Crosby Joined by Grammy Nominee Jimmy “Duck” Holmes, Last of the Bentonio, MS Blues Men, on Four Tracks on At the Blue Front, Due Out Aug. 20
“Ryan Lee Crosby… brings influences from Africa and India to the Bentonia sound.”
–Smithsonian Magazine
“Sometimes light and free-flowing, sometimes intense and heavy.”
–Aquarium Drunkard
“Crosby really digs into the frayed, meandering vulnerability… we feel most deeply the ghostly emptiness of Bentonia blues and the ragged solitude of the minor tuning. And it’s where Crosby makes his mark most powerfully, turning this old-school sadness into something profoundly modern.”
–Acoustic Guitar Magazine
“Crosby’s sighing vocals and precise fingerpicking lay bare the ineffable sorrow at the Bentonia sound’s core”
–Living Blues Magazine
“Crosby’s droning pulse is often hypnotic.”
–Vintage Guitar Magazine
Visionary guitarist Ryan Lee Crosby buckled his 1980s Tascam 22-4 four-track portable reel-to-reel tape machine into the back seat of a borrowed 2012 Toyota Venza, bracing it with towels on either side. He was about to leave his Portsmouth, RI home for the Blue Front Cafe, a juke joint founded in the 1940s in Bentonia, MS. The resulting new album At the Blue Front comes out August 20 via digital, CD, and cassette.
The first single and video for “Catfish,” featuring Jimmy “Duck” Holmes and filmed at the Blue Front, is out today.
Crosby’s music has already positioned him as a major new guitarist in the blues and American Primitive styles, earning spotlights from Guitar Player, Aquarium Drunkard, WBUR (Boston NPR station), Smithsonian Mag, Premier Guitar, American Blues Scene, Vintage Guitar Mag, Acoustic Guitar Mag, and the Nashville Scene, opened concerts for Pokey LaFarge, The Hold Steady, Chris Smither, and Charlie Parr, is a regular at Clarksdale, MS’ Juke Joint Fest and the Hudson Valley’s Meadowlark Fest, worked with producer Bruce Watson, and his song “Down So Long” was added to Spotify’s official Blues on the Rocks playlist.
Under the tutelage of GRAMMY Award-nominee and last of the Bentonia, MS bluesmen 77-year-old Jimmy “Duck” Holmes, who runs the Blue Front as his mother did before him, Crosby patiently learned the Bentonia style. The Bentonia blues, which Holmes learned from the form’s originator Henry Stuckey as well as Jack Owens, depends upon a minor key open guitar tuning called crossnote and is often accompanied by falsetto singing. Its most famous exponent, Skip James, had stopped Crosby in his tracks when Ryan first heard the sound, and now Crosby was set to record in a room where James often performed. Even as he is respectful of the tradition, Crosby develops the style in his own way, using a 12-string electric guitar.
Part of learning from Holmes has been allowing for the spontaneous, both via collaboration, inspiration in a moment, or circumstances in the juke joint. In the spirit of Alan Lomax, David Evans, and Chris Strachwitz, the resulting album captures a freight train that runs right outside the juke joint. Half of the songs on the album were composed prior and half are improvisations, including two of the songs with Jimmy. “Well, the blues is conversational music – on many levels. From its call and response structure to its capacity for directly and indirectly addressing personal, physical, cultural and spiritual matters – I see the blues as always being in dialogue,” says Crosby. “A one-chord blues can give the mind, as well as the heart, a place to rest and regroup. Some of the lyrics were sung in real time as we listened to each other during the session.”
Holmes, whose last album was produced by Dan Auerbach, ended up sitting in on four songs, with the mic literally being spontaneously passed back and forth for vocals at times. He joins Crosby on the Mississippi standard “Catfish,” “Slow Down,” and the improvised, apropos “Hard Times” and “Tell Me” with Holmes kicking off the vocal. In fact, the sessions also yielded the forthcoming Holmes album Bentonia Blues / Right Now.
Crosby and Holmes were introduced in 2019 after a fan saw a video of Crosby playing at Deep Blues Fest. Crosby immediately booked a plane ticket from Boston. Crosby recalls, “To me, the relationship with Jimmy is the most important thing. It was truly transformative for me. It’s where the music starts and ends for me in many ways. I look to Jimmy for wisdom, guidance, context, inspiration, connection. Playing and singing with him has helped me to both focus and open my playing at the same time. I see him as a teacher of what it means to be human. Everything about how I relate to the blues comes back to my interactions with him and my experiences at the Blue Front. Going to the Blue Front has helped me create a sense of meaning and purpose in my life. It has helped me heal from loss and it has helped me find a sense of humanity that I didn’t even know I was looking for.”
Approaching Holmes and the Blue Front scene with respect and acknowledgment of his status as a visitor was important to Crosby, “The qualities that are in this album express a lot of what I value in playing, composing, teaching and production. Make it true, make it real, create with presence and love and attention and focus. Be Spontaneous. Listen, pay attention. Keep on growing, keep on going,” he says.
Joining Crosby is Grant Smith on calabash, a drum made from a gourd originating in West African music, inspired by the music of Boubacar Traoré, Ali Farka Touré and Farees. Smith has toured three continents and performed global, jazz, classical, and blues with the likes of Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, Don Byron, the Violent Femmes, and Jane Wang.
Crosby initially started performing on stages in post-punk bands, in the musical realm of bands like Joy Division.
Crosby also mixed the project, which featured sparing overdubs in New England.
Ryan Lee Crosby Tour Dates
May 10 – Brooklyn, NY – The Bridge Studio
June 20 – Memphis, TN – The Green Room (w/ Willie Farmer)
June 21 – Bentonia, MS – Bentonia Blues Festival
Sept 14 – Stone Ridge, NY – Meadowlark Fest
Ryan Lee Crosby At The Blue Front Track Listing
1. Going Away
2. I’m Gonna Change
3. I’ve Been Worried
4. Mistreating People
5. Hard Times (w/ Jimmy “Duck” Holmes)
6. Catfish (w/ Jimmy “Duck” Holmes)
7. Slow Down (Part 2) (w/ Jimmy “Duck” Holmes)
8. Tell Me (w/ Jimmy “Duck” Holmes)
