 Chris Cotton's, "I Watched the Devil Die"
A Tweed BluesRevue
Yellow Dog Records sent a copy of "I Watched the Devil Die" last week. Chris Cotton requested that it be sent here to Mythical Tweed Towers so that I might review it for the site's readers and so that is what I will do. It is so much easier to accomplish these things when the material is good, and this entire cd gets the ExtryFine Stamp of Approval from me, for whatever that is worth.
If you like your music raw and with a purpose behind it, buy this record. If you enjoy a little Bakersfield C&W mixed in with some Elizabeth Cotton, Delta-style fiddles, banjos and drums, whiskey soaked vocals singing whiskey soaked lyrics then you go out and BUY this record cause you need to have it.
Cotton's done a sort of masterpiece here with this collection of songs and music. He paints a dreamland of characters and situations on a canvas of highly infectious background tunes. I've had his guitar part to "I Watched the Devil Die" running around in my head for the last three days and can't seem to shake it loose.
This ain't a Blues record. There's blues elements in it, but even Chris says it ain't a blues record. It's more a sort of new breed of what folks might call Americana music with bits of hokum and hillcountry mixed together with Memphis streetcorner jug band, Piedmont picking.....I don't know what to call it....mebbe it's the Devil's Music or mebbe Haunted Hokum.... but every song on there is damn good and will stand up to many listens. I know this because I've played it through probably twenty or thirty times since it arrived on my doorstep.
We did an online interview to get some background for this piece and it went like this:
Q. What was it like working on the oil rigs? Did you meet up with any
colorful characters out there? I know you probably did cause I've
worked
with some real crazy fuckers who'd been down on those rigs.
A. The capt' was "coon-ass" NOT a racist term but anyone from Louisiana
should know what that means...cajun muther that half-speaks French and
English, grew up in the Bijou, bareley write his own name etc, but smart
in his own ways.
Being a deckhand from Californ with a knowhow of a lot
of common sense was not a qualification for this job. Being able to risk
your life for the sake of drillin' oil/natural gas was more like it, and
all of that for $55 a day.
A. Can you explain how a guy from Marin County is able to write, play
and
sing the way you do and make this exceptionally fine collection of songs
come off sounding like you have lived every minute of the scenarios that
pop
into the listener's mind? What happened to you to make you go deep and
pull
out all this good stuff?
A. I'm actually from Santa Clara County, the 3rd most populous county in
californ, 3rd to Los Angeles, and San Diego. Also the most Populous Bay
Area County.
But to answer your question, I went to school in Maine, and Utah, during
High school, and saw that the grass grows greener everywhere, depending
upon what the hell your looking for, and the grass was greener for
ragtime music in New Orleans, Louisiana. I hitched rides and rode
frieghts cross country to get there and visited Robert Johnsons
"officially sanctioned" grave site in Morgan City Mississippi which I
have a story that portends the song.
The story was that My traveling partner and I visited the gravesite at
the Mt. Zion church there in Morgan City, MS and we were done about
dusk, and we figgered we could get a ride to Ida Bena, the next town
down the road, and sat down on the roadside in proper hitching' fashion,
and along comes a sheriff. He pulls over and asked us where we were from
and where we were going and we told him Ida Bena and he told us he could
take us out of town to the county line so we thought that that would be
best, since we were getting strange looks sittin' there on the side of
the road being white as day. So we took him up on the offer and got in
back of the car and thought we were right as rain!
About three miles
down the road the Sheriff gets leadfoot and next thing you know were
travellin' down the 2 lane highway about 120 miles an hour. I said: "sir
just out of curiosity, why are we going so quick" thinking he was just
screwin' with us, to which he answered: "Boys, I'm about to run outa'
gas, and so I'm goin' into Ida Bena, have to now, and I figure if I run
out on the way, I'll just coast on in."
We were totally amazed by this and in proper tramp fashion, my partner
pulls an oilcan of malt liquor out of his backpack and starts drinking
it! In the back of the squad car.
We got to Ida bena, shook off the buzz, and went on our way.
Q. Were your original songs written while you were down in Mississippi
or
have you been carrying them around with you for a while?
A. Both
Q. The Clarksdale Sessions...Give us a story from when you were in
there making the recordings.
A. Well, I have known Jimbo for the last four years and I was elated to
have a chance to go to his new studio and record, as I had not had a
chance to really check out Clarksdale when I was there in 97' and we got
there with the notion in mind to cut the record straight and quick which
was exactly how Mathus wanted it, and it worked well all around.
A strange thing happened when we were there, staying at Jimbo's unc's
place on Lynn St after we were done recording one night at about 3 or 4
in the morning, myself, Kristen(my girlfriend) Shelly(next door
neighbor), and Jimbo, were shootin craps and drinking celebratory scotch
from Buddy Guy after the gig Jimbo did in Ft. Lauderdale the previous
day and these young cats were staying there at Guy's from Ohio that were
checking out Jimbo's studio. They were in a Christian Punk band and one
of the guys woke up to the sound of the devils dice and came into the
living room and saw the stacks of (imagine money) on the floor and the
booze and the kid began doing pushups on the floor right on top of the
pile. He didn't say a word. Just did pushups. He was exorcising the
demons through exercising! Didn't work though, I lost a grip of coin.
Q. How's Jack Johnson to work with? What's he like to hang around with?
How about Jimbo Mathus?
A. I didn't get a chance to hang out with Big Jack for too long, he showed
up right before the session, and left not long after, although he was
the most amazing slide player that I have ever had the pleasure to work
with, and if it wasn't my session he would have destroyed notions of
blues singing with the timbre of his huge voice, but he did that anyways
with his slide guitar. Amazing.
Mathus is like a man on a mission that you can't quite identify with
because he's so much more qualified than anyone else to lead. Generally.
Otherwise he's goin' to take your money with dice.
Q. Sounded like everybody in the studio was having a good time.
Everything
is so perfectly basic and natural.
A. Good. Naturally loose, but
tight (know what I mean!)
Q. Where you going from here?
A. Hopefully to some festivals, I confirmed a couple with some coming back
soon, but a good tour of the U.S. is in my lifetime. I can feel it.
Well, I give this one five stars out of a possible five. Go to YELLOW DOG RECORDS' website and find out how to get a copy for yourself. It's real music, and not even a whiff of bullshit anywhere. Cotton's "I Watched the Devil Die" is further proof that songs with substance are not yet extinct, and follow no known "formula" to kiss the collective asses of the masses for the quick buck. There are still exceptional writers, musicians and studios out there that know how to conjure up something worth listening at and that will stick to your ribs. Now, if I could just get that guitar riff outta my mind.
For more information on Chris Cotton, visit his website at www.cottonchris.com or click on the Yellow Dog Logo below.
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