Man From Another Time

Album Review

Seasick Steve has been playing music all his life although he didn't start making a living at it until he was in his early sixties. He was born in Oakland, and took guitar lessons from K.C. Douglas who wrote the standard "Mercury Blues." He traveled the world busking, played as a session guitarist, and was befriended by Janis Joplin and Joni Mitchell in the '60s. In the '80s, he produced the first Modest Mouse album This Is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About. He moved to Norway with his wife and family in 2001, and started recording his quirky blues tunes on an old four-track tape machine. After a heart attack, he got serious about his career and cut Dog House Music, which sold over 200,000 copies with little promotion. An appearance on Jools Holland's BBC TV show, helped his next record, I Started Out with Nothin and I Still Got Most of It Left, go platinum in England. Man from Another Time follows in the footsteps of his breakthrough with a raw, unpolished sound that showcases Steve's skills on guitar, banjo, and diddley bo. The album was cut in real time on analog tape, and sounds as warm and funky as Steve himself. "The Banjo Song" is a hard-luck tale that shows off Steve's moaning vocals and haunted banjo picking. "That's All" is a John Lee Hooker-style trance blues driven by Dan Magnusson's four-on-the-floor drumming, Steve's propulsive, fuzzy electric guitar licks, and an exuberant vocal. "Seasick Boogie" is a three-note stomper that sustains your interest by the force of Steve's wailing vocals, rhythm guitar work, and Magnusson's inventive percussion work. Steve digs deep into the roots of the blues on "Dark," a guitar and moaning vocal meditation on mortality, and "Just Because I Can (csx)" the melancholy lament of a railroad hobo given a deadpan vocal and enriched by Steve's acoustic guitar work, full of icy slides and stinging bent notes. ~ j. poet, Rovi