Just like the flame-shrouded voodoo woman rising out of the mists of a Mississippi cotton field on the album's cover, Elam McKnight's "Supa Good," on Desert Highway Records, is full of music that will reach down and grab your spirit and shake your soul to its foundation. It's been our pleasure to know Elam since his first recording, "Braid My Hair," and his talents have only gotten better. On this smokin' set, he pays homage to those from whom he has learned the meaning of the blues, greats such as R. L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough, and Othar Turner, among others. Check out "Mighty Men" for his tribute to them. Also, he's backed by a sho' nuff band of rogues named the West Levee Phantoms, and they include Ringo Jukes and Sam Carr on drums, Dano Shaw on bass, Ronnie Godfrey on keys, Kim Morrison on backing vocals, and Elam's recording partner on their acoustic sets and at the IBC, Britain's Keith Carter, on harp.
Elam's maturity as a writer and performer show thru markedly on this disc. He's got that certain swagger that seems to carry these tunes from the Delta juke joints right into your CD player. A good woman that's got "Kung Fu Power" starts off slow, then builds to a searing finish, featuring a fine solo at the bridge. Elam's mandolin takes the lead in the acoustic-themed "Long Curly Hair," with Keith's harp the perfect complement. "Hold You Closer" has a cool, soulful vibe, and with the punchy horn section and backing female chorus, gives this one a STAX feeling. A brilliant slide rolls over Keith's harp as Elam gets down with "What In The World Is Wrong," while everybody has a good time on "Pony Thang," rolling it like a locomotive thru the Clarksdale night.
We had two favorites, too. When a black cat comes after you, the best thing to do is bury it, so, complete with blasts from Elam's Browning 12-gauge (that, sadly, "lack reverb") we have "I Buried a Black Cat." And, Elam professes his intense adoration of Seventies "blaxploitation" film star Pam Grier, noting that "Foxy Brown is the sweetest woman I've ever seen!!" This one is punctuated by some killer "ho' house piano" from Ronnie Godfrey, too!
The very opening line of the CD, from "Devil Minded Woman," has Elam telling us that "a change is gon' come--a music revolution!"--and by the end of "Big Daddy's Lament," that closes the set, this prophecy is brought to fruition. Elam stresses that he's not merely following in the footsteps of the past masters, but looking "to see what they saw" and interpret it in his own way. Young men such as Elam, Richard Johnston, and the surviving members of the Burnside, Kimbrough, and Turner families, have a firm grasp on the meaning of the blues, and, more importantly, what the blues means to them. Elam, we tip our hats to you, young man....."Supa Good" is just that!!! Until next time...Sheryl and Don Crow.
NEW REVIEWS for SUPA GOOD:
Supa Good.
While it's one thing to call your latest CD Supa Good, it's another matter entirely to live up to that claim.
But like a (in)famous cornerback in the NFL with the marquee-grabbing moniker of Prime Time used to say, "It ain't bragging if you can back it up."
And while it may seem like Elam McKnight must have a huge set of stones for labeling his third CD Supa Good, let me tell you, it ain't bragging, cause McKnight and his troops certainly back it up.
In Spades.
After releasing his first two discs, Braid My Hair and Last Country Store, the latter an acoustic-type effort that paired the dynamic young bluesman with UK harmonica great Keith Carter, McKnight seems intent on shaking up the establishment with Supa Good.
Wound throughout the 16 tracks that make up Supa Good is an underlying theme of revolution, paved by looking back in order to see the future.
McKnight, while obviously a historian and keeper of the flame for those that came before him, has no intention of hitching his wagon solely to the past, rather he seems determined to roll up his sleeves in search of something that is anything but the "same-old, same-old."
Brilliant.
But knowing that McKnight considers R.L. Burnside's 1996 CD A Ass Pocket Of Whiskey to be the Holy Grail of the blues, (as well it is) it's no surprise that Supa Good should find its own spot on the great, big book shelf of the blues, adding new chapters along the way.
For not only does McKnight freely channel the sound of the late, great Burnside along with fellow Hill Country Godfather Junior Kimbrough, he has honed in on the attitude also,sounding like he just stepped out of the backdoor of a Holly Springs BBQ joint straight into the recording studio. Equipped with not only his Silvertone guitar, but with a Browning semi-automatic 12-gauge shotgun, to boot. One can almost imagine Kimbrough burnishing such a firearm to quell an unruly crowd at his famous juke joint on a Sunday night, as McKnight ends the third track on the disc, "I Buried A Black Cat" by letting fly with some hot lead from said Browning, and then exclaiming, "I think the shotgun needs more reverb."
Vocals, guitars, mandolin, tambourine, snare and Browning shotgun, McKnight seems at home whatever instrument rests in his hands.
Revolution, indeed.
McKnight and his West Levee Phantoms, including the red-hot Carter on harp, along with legendary skin-pounder Ringo Jukes on drums and Dano Shaw on bass, deliver a most satisfying blend of old-school Delta blues with a sort of 22nd-Century feel, mixed with a DIY punk-kind of ethos. Jumping from a straight-ahead shuffle to a breakneck, out-of-control, 4-4 on-the-floor rock thing, sometimes within the same song, McKnight and crew keep things interesting from the get-go.
The disc opens with "Devil Minded Woman," starting out like a Burlington Northern engine gathering steam as McKnight fires the opening salvo - "I think I hear a change gonna come." That change does indeed come as the locomotive rattles on, chugging along like a train bound for Clarksdale, Miss. But that train also sounds like might just jump the track at any second, building speed as snippets of fife music - ala the late Otha Turner, show up to speed things along. In the end, however, conductor Carter keeps the train firmly on pace with his outstanding harp work, giving the tune an element of danger missing from a lot of contemporary blues.
Such is Supa Good.
And just when you think you've heard it all, McKnight calls up the Coup De Gras via the disc's closing track.
All 5:39 of "Big Daddy's Lament" are heartfelt minutes, as McKnight rap-sings-talks his way through a litany of people who not only have influenced his work, but also have supported him on what at times has been a rocky road to where he is at today. Most notable in McKnight's thanks is the afore-mentioned Burnside, the "Big Daddy" in the title of the song. McKnight shouts Burnside's praises of the very top of the church spire, saying "I call him Teacher, 'cause he took my soul to school."
All-in-all, whether showing much love for Hill Country legends, or "Pam Grier," or just flat getting down on Son House's "Pony Thang," McKnight's Supa Good is just that, Supa Good.
And like the man says, "It ain't bragging if you can back it up."
Here's hoping McKnight finds the bright spotlight of Prime Time in the near future of what looks to be a long career in the blues. For as McKnight says, quoting the immortal Red, owner and operator of Red's Lounge in Clarksdale, ""This music game is on for life."
---Terry Mullins
Fantastic effort from young generation roots music master...
This album is great, highly recommended to blues fans, roots afficianados, hill country blues devotees, etc. Elam has put a great deal of effort into this CD, and it shows...Walk, don't run, to your nearest music retailer and purchase "SUPA GOOD."
--- Terry Buckalew Host (Delta Sounds Radio) Helena, AR
Supa Good and Elam McKnight is the future of the Blues! And don't let the skin color fool you as he is real deal old time Mississippi Blues with a modern touch. The music is in good hands with the likes of Elam.
Robert Lynn
Host of the Back Alley Blues Show on KSPQ
"Strap in. Elam McKnight has returned to the recording scene with a vengeance. After his more sedate acoustic team-up with Keith Carter, McKnight has roared back with Supa Good (Desert Highway), a wild and wooly gumbo of 21st Century Hill Country Blues that grabs you by the throat from the first track and hangs on for a solid hour."
Graham Clarke
Elam McKnight is Supa Dupa Good!
Review by Rick Saunders
"Elam Mcnight's music is filled with shoutin' and singin', fat flat foot stompin' and leering dirty preachin' grooves that roll and tumble and crawl their way thru fifty-some years of red dirt, swampy, back porch blues, basement funque, rattle trunk hip-hop haze, deep woods hunch, small town 'tonk n' juke and big city rock and swagger. Mr. Mcknight filters it through well worn rough cotton sugar and grit sacks and tennesee sun and sweat to deliver up a sound that's both familiar, full bodied, refreshing and fine. It's good time any night party music as well as sitting home drinkin' and thinkin' music."
Painting by Brandy Kayzakian-Rowe
TOUR DATES
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YOU CAN WATCH AT THIS LINK AND CONTROL SCREEN SIZE
This Music Video comprises footage from Elam and Keith's performance at the 2005 Juke Joint Festival in Clarksdale, MS and the Alan Lomax Film "The Land Where Blues Began." Few figures deserve greater credit for the preservation of America's folk music traditions than Alan Lomax. Scouring the backroads, honky tonks and work camps of the Deep South, he unearthed a treasure trove of songs and singers, documenting the music of the common man for future generations to discover; through Lomax's pioneering efforts, cultural traditions ranging from the Delta blues to Appalachian folk to field hollers continue to live on, with his invaluable recordings offering a compelling portrait of times and cultures otherwise long gone.
ELAM MCKNIGHT: Braid My Hair
Blues rock all the way. Elam McKnight's song writing talent is more than evident and take this CD release to the room of fine listening. Elam sings with everything he has to offer. Blues never felt so good. (4 out of 5 stars)"
---Roots Music Report
BUY DIGITAL DOWNLOADS FOR THOSE NEW MP3 Players at the following:
King Biscuit Radio SHOW now on the MUSIC PAGE! This was ELam and Keith's first appearance on the KING BISCUIT RADIO HOUR with Sonny Payne. Scroll down and give it a listen!
Poland Rocks - April 25, 2008
Dear Elam,
It’s here. The parcel you've sent me with your newest disc has reached me safe and sound today, thank you very much!
I am so happy that you’ve decided to go back to your “Braid My Hair” type of sound with Mississippi blues played by a small combo as this is the sound I really love. Raw, not polished. Your approach to the blues is so pure, no fancy stuff, just the real Delta sound with some talented cats behind your back. They base they create for you is solid, bringing to mind juke joint cuts of Junior Kimbrough’s band but it is your vocal delivery that works like a cherry on a milkshake. Your singing is strong and your voice’s timbre is plain perfect for this kind of music. It’s not something I say lightly as the voice is always the first thing I focus on. Also, you had a cool idea of incorporating modern sounds into your Delta stew – the closing cut of the CD can well serve as a look into the future of the blues. Thanks to people like you it is going to be a bright future.
As always I’ll be happy to spin your stuff in my shows.
Thank you again Elam for the music you've sent me! Let us stay in touch.
Best wishes,
Przemek Draheim
Back TO the Recording GAME!!!! - December 4, 2007
Many people have asked "Elam when are you going to work on the next album?"
Well here you go:
It has been about a year and me and the boys (Dano and Ringo) are back at it. After touring and releasing Supa Good we decided it was time to get busy recording the next Monstrosity.
It was good to be together again. We tracked about 10 songs and got a good start on our next
Musical adventure. The album has a definite Rock feel already and will probably expand off into
areas uncharted as of yet. It should be interesting. Nonetheless we are happy to begin again.
There is an ancient Zen saying that says "there is no greater step than the first."
So much excitement exists in this act of beginning. You learn so much from the exuberance and
the common bond you feel with musicians who have the same vision.
This album will most likely be a labor of love and our time will be taken in its creation.
We will spit out some rough examples when we are comfortable enough with their "roughness."
Again it is great to be back in the ring. Recording is a great experience and much time and care
will be spent on this puppy
Details to follow soon!
Peace
Love
Namaste
Elam McKnight
News Diet Fast - October 12, 2007
Off the News Fast Diet
I went on a news fast a couple of years ago after deciding that watching hours of CNN was damaging my mind in some way. Back in the good old “post 9-11 constant state of shock” days it seemed a sensible thing to do because any second the world was going to just, well, blow up. Of course if I bored with CNN I would switch to FOX NEWS to really get my blood pumping because over there the world had already “blown up” and they were describing the chaos. Whew! I get breathy just thinking about it.
So after my two year hiatus from cable news I turned to the TV and just left it on CNN for an hour as I researched a couple of things on GOOGLE. Now bear in mind I still read the news from the Internet. I would feel a total oaf if I did not at least make some attempt to keep up with my world and conceptualize the things going on in it. But as for TV news I tried to keep away from it until the other day.
I will not tell whose program I was watching because I do not think they are to blame for the realization I came to after my hour of being bombarded with the news. It is neither CNN’s fault or anyone else’s. I do not think they have swayed me to this thing that hit me like a pile of stones. I think it only popped something that had been festering in my almost conscious mind and after pulling away from the day’s headlines I sadly realized it; I was a little bit ashamed to be an American.
Before the “well get the H$%^ out of the country” thoughts enter your mind or you think that I have lost some type of love for this thing so dear to me let me first explain. Then, after I have explained, if you, dear reader, are still angered with my personal conclusion then let the slime sling.
I pulled away from the television kind of disappointed in myself for even thinking this thing. But then I held on to the thoughts I was having and let them circle in my mind to see if they resonated or fell about in a clutter, which would mean they were ill thought. The clutter never came and I had to sit with the truth I felt. I was ashamed of being an American and here is why.
One story in particular caught my attention. Our Congress was passing a bill that labeled the actions of the Turkish Ottomans in WWI “genocide” against the Armenians. This insulted the Turkish people to the point that they pulled their ambassador home from the US. Of course Turkey, being our main staging ground for supplies to Iraq, is a big piece in the Bush Administration’s “Puzzle” that is the War in Iraq. So they were busying themselves apologizing and saying to the government of Turkey that they were sorry for this. But then you have this same administration’s insistence to this same government, that whatever they do, they cannot attack the Kurds to their south who routinely attack them and kill their citizens.
Here is where “we” make no sense to the rest of the world. I will not speak to the right or wrong of Congress’ actions because, honestly, I do not know enough about WWI history to make comment. But here is how it plays: we first insult a country then tell them, as we have told them for years, that they cannot, under any circumstances, retaliate on a group, the Kurdish Rebels, that has dogged them since 1984, crossed their borders, and killed their citizens. Current body count is roughly 30,000 Turkish citizens.
Yet we, the United States of America, can say that Iraq had something to do with the killing of 3,000 of our citizens, which they did not, and that they were intent on attacking us with weapons of Mass Destruction, which they were not. We can then travel thousands of miles to this country and make war with it under these, at best, suspicious guises.
I can hear the voices now from my country boy past. “We don’ need no permission from anybody!” “We do what we want to do!” “We the greatest country in the world!” And these sentiments, though they are loud and passion filled, are not what the world needs to hear from our collective mouths. It does not take a great deal of observing and conceptualizing the problem: we are not that popular anymore and many millions of people all over the world are none too happy with us.
We pride ourselves, maybe rightfully in the past, as being a leader in the world, a just one a lot of times. We are a far cry from the old days. And what brought this home to me, when I realized that I was not as proud as I once was to say I was an American, was the one shining example of patriotism I can think of: my grandfather. I went into the other room where he sat, after I shut off the television, and noticed a picture book he had been looking at voraciously for the last couple of weeks: Ken Burn’s The War. It is a quite notable book to him as he served in “the war” and as I have watched him scan those pages, through WWII era black and white photos, I wonder how much these things probably take him back to those times. A time when we were the world’s savior and my grandfather a member of what will always be, IMHO, the greatest generation of Americans to ever walk the earth.
I looked at the book myself and found particular interest in pictures of brave young American boys marching through the streets of France as though they were Greek gods come to life to the Parisians. The dichotomy of then to now, where now we might be ridiculed on site in a foreign land, when we were once lauded and praised as redeemers, by of all people, the French, burned in my mind. It made me think that if my grandfather’s generation and their efforts were an emotional investment. One that could be used by future generations to purchase sympathy and respect from other countries it has sadly been neglected and now, I fear, spent up by the current lackeys we allow to run our government.
It makes me so frustrated when I realize the picture we portray to the world. And I know this picture from talking to others in Europe, face to face. When I traveled there to play music I was actually fearful and anytime I did a radio interview I prefaced it with a warning to not ask me anything political for fear of starting a mess. I must say I was treated graciously by all Europeans that I met and spoke with but was leery of them bringing up anything about my own country’s actions. Then I realized, sadly, why they never brought it up. Many of them think we, as Americans all are 100% in support of everything that our government does. One Italian person told me this and could not believe, when I told him I was quite objectionable to many of my government’s actions. He said he felt this way because all they see there is how we are in total support of everything. It did make me feel better also to hear one girl tell me quite frankly that the Italians love us, American people, but only hate a handful of people.
Again I am coming to terms with this thing called shame, shame in being a member of a club that is doing so many things wrong. We can spend half of a trillion dollars on a war that 70% of our country is not in favor of but we cannot insure the children of America’s working poor. That really sells well. “Give us your children. We will use them to be killed and maimed in a war that most of you do not want and then do not even think to ask us to help you secure the health of these same children we use, guilelessly, in the immediate future.” Anyone who is angered with me for my shame I would ask you to let this sit with you for just a minute. And also realize the oxymoron that is “WORKING POOR!”
Before the preface of Ken Burn’s The War there is a dedication for the 1,000 veterans from WWII who die everyday. This inscription made me think of one of my favorite movies, Gladiator, and the words spoken at its end. If you have not seen this movie stop reading now because it is far better than what I am writing and go watch it because I am going to ruin the ending. When Russell Crowe’s character Maximus dies and the princess speaks of the old glory that once was ROME and asks for assistance to carry away his tragic but heroic body it was easy for me to draw the comparison to both of our dying or dead memories. It is a sad lament to cry for a time when we, as the modern Rome, were the great shining city on the hill. And if we are the modern Romans where is our Marcus Aurelius for I greatly fear that we are beneath a Nero.
It is not necessary for the entire world to like us. Actually I think there will always be a portion that will not like us and they should not because we will never like them, and in fact revile and hate them. Countries and regimes who subjugate women to the level of slave, allow religion, many times an extremist one, to be a form of government, and those that kill its own citizens unjustly and trample on even a basic level of human rights will not and should not ever be respected by our country and its citizens. Any country or organization that disdains the advancement of knowledge and would really rather us live in a state resembling the turn of the millennium, not 2000 A.D but the one that started at 1000 A.D, should never be taken seriously nor respected beyond common courtesy.
We have to give respect before we receive it in kind. I fear that we have a lot of respect to gain back before we can give it again as a country. There was a time, not that long ago, 2001 actually, when the world stood with us proudly in a time of need. What a bountiful and righteous time we held briefly in our hands in those days. We had the world, most of it or at least the parts we cared about, and ready to join us in an honorable fight, one that was unquestionably justified. Why was that opportunity so quickly dispelled? How could we mess something that positive up? Can we ever regain our once vaulted status? Not the one where we all stand around and tell each other how great we are but the real kind of status that lets us look honestly at ourselves and see what we should be: One Nation…(you fill in the rest.)
