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2/1/2005
Ian Zack
When fingerstyle blues guitarist and singer Mary Flower entered a studio in New Orleans in May 2005, she had no idea the city would soon be struggling to recover from one of the nation’s worst natural disasters. Bywater Dance, the CD that resulted from those sessions, is not only Flower’s best recording to date but also a tribute to the Big Easy and its enormous contributions to American music. Flower, who placed third in the 2000 National Fingerpicking Guitar Championships, has still not received the attention she deserves, but she’s certainly well known to other musicians. That helps explain her impressive guest list, which includes such New Orleans greats as pianists Henry Butler and Jon Cleary, trombonist Craig Klein, and clarinetist Dr. Michael White. The piano and Dixieland horn section perfectly complement Flower’s ragtime-inflected picking and funky lap-steel work and lend an exultant air to tunes like “The Blues My Naughty Baby Gives to Me” and “New Orleans Hop Scop Blues.” There’s unexpected posthurricane irony in the choice of Leroy Carr’s “Papa’s on the Housetop,” but the overall mood of the set, as with much of the music from this wounded city, is joyful, celebratory, and unabashedly hopeful.