Venue: Hotel Jama / Postojna / Slovenia
Concert date: 01/24/2008
Attendance: 400
Ticket price: €13.00
Thursday nights spent in the safe, blissfully draft-free surroundings of the Postojna Blues Festival, far from the misery of those coastal winds, are becoming a fixture in the calendar of every honest music nut. This time, of course, nobody could afford to miss the visit of the self-proclaimed last living legend of Texas blues, a gentleman by the name of Sonny Rhodes. At seventy-six, he more than lived up to that billing, both with his voice and, naturally, his “stature”. All the high hopes, so naively pinned on the guitarist’s mischievous show, turned out to be completely justified. Over a set of a good two hours, the charismatic Rhodes shook a dozen great blues numbers out of his sleeve, leading us blindfolded and dangerously close to the primal blues tradition the whole way. It’s a heartening fact, and one that goes nicely with the slightly surprising sight of the parking lot in front of Hotel Jama in Postojna being jam-packed with cars for the first time in ages. You can take it as optimistic proof that the Alpine foothills have a real appetite for blues.
You get used to it fast: Papa Rhodes, at an age to be envied, isn’t about to stop cheerfully preaching the soothing powers of everyday pleasures of the flesh. Which, of course, isn’t the least bit surprising. Any absence of singing about said activities would be more or less blasphemous, at least when it comes to the depraved morals of your typical blues melos. You could feel its intensity on every front Thursday night, anywhere our ears were still capable of telling the untamed slide squealing from its strikingly similar cousin, the mating call of some seriously exotic bird! Sonny Rhodes is definitely a notable figure. His music is less formulaic technical wizardry than an instinctive blues sermon, and combined with his imposing personal presence it makes for an exceptional tandem, one that can warm up even a Slovenian crowd stuffed to the gills with beef and žlikrofi. Alongside these superior musical gifts stands a clear message, really the well-known mix of straight-up analysis of all sorts of life situations, arranged with that typical Black spirit and humor, with no shortage of sharp rhetoric, melancholy and, finally, the magic of love.
Sonny Rhodes split Thursday night into two heavily stretched-out halves, each with its own flavor. But before we get to dissecting both in detail, allow me one more word about the finely tuned color scheme that adorned the legendary musician’s worn-out torso. Dressed in a deep-blue evening outfit, jokingly rounded off with a pair of sky-white shoes and a screaming-yellow hat, Sonny stepped onto the stage with a mostly light step and immediately tossed the cold Postojna evening a brilliant I Wonder Why, a simple song of short, sharply spiced guitar coughs that kept reminding us of their intolerant nature with constant barking all night long! How the night went, despite an excellent session band, was understandably all Sonny Rhodes. Guitar playing that’s more sparkling and emotional than pedantic is the magic with which Sonny successfully builds on the norms of traditional blues, borrows impulsive motifs from blues giants like T – Bone Walker and BB King, and reworks them into arrangements that are up to date yet still sharpened to a edge. Tiziano Galli, a well-known face of the Postojna crowd, had the honor of contributing a share to this adaptation, so to speak. Tiziano’s brave wrestling with Sonny’s noticeably more aggressive delivery kindly relieved the evening of one-sided displays of blues playing. So next, with 10 Pan Alley and Personal Manager, we also got a somewhat lighter instrumental workout, whose emotional peak was the sentimental blues ballad Since I Met You.
The second half of the night rang out under the domination of the lap steel guitar. Sonny Rhodes is quite likely one of the few blues guitarists who ever picked up this interesting instrument, tamed it and bent it to his own way of expressing himself musically. Now it serves faithfully under the baton of the guitarist’s uncompromising blues tutelage, and it almost seems like it was meant for him from the very start. Rivers Invitation proved the greatest triumph of fiery slide playing combined with brazenly growling vocals. Please love Me added a new dimension to the evening, again with major help from the in-form Tiziano. For the finale, Sonny turned to the old funk standard Shakey Ground. Half joking, half serious, the heat carried him off into the crowd one last time, where his odd shuffling once more glued an entire orchestra of eyes in the hotel auditorium to him. No wonder, since Sunny Rhodes celebrates at least as much in his presence as in his playing. A legend who, even in the new millennium, stubbornly remains exactly what he is. A true one-off!
Text: Daniel Pavlica
Photography: Mojca Perdih
Setlist
1.I Wonder Why 2.Put The Foot 3.10 Pan Alley 4.Think 5.Personal Manager 6.Please Love Me 7.River’s Invitation 8.10 St. Inn 9.Since I Met You 10.Shakey Ground
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