I'm so swamped down with work right now it's really unfunny. I feel guilty about still not having finished writing about the Festival, but I simply cannot find the time and /or brain bandwidth to do it right now. Since Bill Barrett has had time to digest all the records he brought back from France and writes me about it regularly I thought I'd include (with his authorisation) a quote of his on Steven deBruyn :
The first cut of Steven's I heard was Sonny Boy's Advice from his El Fish years. I was floored. Only recently have I decided that Steven's is the most original and honest solution to the problem of playing blues in the 21st century. It's a sophisticated and hip solution too. On the opening sequence of that song he really nails that SBII sound. He deconstructs blues over a funky swing 16ths vamp... while using a William Burroughs "cut & paste" of Rice Miller's Little Village melt-down. Pure genius.
On his Rhythm Junks CD he pays homage to a variety of harp players and at the same time to none at all. On Don't ever lose that rhythm he even quotes William Clark's The Boss. He utilizes processed sound with depth and feeling and always to the service of the tune at hand.
And this is no small task!But the main reason I think he needs to be on my short list of harp players to listen to: he's a departure in terms of how he feels the beat. It's his groove, his sense of feel. It's not Toots, Chicago or Vaudeville. He has the influence of all this disparate stuff and more modern
influences from early 70's James Brown to 90's hip-hop. He channels the heavyweights of 50's Chess through more sophisticated lines, over more contemporary material.More importantly to the music: he only plays the harp in the service of making the song better. There are no long self indulgent solos. In the Rhythm Junks, the horns are the real focus of the tunes, and great tunes they are! Their collective parts sound so simple and yet are a complex blend of Mancini to Mingus. And Steven melts right in...
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