Blues is an oft-mangled genre. Like the Mississippi Delta that spawned it, it’s clearly an obstinate survivor: it’s carried on through long decades of onslaughts from outsiders. The blues is music of poor African-Americans, the emotion-fuelled outpouring of a brand of oppression that moved from slavery to overt racism and begrudging acceptance of civil rights.
It’s little wonder, then, that the music sounds different in the hands of others. Not that no one else should try to participate—blues is, like its jazz cousin, a uniquely American art form that rewards improvisation and the development of a personal musical voice, no matter who you are or where you’re from. It’s a big enough umbrella to incorporate the sounds of most anyone who approaches with genuine love for its idiosyncracies.
That said, failures are common among blues guitarists who come to the music from outside its cultural context. As far as I’m concerned, you can have the oatmeal twaddlings of post-1960s Eric Clapton. And please, please don’t make me suffer through the sweaty noodlings of Joe Bonamassa. That’s blues like Muzak is classical.
Though I am a hard sell on the blues front, on a recent Saturday, I found myself at Easthampton’s Cellar Bar awaiting the blues as played by the Ed Vadas Quartet. Vadas, on guitar and vocals, is joined in the quartet by bassist Steve Toutant, drummer Chet Pasek, and Sue Burkhart, also on guitar and vocals.
Vadas is, for my money, easily the most interesting blues player in the Valley. In an Advocate article a few years ago (“Behind the Beat,” Oct. 11, 2007), Vadas expounded at some length upon his views of the blues. Vadas thinks it’s important to have developed a philosophy of music, to have a why instead of just an unthinking how. A succinct summation of his views currently graces his website: “…Most blues lovers and players were taken by the music for the correct reasons, but seem to have lost track, in their effort to learn. Many have studied how to build a boat, but forgot where the river was.”
Vadas, on the other hand, seems far more intent on the voyage than the vehicle. Interestingly, he and Burkhart played through nearly identical equipment at the Cellar Bar: Fender Stratocasters through Fender Deluxe amps. When I caught sight of the pickup settings on the guitars, even that was identical. Knowing Vadas, that’s probably intentional.
With lesser guitarists, that might well have created a mush of indistinguishable sounds. With Vadas and Burkhart, it instead served to highlight two distinctive and richly developed guitar “voices.” It was instantly apparent, when a solo came around, which guitarist was stepping out front, though the differences were almost solely in approach.
When Vadas took a turn, the notes stood starkly out, often not exactly on a beat and often repetitive, insistent. Vadas doesn’t focus on careful precision, at least in a guitar solo: he understands that it’s pure feeling that drives the best playing, not technical skill. It isn’t that Vadas doesn’t have guitar skills—he has plenty—but rather that he knows that playing a song like you mean it, like you really get it, is the foundation of a memorable performance. Vadas’ solos ride on emotion, and he often finds his way to something that’s full of blue notes and full of intensity. When he returns to singing, something has really happened. You’ve been on a voyage.
Burkhart, a guitarist with plenty of training and lots of playing experience with Vadas and on her own, understands the same things. Her interpretations aren’t as rough around the edges as Vadas’, but deliver a kind of voyage all their own. Her precision is a nice counterpoint, and her notes seem restless; her slower, first-gear stylings always seem to imply that something more is waiting. That tension tends to grow as she builds upon simpler melodies, buttressing them with grace notes and an extra run here or there. Before long, she’s delivering a positive onslaught of notes, bleeding bluesy bends around the edges.
Burkhart, just like Vadas, never delivers something that sounds like a technical exercise. She seems fueled by something at the core of a song. At the Cellar Bar, when she played a solo, the whole room seemed rapt before long. When she finished, a wave of applause broke out nearly every time.
Burkhart doesn’t look like the cliche of a blues player. Even Vadas, a white guy from Worcester, sports the “wrong” cred. But both of them, like few contemporary blues players of whatever origin, are able to tap into that hard-to-pin-down feeling that’s animated the blues since it first came out of the cotton fields. Somehow, I think those old guitar-toting Delta blues players of 70 or 80 years ago would understand what these two are up to.