Artist: Mary Flower
Album: Livin’ With The Blues Again
Label: Little Village Foundation Records
Release Date: 8.17.2019
Any new release from Portland, Oregon-based acoustic picker Mary Flower is surely something to be welcomed and, dare I say it, treasured. Flower only delivers a new album when the time is right for her and this is her first offering for some years, since Bywater Dance, back in 2015.
Flower is a national acoustic finger-picking champion who moves effortlessly with guaranteed class and quality from her favored acoustic guitar to stunningly soulful and at times deceptively understated but always on-the-button lap-slide when the force takes her. It’s just way too easy to think of female US acoustic blues-based pickers as being limited to, say, Cindy Cashdollar, Rory Block or Bonnie Raitt. All of these are vitally important players in the modern blues world but Flower can and often does outstrip them all with her beautifully nuanced fretwork and a voice that matches her picking perfectly every time.
With her feet firmly rooted among the roots of early blues tradition, she is easily one of the best, if not the very best ragtime-blues picker out there. With Livin’ With The Blues Again, she once more turns out a genuinely superb bit of acoustic guitar with blues and its ragtime-cousin in full focus, delightfully delivered and produced. Tracks include the immediately demanding opener, “Crooked Rag,” the gospel-tinged “When Gabriel Comes Blowin’ On His Horn” and some straight, full on blues with the title track. An old Flower favorite also gets another welcome run with “River of Joy.” Indeed, this album represents the well-loved cannon of music that Flower has played and championed in recent years both in the studio and on the road, a near-perfect 12-track sampler for those who have yet to discover this hugely talented US picker, most accurately described by no less a figure than Jorma Kaukonen—a guy who knows his stuff—as a “national treasure in your own backyard.” But don’t just take Jorma’s word, get out and buy this album while you can.
—Iain Patience
Be the first to comment!