3/1/2006

Dennis Rozanski

Mary Flower is obviously a guitarmeister. You don't twice place in the top three at the National Fingerpicking Guitar Championship without mastering the fine art of string dancing. And that's exactly what the breezy Bywater Dance lets this acoustic bluesician tastefully do. But rather than traipse out the standard fare typically used to legitimize one's fingerstyle skills, Flower suits her own eclectic fancy. That means picking apart -- or even sliding through -- tunes from unsung heroes like Blind Teddy Darby ("Built Right On The Ground") and Geeshie Wiley ("Last Kind Word Blues"), as well as revamping other back-dated material like "Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?," It also means having a ball playing around with something like Leroy Carr's "Papa's On The Housetop." However none of this is done alone. Instead, full advantage was taken of holding the session downriver from the French Quarter, as a stream of locals parade through to enhance textures. Their most vibrant splash comes when trumpet, smash-mouth trombone, and a sousaphone's thunder shepherd along "New Orleans Hop Scop Blues." Through it all, Flower's clean, clear singing mirrors that clarity in her playing. Yet ample time is also allotted for just her guitar's voice, as it engages duet partners in musical conversation over handcrafted instrumentals. That's where you'll find Dr. Michael White's clarinet fluttering in the warm updrafts over "Terminal Rag," as well as guitarist Woody Mann doubling the grace and gentility of "Hudson River Rag." Here too lurks their emotional antithesis: a disavowal of charm in the form of lap-slide slurs and equally urgent bites from Jon Cleary's piano that walk the tightrope strung across "Raise The Devil."