitgeist? They brought a blues legacy into popular modified transmission. The disavowal of inspiration in the dark roots of the dirty south’s slave system was a part of the sanitization process.
In North Nashville, old time Blues greats still light up dingy old clubs. Memphis sings. New Orleans has reconfigured after the great flood.
And Nick Maybury and David Lamar will be keeping the blues alive with a residency at Hotel Café.
Their next show will be March 8, 2009.
I’m used to barhopping from old country to southern rock to blues to jazz to bluegrass to experimental industrial all in a night, not to mention the late night jam sessions into the a.m.
When I hear Nick Maybury and David Lamar revive an old blues sound on the sacred stage of Hotel Café, I feel they are propelling a blues renaissance in Los Angeles. Hurricane Katrina caused a diaspora of great Louisiana blues and jazz talent to scatter to the furthest endpoints on the map. When I hear Nick and Dave, I hear an old time music, made with reverence for and dedication to the past.
To talk blues or Maybury, we must first talk the origin of the proto-guitar 5, 000 years ago in Africa or Asia, or the modern evolution to electric in the 1940’s. Electrification lit up a blues which nourished a people oppressed by centuries of racism in America.
The blues were blue for a reason. Miles Davis was Blue. Maurice Ravel named the second movement of his 1927 sonata No. 2 in G for violin and piano “The Blues” as blues became an international phenomenon made available by the early phonograph records. This work predated Ravel’s first trip to America. The blues traversed the world as a result of industrialized music distribution.
Even the shamisen and a vocal layer, might sing something universally experienced beyond Americana and its sphere of influence. What is the blues if not folk music, in the sense of “volk”—a people? And indigenous blues, as spontaneous sorrow, sprouts anywhere there is a human soul.
When Nick touches the guitar, Nashville greats come to mind. Kenny Vaughn play live and in studio, and is perhaps the most mind-blowing lead guitar player alive.
I first knew him as the show-stealing lead for the Greg Garing old country revival experience, which quickly traversed genres old country to swing to surf rock to jazz and back to rock and country again. Watching Vaughn and Garing get lost in a dueling lead guitar solo conversation was a gripping, mind bending, edge of the seat experience. Kenny Vaughn played with many bands and sessions in Nashville and can be seen on YouTube. My own best friend David Soldi came from a family of music royalty. His great grandfather, fiddle player “Cactus” Soldi from Sicily holds a spot in the Bluegrass Hall of Fame, and his dad played lead guitar for Johnny Cash. When his dad was on tour, Soldi (which means “cash” in Italian) would sneak into the guitar vault and teach himself. Soldi was a ringleader for Black Label Empire’s best bands of the early 2000’s Nashville music scene, orchestrating the sonic splendor of Communist, Fun’iki, The Brian Kotzer Band, and serving as resident lead guitar wizard muse for a host of creative people that coalesced around dive/audioparadise Springwater tavern’s music scene and the Elliston Place bar crawl.
Before my father’ slide into complete dementia, he pioneered a crusade to get Deford Bailey, the first African-American to play the Grand Old Opry into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Deford was the grandson of slaves.
My father was in love with the blues sound of the fifties which directly flowed out of the American slave system. In the 1950’s, Steve, my father would walk the line of racist segregated Blues in Washington D.C. and cross over into the club scene as a teenager.
So blues are in my heart and blood and DNA. And what was rock-and-roll , especially early Beatles and Presley but a repackaging of indigenous Blues into an acceptable format for a racist zeitgeist? They brought a blues legacy into popular modified transmission. The disavowal of inspiration in the dark roots of the dirty south’s slave system was a part of the sanitization process.
In North Nashville, old time Blues greats still light up dingy old clubs. Memphis sings. New Orleans has reconfigured after the great flood.
And Nick Maybury and David Lamar will be keeping the blues alive with a residency at Hotel Café.
Their next show will be March 8, 2009.
I, also a native Nashvillian, became homesick that night at Hotel Cafe. Delta Blueas Festival, anyone. Mempis in May BB king playing Lucille on a bench off Beale street, elliston place alive with electricity echoing oppressiona and redemption of the cobb;led streets. Have you ever suffered? and have you ever been reborn?
ReplyDeletevery cool
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