8/1/2006

Ian Zack

Mary Flower's career can be neatly divided into a "before" and an "after," but it's what happened in the middle that should be of particular interest to budding guitarists.

Flower, a gifted fingerpicker and rising star on the acoustic-blues scene, speaks in reverent tones about attending a music camp - one of those room-and-boardwork shops where novices hand out and play with the pros - at a crucial time in her artistic development. She says simply: "It changed my life."

Flower, 57, had come of age musically in and around Denver, Colorado. In the early 1970s, she toured the college coffeehouse circuit around the country, playing an eclectic mix of folk and roots music as part of a duo with Texas born singer and guitarist Katy Moffatt. In the late '70s, she got married and, before long, put her larger musical aspirations on hold to raise two children - although she did continue to play gigs in Denver, where she founded the Mother Folkers, a celebrated local woman's folk cooperative.

Around 1993, recently divorced, and with her kids in high school, Flower decided to jump-start a career that had never really quite taken off. As fate would have it, she was invited that year to the Augusta Heritage Center Blues Week in Elkins, West Virginia, as a "visiting guest artist" to play alongside the camp instructors - blues luminaries like John Cephas, Steve James, Paul Geremia, and John Jackson. Flower says the camaraderie and energy of the camp and the professionalism of her fellow musicians had a profound effect on her. "I realized that there was something out there that nurtured these players who weren't professional but had this love of acoustic blues in common," she says.

Flower had been building a growing repertoire of country-blues and ragtime tunes, and with the jolt of confidence that resulted from realizing she was far from alone in her musical pursuits, she suddenly knew what to do with it. "I came home and went right into the studio with a vengeance and recorded my first CD," she says.

She never looked back, and since then her career has maintained an upward trajectory. Flower has released five more CDs in the last 12 years, several to critical acclaim; she twice (in 2000 and 2003) took home a third-place trophy at the National Fingerpicking Guitar Championships in Winfield, Kansas; and she recently signed with Yellow Dog Records (www.yellowdogrecords.com), which released her latest CD, Bywater Dance, in late 2005.

Flower is now a regular instructor herself at an increasing number of guitar camps in the US, Canada, and the United Kingdom. She recommends the experience highly, not just as a way to learn from accomplished artists, but also for the vibe that results from living and breathing the music for days at a time. "If you spend one week at a guitar camp and you watch ten experts play, you just get that spirit," she says.

Although possessed of a husky, warm singing voice, Flower does not try to emulate Bessie Smith or, for that matter, any of the old blues masters. "There are a lot of white people who sing and try to sound like they're from Mississippi, and it sounds phony," she says, offering the following tip for neophytes: "If you're singing, never drop your Rs [for example, po' instead or poor], because that's when you get into trouble."

Her guitar style owes a great debt to such Piedmont blues and ragtime players as Blind Blake and Blind Boy Fuller, but Flower gets her own signature sound by using open strings and unusual partial chords up and down the neck to create a lot of movement and syncopation in both her covers and originals.

Surprisingly, given her penchant for writing original rags, Flower says she hardly ever thinks in terms of chords. "I follow my ear," she says. "It's like figuring out a puzzle until the last piece is in. It's trial and error, hit or miss, and when you hit on something that works, you move ahead."

Several years ago, Flower settled in Portland, Oregon, in part to be closer to her son, Jesse Withers, who plays bass in the popular Portland bluegrass band Jackstraw. Flower always keeps a guitar on hand in her living room, in case inspiration hits, the way it did at the first guitar camp. "You never know," she says, "when that little spark is going to happen."