Kelly Joe Phelps Albums (8)
What The Critics Say
Guitarist and songwriter Kelly Joe Phelps has always traveled an iconoclastic, enigmatic path. Since the release of his debut album, Lead Me On in 1995 on the tiny Burnside imprint, through his amazing Rykodisc recordings from the late part of that decade and the middle of the first part of this century, he's wound his way through covers and his own songs with a particular sense of place and rough-hewn elegance. Western Bell is Phelps' first record since 2006, issued on the Vancouver indie Black Hen Music. Norman & Nancy Blake once released an album with their Rising Fawn String Ensemble called Original Underground Music from the Mysterious South, comprised of folk songs, Civil War era reels, and dance tunes that felt utterly out of time and space because they were so basic and unadorned, so completely uncluttered by anything but a direct attempt to play this music as the seemingly forgotten and alien construct it was in the early 1980s. Phelps' album, it can be paraphrased, is "original underground music from the mysterious (North)west." Just as Loren MazzaCane Connors mutated his love of the Delta blues into an avant-guarde hybrid all his own -- often barely recognizable as blues but clearly based in it -- Phelps has, on Western Bell, offered listeners a complete synthesis of his musical vision as a guitarist. This is a completely instrumental collection of original tunes played on acoustic six- and 12-string guitars, lap slide guitar, and bells. Musically, Phelps combines his love of Piedmont style picking, early 20th century Texas, Louisiana, and deep Delta blues with his love of decidedly Western notions of folk song and Rocky Mountain mountain music. Even this description is poor. The reason is that Phelps infuses his own music with such comfort, space, and gentleness in his playing that what comes out is his own inviting but subjective history of blues as it has evolved in his spirit. Some of these songs are hummable, such as the opening title track, a waltz with some odd bits of slightly dissonant harmonics tossed in near the end that add dimension. "Blowing Dust 40 Miles" is skeletal, with slide and fingerpicking styles varying and moving through and against one another, trying to hesitantly and somewhat tensely decide if there is a song in the improvisation, all the while pulling the listener deeper into the ghostliness of the music itself. "Hometown with Melody," played on a 12-string, sounds like a combination lullaby and travel song played as a tentative reminiscence. "The Jenny Spin," played on the lap slide, has a minimal melody, articulated through a fragmented mode with bells hovering in the distance to ground the tune because it's barely there -- despite some amazingly fluid playing by Phelps -- and might float away. "Blue Daughter Tattoo" combines the abundance of Phelps' fingerstyle expertise with a bass-string driven walk through western cowboy melody, country blues, and logging camp song forms. Western Bell is among the most unique acoustic guitar recordings out there today. It's not a superpicker exercise, and it doesn't sound like any of the past or current acoustic guitar icons; Phelps moves it his own way. Here he plays as if in dialogue with some unseen entity, telling stories on the instrument that only he knows the meaning of -- or he's asking questions, trying to discover for himself. Cryptic, hushed, confoundingly beautiful, this is a brilliant, deeply moving work by an artist who has created a new language on the acoustic guitar, culled from the discontinued speech fragments of American music's own mysterious past. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
A year and a half after his remarkable live album, Tap the Red Cane Whirlwind, Kelly Joe Phelps returns to the studio with his restless, searing, intimate vision and remarkable skills as both an instrumentalist and a songwriter. While Phelps employs several musicians from his past, such as guitarist Steve Dawson, fiddler Jesse Zubot, and keyboardist Chris Gestrin (all of whom played on 1983's Slingshot Professionals), there's nothing here that's reminiscent of that set. First and foremost, Phelps is a songwriter here. Phelps looks at his subjects, such as the lover in "Spanish Hands," from the side. He communicates directly while peeling back the layers of appearance, and describes her as both "a gentle bell" and "a cat's eye." This is the songwriter as poet, heard over and again as the subtly shaded instrumental backdrops caress his words lovingly, letting them roll out unencumbered. In the opener, "Crow's Nest," his acoustic guitar is unassuming as he trots out the words "Come along to the riverside, sit down now/I just want to hear somebody else whine/If you've got tomorrow, I've got a blade/We can dig a hole into an old book/We can keep our secrets there." He allows the truth of desperation, love, and the willingness of other possibilities all to emerge before Zubot floats his way in and adorns that guitar with some lonesome balladry of his own. On "The Anvil," Wallace Stevens' ghost comes to visit in Phelps imagery, metaphors, and similes, accompanied by a shuffling snare and a pump organ as he sings "There is an eye walking curiously/By the campground, the bedside night stand/My leg bones feel weary yet walk on they will/Holding for wheels and gravy/On a plate full of nothing but shaking my head/With a side bowl of nothing to do." His rhymes touch the inside, looking at difficulty and confusion from a nearly wistful place, longing for he knows not what. But it's Phelps use of the banjo on Tunesmith Retrofit that is the album's biggest surprise. (Before recording this set, he hadn't played one in 20 years.) He doesn't try to play bluegrass, nor does he try to haunt the ghosts of those players who have gone before. His high lonesome breakdown on "Scapegoat" is infused with the blues, late-20th century classical music, and flamenco. He moves through them all, always returning to the night owl song of the bluegrass breakdown before it all falls apart and comes home to roost in emptiness. Another instrumental is "MacDougal," the rag tribute to Dave Van Ronk, "the Mayor of MacDougal Street" in New York. Phelps lets whimsy carry his playing that touches on Rev. Gary Davis, Jorma Kaukonen, Bert Jansch, Sandy Bull, and yes, Van Ronk himself. The lover's conflict on "Loud as Ears," another solo acoustic guitar effort, brings to mind Davy Graham in style, but it is all Phelps' distillations of folk styles from British to American to roots. But here again, it's Stevens who comes to haunt Phelps' startlingly original lyrics: "Old dark ruby coats his throat/Gloves a feathered mind/Sharpens up her fountain pen/Lays ink down along the table/Plaintive brickyard, textbook line/Whips her fable down/As long as she is able." The meta text here is Phelps writing about writing, and its inability to reach through conflict to communicate, all to the accompaniment of his acoustic guitar making its way through history. The banjo moans again in the intro to "Handful of Arrows," a tribute to the late guitarist and songwriter Chris Whitley, who died in abject poverty in 2006. Here high and low lonesome hold hands and dance as a Weissenborn guitar, drums, and bass come to join the banjo's long, sad, weeping rage. Tunesmith Retrofit is another side of Phelps to be sure, as a songwriter who understands the actual music of poetry and creates a loose, coarse weave that allows the listener room to inhabit and live inside his songs. His rhythm is true, his words are impure, his songs are nearly glorious. Once more, Phelps shatters expectations and conjures something truly original and brave in the process. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
'Tap the Red Cane Whirlwind'
Release Date 2/1/2005
Tracks 9
Label Rykodisc
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
There are few artists who offer the raw sincerity and accomplished musical acumen that guitarist, singer, and songwriter Kelly Joe Phelps does. From his first offering, Lead Me On on the Burnside label, through his subsequent studio outings for Rykodisc, Phelps has done something remarkable: forged himself a solid identifying mark as a folk and blues musician of distinction in fields owing so much to the past that latter-day performers are usually crushed under the weight of them. Tap the Red Cane Whirlwind is a collection of solo live performances recorded n California in 2004. Lee Townsend, who has long been affiliated with him, produced the set. It opens with a nine-and-a-half-minute version of Skip James' "Hard Time Killin' Floor Blues." Phelps snakily moves the tune through various modes and modulations, delving deep into Delta blues tonalities and backside melodies that open up spaces inside it. His voice, smoky and sweetly raspy, is never harsh, though it often sounds like it is inhabited by ghosts. It's a stunner. The other cover here is a smoking version of the late Rev. Gary Davis' "I Am the Light of the World." Dignified, soulful, and spot-on musically, Phelps is a dynamite guitarist who adds, subtracts, and morphs figures onto the original fingerstyle lines, and uses his voice to offer evidence of the timelessness of the lyric. And as moving and virtuosic as these two performances are, it's his own songs that offer the true prize of this collection. There's "Jericho," with its spooky droning bassline just under some slippery, winding fingerstyle playing, all of it supporting a vocal that comes from some lost world, just beyond the pale, to impart a tale from antiquity that weighs heavily on the forbidding present juncture. The stinging folk-blues of "Gold Tooth" showcases Phelps' ability to make the strings literally dance as his singing tugs at the ends of lines while driving others deeper into the spectral groove. The tenderness inherent in "Waiting for Marty" is elegiac, full of sepia tones and the notion of bittersweet memory. Here is the place where longing, regret for a life squandered, and the acceptance of things as they are -- even as they drift away into the ether and invisible history -- makes for a song that is literally unlike any other. Simply stated, if there is one recording that captures the sum of the magic, power, and poetry that is Kelly Joe Phelps, this one's it. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
'Slingshot Professionals'
Release Date 3/11/2003
Tracks 10
Label Rykodisc
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
For his first "band" album, this adroit Portland slide guitarist hired on Bill Frisell as well as the lesser-known but excellent Canadian duo Jesse Zubot and Steve Dawson. Zubot's violin and Dawson's Weissenborn help to elevate this all-acoustic effort. It's well worth a listen. ~ Mark Allan, All Music Guide
'Sky Like a Broken Clock'
Release Date 7/10/2001
Tracks 10
Label Rykodisc
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
Recorded in a live studio setting with no overdubs, Sky Like a Broken Clock has a pure sound and the seamless flow that can only be acheived by a group of accomplished, and complementary, musicians. Producer George Howard, who also worked on Jess Klein's Draw Them Near and Mojave by the Willard Grant Conspiracy, has a knack for creating a warm, clean-sounding folk music, captured with an almost eerily crystalline feel. Known for his imaginative take on the country blues of artists like Skip James, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and Mississippi Fred McDowell, Phelps put together an album entirely of originals for this venture. The result is a set of low-key, abstract story-songs about voodoo, sin, and prostitution, with "Worn Out," the album's closer, having a lullaby-like quality. Phelps' guitar work on this album is fairly straightforward (unfortunately not featuring his signature acoustic slide), and is backed by Larry Taylor on string bass and Billy Conway on drums. ~ Travis Drageset, All Music Guide
'Shine Eyed Mister Zen'
Release Date 7/13/1999
Tracks 11
Label Rykodisc
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
Phelps' third album is an accomplished serving of country blues that combines the sweet and sour power of his guitar playing with the equally bittersweet charge of Phelps' wearied voice. Shine Eyed Mister Zen features a lot of singing, but most importantly it spotlights the singing of Phelps' slide guitar, which integrates a humid and natural style that invokes the mystery and religion that these mostly original songs lean toward. The dusty delta Phelps conjures here is at once familiar and nostalgic; it's to his credit that Phelps is able to add his own voice to the spiritual mix. A mystical and unaffected recording. ~ Michael Gallucci, All Music Guide
'Roll Away the Stone'
Release Date 8/26/1997
Tracks 11
Label Rykodisc
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
If anything, Roll Away the Stone is an even better record than Kelly Joe Phelps' debut, Lead Me On. Phelps continues to grow as both a musician and songwriter, and his interpretations of classic blues songs show increased imagination. Although it's based in classic blues, this music doesn't sound ancient -- it sounds vital and alive, like any great music should. ~ Thom Owens, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
This is the real deal -- Phelps performs with the full authority and authenticity of the Delta bluest tradition without ever once sounding like a Folkways museum piece. There's nothing more to it than the 34-year-old's raspy, swamp-infused vocals, lapstyle acoustic guitar played using fingerpicking and slide, and self-accompanied stomp-box percussion. For the six originals and seven gospel and prewar blues selections on offer here, it's more than enough. File alongside the likes of Ben Harper and Keb' Mo'. ~ Roch Parisien, All Music Guide
