Friday, August 19, 2005 ... 3:12 PM
Reverend Robert Wilkins
He is best known for "Old Jim Canan's", a memento of a Beale Street speakeasy called in its day The Castle of Missing Men. He was a Memphis songster from the Jazz Age whose resume spans jug bands, revivalist folk festivals, and the holy pulpit. He leaves the biggest stamp on my guts that any blues has left since I first heard "Dark Was the Night" with his two-sided, one-chord midnight lament, "Rolling Stone."
Man, don't your house feel lonesome when your biscuit roller gone
Man, don't your house feel lonesome when your biscuit roller's gone
You stand in your back door and cry by yourself, alone
You stand in your back door, cryin by yourself, alone
Its couplets, delivered in a nasal drone, are punctuated by this syncopated, obsessive-compulsive hook that suggests, in its dripping faucet repetition, a long and fucking lonesome night of rocking back and forth and staring into shadows.
With his slurred consonants, the weary rolling up and down minor third intervals, Wilkins sounds like a man sitting on the edge of his empty bed in his skivvies at 2AM, awakened by a bad dream but still drunk, playing a riff and a chord over and over to keep from going back to sleep, or to keep from crying his eyes out, or to keep from blowing his brains out.
This is the best kind of comfort music. Comfort does not shine a light on you; comfort touches you in the dark.
Listen to this tune and a bunch of other Wilkins cuts on the JSP anthology Masters of Memphis Blues -- 4 CDs stuffed full of Tennessee whiskey and cotton, which you can pick up for $25.00 at your local record mart. I get no kickbacks for advertising this. I just love this label and their cheapo boxed sets.
Brendan
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Making Notes: Music of the Carolinas
(Novello Festival Press, April 2008)
includes my essay, "Link Wray"
MUSIC
Flop Eared Mule
The Celestial Monochord
HickoryWind.org
Modern Acoustic Magazine / Blog
Faking It
Honey, Where You Been So Long?
whiskey-girl
Porchlight
Charlotte-related
Emily A. Benton
Laurie Koster's Charlotte & Area Events
Evening Muse
Neighborhood Theatre
OTHER THAN MUSIC
Rusty Barnes
Mixed Animal
Cans and Jars
Night Train
Cat and Girl
Tom Drury
Ian Frazier
Film Freak Central
November 9, 2007
Eilen Jewell
The Evening Muse, Charlotte, NC
***review!***
June 16, 2007:
Carrie Rodriguez w/ Tim Easton
The Evening Muse, Charlotte, NC
***review!***
June 2, 2007:
Mt. Airy Fiddlers Convention
***review!***
July 10, 2005:
Chris Scruggs
The Evening Muse, Charlotte, NC
***review!***
July 8, 2005:
Tim Easton
The Evening Muse, Charlotte, NC
***review!***
February 19, 2005:
Neko Case and The Sadies w/ Visqueen
Variety Playhouse, Atlanta, GA
***review!***
September 17, 2004:
Gillian Welch & David Rawlings w/ Old Crow Medicine Show
Theater At Lime Kiln, Lexington, VA
***review!***
August 17, 2004:
Sweet Harmony Traveling Revue
Wolf Trap, Vienna, VA
***review!***
August 7 & 8, 2004:
Newport Folk Festival
Newport, R.I.
***review!***
July 11, 2004:
Cowboy Junkies
Wolf Trap, Vienna, VA
***review!***
Various Artists:
Friends of Old Time Music: the folks arrival 1961-1965 (at HickoryWind.org)
Neko Case:
Live From Austin TX DVD (at HickoryWing.org)
Old Crow Medicine Show:
Big Iron World
Sampson Pittman:
"Highway 61 Blues"
Baby Boy Warren:
"Stop Breakin Down"
Nina Nastasia:
The Blackened Air
Ryan Adams:
Jacksonville City Nights
Robert Wilkins:
"Rolling Stone"
Neko Case:
Furnace Room Lullaby
Etta Baker:
One Dime Blues
Steve Earle:
The Revolution Starts Now
Grey DeLisle:
The Graceful Ghost
