David “Honeyboy” Edwards

I spent the weekend trying to put together few words to explain the philosophy of this place. I emphasized that here I will talk about contemporary music showing traditional B&W film photography (check out liveon35mm page if you want to know more).

What a better start than contradicting myself reviewing an artist, a venue and a music that belong to the past, using a B&W photograph digitally edited to delete an unwanted microphone?
Sounds good, doesn’t it? Exceptions are needed to confirm rules, and more important I needed an excuse to use Willie Dixon statement as a self motivation to start this journey.

“Blues is the roots, everything else is the fruit”

Many of you, hopefully, will not agree, which is a very good reason to invite you to start filling up the comment box on the bottom, but I quite like the idea of putting solid roots to this pages. It won’t last long, be sure that in the very near future lots of new exciting fruits will be harvested. Stay tuned! (You can leave your e-mail on the bottom right of this page and if you are on myspace join my friends and you will receive a new bullettin anytime something new is posted here. Otherwise bookmark this site, feed it to readers, tell your friends and comeback soon).

 OK, that’s enough, Let’s Start…

David Honeyboy Edwards – The Spitz, London.

This gig was to fill up my passion for Delta Blues. Already impressed in April by the wonderful-despite-the-age  “T-Model” Ford performance, 87 years old straight from Greenville, Mississippi, I desired to listen and portray 92 years of blues history. David “Honeyboy” Edwards, class 1915, was in town last August.

Honeyboy is like a living blues encyclopedia, which he published in a wonderful autobiography “the world don’t owe me nothing”. Teenager, Honeyboy learned to play guitar touring with Big Joe Williams in the early thirties, he was present when Robert Johnson was poisoned and was already playing for 35 years when the Stones did their first american tour. Picked up the guitar as an alternative to cotton fields, he started hoboing the Delta, moving to New Orleans in cold winters and up north to Chicago on freight trains in the summer. He was recorded by Alan Lomax in 1942, he was the one who suggested him to go and record a young guy called Muddy Waters.  Isn’t this enough to use the word legend? well, to me it is.

Impressively, 75 years on the road, Honeyboy still rocks! From classics as Robert Johnson’s Sweet Home Chicago to his compositions, first half on acoustic guitar, second on electric, with a rhythm guitarist and a harp player (his manager) backing him, his blues filled the super hot Spitz with real southern delta atmosphere.

Thanks to the wonderful production of not the same old blues crap which brings to London the best Blues acts, and to the Spitz one of the best East London venues, which closed for good its Spitafield location last thursday, liveon35mmstarts its life celebrating these delta bluesman David Honeyboy Edwards and inviting anyone to support the Spitz in the search of a new location to keep great music alive.

If you want to listen some of Honeyboy stripped down blues, check this

Photo tip 

Oh, yes I wrote somewhere I am going to give you photographic advices, so let’s see, what to say about this gig. Musicians singing and playing guitar sitting on a chair, with only one spotlight are hard stuff to portray. Main problem being the microphone which is always covering part of their face.

If this is the case, listen to the music (better if you know the song), wait for the solo or the instrumental part usually in the middle, after a couple of stanzas. That is the moment to shoot. Usually the singer moves away from the mic and concentrate on the guitar, which also give a deeper expression on his face.

 

~ by Valerio on October 1, 2007.