Son Henry plays a with an acute feel for the rhythms and anger of the delta , in turns subtle and ferocious, hollering and stomping in time with the eerie call of the bottleneck (Eric Scott, Blues Matters Magazine)
In a world obsessed with the nex [+]Son Henry plays a with an acute feel for the rhythms and anger of the delta , in turns subtle and ferocious, hollering and stomping in time with the eerie call of the bottleneck (Eric Scott, Blues Matters Magazine)
In a world obsessed with the next big thing, its quite surprising to meet a man that's so deeply rooted in the music if the middle of the previous century. Son Henry is, quite simply, a musician that lives and breathes the blues. However, that comes as no surprise to the legions of faithful. They know to turn out in all kinds of weather so they can be close to the fire generated every time this man picks up a guitar. In Alaska where the bars sometimes never close, he's been know to hold an audience until the sun-lit hours of the next morning when they really should be at home getting dressed for work.
He's made a startling range of styles his own, from deep soulful delta blues to loping Texas Shuffles and all points in between. Original tunes that sound like they were written in decades past. But be warned- it's when the lap steel guitar comes out that you need to stand back.
There are probably three lap steel blues guitarists that people know- Freddy Roulette, Sonny Rhodes and the late Hop Wilson. It's an instrument originally intended for Hawaiian music that later found a home in early Western Swing Bands. It's not generally considered to be a blues instrument, but if you put it into his hands then sparks begin to fly. He began playing lap steel guitar as a kid, mostly as a party trick by simply laying a Stratocaster across his lap and playing with a bar glass for a slide. As he delved deeper into the earlier blues, it was a chance discovery of an old record by Houston-based guitarist Hop Wilson that sent him off to study the instrument more seriously. He acquired his first lap steel guitar, an ancient Epiphone, to settle a long-standing poker debt and began dragging it to gigs.
In early 1999 at a gig at Anchorage's Blues Central a man staggered out of the crowd and approached Son after a late night gig. "Son", he said pointing to the old Epiphone, "I love listening to you play, but that guitar is a piece of crap. I've got a good steel guitar at my mothers house in Chicago. If you'll play it instead of that thing it's yours".
Dru
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