A person would have been hard-pressed to decide
just which glowed the brightest on a clear, crisp Halloween night in West
Plains.
Was it the beautifully-intoxicating full moon that
radiated down from the Heavens onto the Court Square?
Or was it the brilliantly beaming face of Cedell
Davis, lit up with a smile so infectious that you couldn't help but
feel warm inside?
Truth be known, it was probably Davis, the
83-year-old living blues legend from Pine Bluff, that cast the biggest glow, as
he closed the book on another outstanding chapter of Robert
Lynn's annual Back Alley Blues Bash in the elegant Opera House in West
Plains.
It wasn't hard to understand why Davis was smiling
so broadly and favoring those in attendance with stories of when he ran with
blues icons like Sonny Boy Williamson and Robert Nighthawk back in the
wild-and-wooly days when Helena rivaled Chicago for blues capital of the
world.
It's a little thing called fresh air.
Rescued from the confinement of being a nameless,
faceless resident stuck in the back room of some forgotten nursing
home, Davis is right where he feels most at home these days.
Up on the stage, in front of adoring
fans.
Lovers of the real-deal Delta blues
have Brethren, a smoking-hot band from Hot Springs, Ark., to thank for
Davis' re-emergence into the spotlight.
Brethren founder Greg "Big Papa" Binns began
visiting Davis in a Pine Bluff nursing home a few years ago and that led to the
one-of-a-kind pairing of a Delta blues treasure with a band that Binns describes
as "Soundgarden meets Skip James."
Although a debilitating stroke has robbed the
wheelchair-bound Davis of the ability to play his unique slide guitar,
using a butter knife for a slide, he can still belt out his signature tunes
like "Chicken Hawk" and "Let Me Play With Your Poodle" with all the power and
force of a man half his age.
Brethren, a band that deserves to have both eyes
focused squarely on, set the tone for Davis' entrance by ripping out
sweltering-hot versions of a handful of tunes off their debut CD, Come Hell
or High Water.. Harmonica maestro John Stephens engaged the audience from the
get-go, hopping off stage and mingling with the couples dancing the night
away,while blowing some mean and meaty harp as Brethren hammered out "Oh,
Yeah" and "Bible Thumper."
After Davis made his way to the stage, the
intensity was ratcheted up several notches, just by the mere presence of
the West Helena born blues icon.
The real beauty of this Cedell Davis/Brethren combo
is the mutual respect they share. Just by looking in Davis' eyes and watching
the way he nodded his head in approval, one could tell he genuinely loves having
Brethren back him up. They understand and get what Davis is about. And as for
Brethren, their faces looked like a kid's face on Christmas morning might - full
of excitement and true joy- as they breathed life into Davis' classic
songbook.
The 2009 edition of the Back Alley Blues Bash,
which since its inception a half-decade ago has brought artists such as
Jimbo Mathus, T-Model Ford, Mem Shannon and Little Charlie and The Nightcats to
West Plains, got off to a blistering start thanks to the Dallas-based duo of
K.M. Williams and Washboard Jackson, better known as Trainreck.
But regardless of what their name might imply,
Trainreck is a perfectly-matched twosome and they had jaws dropping in disbelief
at the Opera House, just as they normally do at the Juke Joint festival in
Clarksdale every April.
Williams, self-taught on the instrument, slid up
and down on the broomstick neck of his cigar box guitar in a bundle of
bottleneck bliss, while Washboard pounded on his drums, using just his
hands, with such guttural abandon that it looked like his kit might
easily have raised a white flag and surrendered.
This convergence of boogie and brawl sounds kind of
like what might have happened had John Lee Hooker ever stumbled
into the middle of a Mike Tyson heavyweight fight.
This left the crowd at the Opera House thoroughly
impressed, as they jumped, stomped and howled with delight at the
have-to-see-it-to-believe-it blues magic of Trainreck..
The perfect bridge between the boogie stomp of
Trainreck and the hurricane gale of Cedell Davis/Brethren, was the hard-slamming
wall of sound the Gary Coffey Band constructed.
And just like a trio of highly-skilled carpenters
armed with jackhammers might do, Summersville, Mo's Gary Coffey Band
shook the very ground that the Opera House was built on.
Opening with a Coffey original, the chugging
"Fishin'" and closing with an out-of-control version of George Thorogood's "Bad
to the Bone," the Gary Coffey Band proved that their resume of work is solid
enough to shoot their name straight to the top of the marquee.
Instead of just rehashing the same old tired
blues/rock that is threatening to dominate the scene these days, Coffey,
armed with either his trusty Charvel-Jackson or
his Peavey Predator, fired off lick after tasty lick that washed over the
audience like a refreshing cool breeze on a stuffy day.
That's also probably the best way to describe
Robert Lynn's Back Alley Blues Bash - like a refreshing breeze on a stuffy
day.
Refusing to hang with the stale and
stodgy same-old, same-old, the Back Alley Blues Bash seems hell-bent on
delivering a fresh wave of performers on a yearly basis that, while maybe off
the beaten path, are every bit the real deal that some of the more recognized
names in the business are.
And that should be more than enough to bring a
full-moon like smile to blues lovers near and far - Back Alley
style.