music from the road

While in transit from Glacier Park to Missoula, MT about nine days ago, I stopped at a gift shop/espresso stand in Seeley Lake.

The woman inside had some music playing on her boss’s portable CD player that I’d never heard before. When I asked who it was she had to stop the player and pull the disc out. Then she had some trouble pronouncing name of the artist, so she handed it to me.

It was Levee Town, by Sonny Landreth. I’d never heard of him before. The song that had been playing was called Soul Salvation. It is a duet with Bonny Raitt, and it’s very nice. I now have it on my pod, along with a couple of other Landreth tunes, like Native Stepson (live version from the album Grant Street).

This dude can play! He’s a bayou blues player, and though some of his straight ahead blues stuff is not to my taste, I can still appreciate a gifted guitarist when I hear one. Lendreth employs a slide almost all of the time, but I’ll need to look at a video of him playing to see his technique. Take a listen to some of the tracks on his site, there’s a lot more than slide guitar going on here and I wonder how he does some of the stuff I’m hearing.

I had thought about posting about him last week, but chose to wait until I had a few spare minutes (which turned about into an hour and half of listening to samples and then purchasing a couple of tracks from iTunes) to hear this guy.

If you have any affection for/interest in Zydeco and/or blues, this is someone you’ll want to check out.