Dom Flemons - Dance Tunes, Ballads and Blues
Reviewed by David Whiteis
Dom Flemons, usually heard on banjo, guitar, and harmonica with the Carolina Chocolate Drops, here steps out on his own. As usual, the emphasis is on vintage acoustic stylings, some of which derive from the pre-blues era and borrow equally from the overlapping African American and Anglo-European folk traditions. But it’s obvious that for Flemons, this music is contemporary and relevant. Three of the eleven songs here are originals; others creatively graft new ideas onto vintage frameworks or combine several old-time themes into fresh combinations.
In fact, it’s the rough edges in Flemons’ delivery that make his performances especially arresting. His vocals on the half-sung, half-spoken Stackolee are illustrative: when he’s singing, he skirts the edges of dissonance, and when he’s narrating he sometimes sounds almost overcome with anguished fury, thus accentuating the tale’s underlying theme of violence. On Dom Blues he showcases rare examples of both string-bending and slide on banjo, and his quavering, cracked mewl echoes the timbral and rhythmic unpredictability of his playing. On the other hand, he’s also capable of perfectionism, as on his feathery guitar fingerpicking on Robert Wilkins’ Police Sergeant Blues and Take Me Back (the latter a combination of Lightnin’ Hopkins and Frank Stokes themes), his speed-demon banjo picking on Earl King, and his whooping harmonica pyrotechnics on Fox Chase.
At times Flemons’ excursions into vintage stylistic expression sound self-conscious—his faux-ragtime ballad Looks Like Another Lonely Moon, ostensibly a moan of romantic longing, is almost hokumish; his take on Jimmie Rodgers’ My Little Lady might have been better served by a stronger dash of the ironic detachment he eschews. In general, though, this is a fascinating and intimate self-portrait of a young artist who’s immersed himself in too-often-forgotten musical traditions and emerged with vivid stories to tell and surprisingly fresh songs to sing.
Source: Living Blues
