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1/1/2006
David Kleiner
Leave your expectations behind. Mary Flower's Bywater Dance offers picking as muscular as her voice is gentle and much more than rootsy blues meets New Orleans. It explores styles with the first-take feel of a joyful jam in a record completed in a week. I put aside expectations for "The Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gives to Me," so strongly associated with the Jim Kweskin Jug Band. As with that outfit, Flower has fun with the song. Her full fingered plucking proves effective paired with piano, with the two playing almost in unison on the passing chords. Flower chunks efficiently behind Amasa Miller's imaginative solo on the 88s then does her own impressive improvising. "Raise the Devil," the first of five Flower instrumentals, brings a Tacoma-like sound to the record with some lap steel. An otherworldly piano solo by Jon Cleary caps the arrangement, with Flower providing adept support. A walking bass kicks off La Grippe, presaging the nice strolling of Flower's active thumb. Flower's vocal on "Last Kind Word Blues" underlines one of the most affecting cuts, made even more bleak by Jon Cleary's fittingly dark, sustained B3 chords and untraditional piano sounds. Flower's jaunty picking on "Terminal Blues" reaches a ragtime peak in a duet with Michael White's voice-like clarinet. Listen to the way they go out together. Flower's heartfelt version of "Buddy Can You Spare a Dime" opens with solo guitar, soon joined by a horn section with some trumpet-supplied growl. A delicious guitar duet between Flower and Woody Mann highlights the gentle cakewalk of "Hudson River Rag. "Main Street Blues" bring jug band into the mix with washboard by Chaz Leary. Listen to the way the guitar solo sets up the clarinet. Check out the sousaphone. This song also has the CD's most unforgettable line, "The promoter's got an odor like a day-old floater." Henry Butler brings the most recognizably New Orleans piano to the CD on cuts like "Built Right on the Ground." Flower answers with some very hot slide guitar to create the album's swingingest tune. The sweet "Good News Waltz" ends the record as pleasantly confounding as it is throughout.