11/1/2005

Graham Clarke

For most people down here in Mississippi & Louisiana, the past few weeks have been pretty tumultuous (especially on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, where a ninety-mile-by-one-mile stretch was basically wiped away by Katrina), but most of the attention has been focused on the plight of New Orleans. Watching the scenes of destruction on TV (once the trees were cleared and power was restored) showed as sad a scene as could be imagined and a lot of people wonder if the Crescent City would ever be the same. A couple of weeks after Katrina, Yellow Dog Records released Bywater Dance by guitar virtuoso Mary Flower. Long regarded as an accomplished fingerstyle guitarist who also excels at lap slide, Flower recorded the disc in New Orleans, in the Bywater area downriver from the French Quarter, in May of 2005 with a host of the city's finest musicians providing assistance and it serves as a positive reminder of how things were in New Orleans not that long ago. The music is a mixture of old-timey New Orleans Jazz, swing, and R&B, combined with Flower's own folk-blues style, and sounds modern and traditional at the same time. The guest musicians include such Crescent City stalwarts as pianist Henry Butler, keyboardist Jon Cleary, clarinetist Dr. Michael White, and Kirk Joseph on sousaphone. Despite all the guests, Bywater Dance is Mary Flower's baby. Her guitar work is breathtaking and her vocals are warm and inviting. Flower wrote five of the fourteen tracks here and all of them are of the instrumental variety ("Raise The Devil," "La Grippe," "Terminal Rag," with White lending a helping hand, "Hudson River Rag," and the pensive closer "Good News Waltz"). The remaining songs are an interesting and sometimes unfamiliar set of covers, noteworthy among them a poignant take on Geechie Wiley's "Last Kind Word Blues," a spirited version of Leroy Carr's "Papa's On The Housetop," and the Red Stick Ramblers' "Main Street Blues" is a definite high point. Flower's cover of "Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?" is particularly moving, in light of the current state of affairs in New Orleans. While Bywater Dance serves as a reminder of the vibrancy and versatility of New Orleans' musical tradition, it also serves as a promise that this tradition will be continued with the eventual rebuilding and restoration of the city. Yellow Dog Records will be donating a portion of the profits from sales of the album to charities working to support New Orleans musicians and preserve and rebuild the city's musical heritage.