Artist:     Clarence Spady

Album:     Surrender

Label:     NOLA Blue

Release Date:     5.21 2021

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Pennsylvanian bluesman Clarence Spady has been a frequent performer at the annual Briggs Farm Blues Fest, which this magazine and this writer habitually review. There still appears to be a open slot or two (hint) at this year’s fest and it would be good timing to have Spady appear again, since Surrender represents only his third album since his 1997 W.C. Handy (pre-BMA) Award nomination for Best Artist Debut for Nature of the Beast. This is his first recording since his BMA nominated Just Between Us for Soul Blues Album. Spady, now in his 60s, has been playing the blues since he was five years old, and, as those nominations attest to, he knows his way around the guitar and has found his comfort zone at the intersection of blues and soul, something all those booty-shaking folks at the Back Porch stage at Briggs Farm know all too well.

Newly signed to NOLA Blues respectable roster of artists, Spady has for now put aside the dramatic tragedies and sidetracks that have derailed or interrupted what was initially a promising career. The nine tracks contain seven original songs and two covers, with three previously unreleased recordings from 1999 captured at the River St. Jazz Café in Plains, PA, that appear as the last three selections. So, here we have a twenty-year span which involves a different set of musicians. New protégé Adam Schultz plays lead guitar on many of the newer tunes, including Shultz’s own “Good Conversation.” Lost friends Lucky Peterson and Shorty Parham are honored respectively with a cover of the former’s burning slow blues “When My Blood Runs Cold” while the latter’s drums on “Addiction Blues” and adds background vocals to the closing “Pick Me Up.”

The Peterson cover, where Spady plays lead, and the poignant shuffle “K-Man,” written for his son who lost his life at the way-too-soon age of 25 (with Tom Martin’s harmonica), are the two of the major highlights. The title track finds Spady in a B.B. King-like testifying blues mode. Z.Z. Hill’s classic “Down Home Blues” gets an acoustic treatment and slowed tempo with Martin’s blues harp in the forefront and solos from Spady and pianist Scott Brown as the tune fades out.

The three 1999 tracks feature a quartet of Spady, organist Mark Hamza, tenorist Tom Hamilton and drummer Anthony Wilson, except on the aforementioned “Addiction Blues.” The clear highlight of the three is the rollicking, rambling instrumental “Jones Falls Expressway” which gives all members ample space to strut their stuff.

Spady claims that he’s “all in” from this point forward. Let’s hope this turns on the ignition switch for an engine that’s been idling at best for too long.

—Jim Hynes