The Transmigration of Blind Joe Death
Randy Adams
Come into this landscape gently, maybe the flat farmland of Mississippi or the open plain of a grand Hollywood western filmed in Montana. Ease in with Randy Adams solo acoustic guitar, tasteful, skilled, and completely devoid of flash or pretense. That¹s the picture I envision as the first track of this intriguing instrumental journey begins. Deeply rooted in early blues, the guitarist invites us in with deceptive simplicity and familiarity. Yeah, nice, background music for a candlelit dinner or a midnight cruise in a 1972 Cadillac. Mood music. Recalling Leadbelly or Cotton, drawing from Kotke or Kaukonen. but just where are we going with this? Transmigration? The transfer of a soul from one body to another, whether human, animal, or to a great inanimate beyond?
For those familiar with his heavy electric guitar work with The Next Step, Train of Thought, and The Awakening, Adams offers a completely unexpected departure in his first solo effort. Eschewing the intense melodic flash of jam-band frenzy, The Transmigration of Blind Joe Death features nothing but acoustic guitar, albeit with a few heavily reverbed accents and otherwise tweaked effects. Rooted in blues, yes, but from the start you get the feeling that this is going somewhere.different. Yet the one common denominator between this CD and Adams live performances is integrity. A serious musician with a great sensitivity to melodic juxtapositions, Adams playing is engaging on its own merit. Leave the dancing belly-button chicks and prissy posers to their vices, but real music fans will be drawn into this ethereal travelogue with ease. But to where? Whether the great Northwest plains or the bitter cotton fields of a generation of slaves, there¹s a resigned melancholy here, as if the narrator in this case, a guitar knew his end were near and a beauteous afterlife was on the horizon. Not sad, just accepting of the inevitable.
Gradually, Blind Joe¹s trip bends and slides like the fingers of the guitarist, twisting into a progressively weirder electronica the deepest ocean, the farthest reaches of space, the center of one's soul. By track six, still riding that acoustic blues wave, we're inspired with an "uh-oh" moment. Like, "Geez, I only took one hit of that tiny little. " Liftoff. And forget the drug reference; this all comes as naturally as a gut-string axe in a moonlit open field. It¹s getting weirder in here, are we in heaven yet? The effects begin to take over: echo, flange, phase, or whatever secret ingredient Adams uses to produce this psychic melody. Carefully modulated improvisation, evolved into composition in the studio, that¹s my guess. But man, when we get to tracks 7 and 8, it¹s all but a done deal --- we¹ve left one body, one world, and entered another universe of mystery, awe, and dreadful thrill.
My only question, for the next time I spin this disc for my journey with Blind Joe Death, is "What should I wear?" A cowboy hat or a space suit? Personally, I recommend both, along with a good comfortable chair and a pair of headphones. Go there. Don¹t be afraid. Metamorphize.
Terence Mulligan, Editor
Minimus Literary Magazine
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/tmulligan6/Miniweb/index.htm
May 6, 2004
Terrance Mulligan - Minimus Literary Magazine