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4/18/2009
Doug Spencer
Mary Flower is a superb finger-style and slide guitarist. A few years ago — thirty-something years into adulthood — she was hailed as ‘maybe the best acoustic blues performer you’ve never heard of.’ Bridges is her new CD. Her home address may surprise you.
Mary Flower now lives in the proverbially grey and wet Portland, Oregon. Her move there has made her happier, not blue. Musically-speaking the city is very well-endowed: Bridges’ many fine players are not visitors from New Orleans!
CD CUT 10, 'DAUGHTER OF CONTORTION'
Finger-style acoustic steel-stringed guitar solo. Genial, original, post-Blind-Blake ragtime/blues. Mary is one of the world's finer exponents of this style; prodigiously precise - and relaxed about it.
CD CUT 7, 'SLOW LANE TO GLORY'
Mary's slide resophonic guitar, in duet with ( her son ) Jesse Withers' ac bass. In no hurry, but definitely virtuosic. Her control of the slide is remarkable
CD CUT 9, 'PORTLAND TOWN'
Ragtime-tinged, sweetly wry ode to the city where its singer-guitarist-author now lives. She nicely plays with/turns around assorted negative preconceptions about how grey and wet is Portland, Oregon. Courtney Von Drehle's accordion is pump-organ-like. The other player is the tuba-wielding Mark Vehrencamp.
CD CUT 13, 'UP A LAZY RIVER'
Very relaxed: Mary fingerpicks her guitar in duo with Tim O'Brien's fiddle. In the middle, Mary sings/croons the lyric.
CD CUT 5, 'COLUMBIA RIVER RAG'
Limber, prodigiously deft finger-style, ragtime original for finger-picked steel-stringed ac guitar, quite solo. Mary lives near the river in question, in Portland Oregon.
CD CUT 6, 'THE GHOST OF THE ST LOUIS BLUES'
Very nice, new, trad-jazz-ish version of an old black-faced minstrelsy song. It is based on/alludes to W.C.Handy's 'St. Louis Blues'. Mary sings/croons and plays deft ac guitar, with Doug Bundy's clarinet, Reggie Houston's soprano sax, Mac Potts' piano, and Mark Vehrencamp's tuba.. Its author ( 1900 - 1962 ) was a blackface minstrel, and a big influence on country music . Miller was almost certainly the first person to record 'Lovesick Blues.' Hank Williams allegedly learned it from him.
CD CUT 3, 'BACKWATER BLUES'
Does not imitate the author/original performer..but does really address the song. Mary's voice and deft ac guitar in duo with pianist Janice Scroggins. This song vividly depicts the impact of a flood on the already-impoverished. It has enjoyed a whole new currency in New Orleans, post-Katrina. However, the widespread belief that Bessie wrote it about the great Mississippi floods of 1927 is mistaken; those floodwaters rose AFTER Bessie had recorded the song.
CD CUT 12, 'TEMPTATION RAG'
Nifty new version of a ragtime standard. Its author published it in 1909. Mary fingerpicks one ac guitar, Robin Kessinger flatpicks the other one, with Mark Vehrencamp's tuba and mandolinist Spud Siegel
CD CUT 14, 'BLUE WALTZ'
Sweet, unrushed waltz for Mary's finger-style ac guitar, with Tim O'Brien's mandolin and Courtney Von Drehle's accordion.