"They forget about that core soul — that soulful part of the blues that examines the human condition."
It's early on a Friday night, and the gloves have come off. Ted Drozdowski is talking the blues, and he doesn't pull punches. Drozdowski — singer, guitarist, leader of the Scissormen, Nashville transplant and occasional Scene contributor — is back on his old turf, perched in the back of Johnny D's, the well-loved Boston club slated to be razed by condo developers by the end of the year. It's the release party for his newest album, Love & Life. It's an album that is rooted in the deepest of blues yet explores the outer edges of the cosmos. The room is filling up fast. Forty minutes into a conversation with the Scene, Drozdowski is fired up, albeit in the cool, calm manner you'd expect from an eminent hepcat.
"The thing is, a lot of those guys are really well-intentioned and think that writing about girls and cars examines the human condition," Drozdowski says. "And it does, but in a really generic way that I don't think it counts. I'm actually willing to dismiss that stuff no matter how much it might incur me the wrath of other people. I'm willing to dismiss that stuff out of hand as not being relevant.
"To me," he goes on, "you have to write tunes that are at least somehow rooted in the current world. Or if you're writing about old themes, at least put them to music that has some semblance to the here and now. This when we're alive. ... To be a creative artist you need to have your own identity, an original sound and an original approach, and I think [most blues musicians] miss the boat on those things."
True to form, on Love & Life Drozdowski uses the deep, hard hill-country blues of R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough as a starting point, then lets the music roam where it needs to roam in order to make a truly modern statement. Coated in fuzz and prone to heavy, meditative grooves, the album sounds like a psychedelic freak-out escaping from a cloud of reefer smoke at a crowded house show, its grimy tonality and gnarly physicality bristling with daring and danger.
This might be because Drozdowski's connection to the blues, the musicians that originated it and the place where it comes from is a real one. Inspired by a press screening of Deep Blues: A Musical Pilgrimage to the Crossroads, the influential 1991 documentary by writer Robert Palmer ("the good one, not the evil one") and director Robert Mugge, Drozdowski traveled to rural Mississippi to meet and learn from the likes of Burnside, Kimbrough and the last remaining legends of juke-blues. Drozdowski befriended Burnside, but only years later would the bluesman discover that Drozdowski actually played guitar as well. That friendship is the foundation for Love & Life's "R.L. Burnside (Sleight Return)," but can also be heard every time Drozdowski unleashes a guitar solo. There's an added shade of tone and color that separates him from the blues pack, and a broader palette than what we've come to expect from folks working within the blues tradition.
It's this willingness to buck the status quo while taking the music all the way back to its roots that makes Love & Life (and the live show that accompanies it) so damn enthralling. Drozdowski's enthusiasm for the infinite possibilities of the blues — and his massive collection of custom guitars — means that each song takes on its own personality and creates its own mood. From the Gun Club-channeling fire of "Letter From Hell" to the stirring slow dance of "Let's Go to Memphis" (which features the recently departed and woefully underrated soul shouter Mighty Sam McClain), Drozdowski and crew make sure nothing ever backslides into Blueshammer territory.
Love & Life is rife with textures as surprising as they are familiar (I swear Drozdowski copped those boing-ing sounds on "R.L. Burnside" from John Zorn's "Hockey"), but when the band digs in and powers through tracks like the family history "Black Lung Fever" or the acoustic "Dreaming on the Road," it's just pure blues excitement. It's an album that reveals new layers with each listen, slowly and steadily unfurling new depth and character, bringing a freshness to a genre that many feel is long past its expiration date.
"There are some very creative people working in conventional blues today," Drozdowski says, "so I don't want to shit on the whole genre. But I'm willing to take a dump on a sizable part of it."
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