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Envoy: Blues Wah! On the first chord, the old man’s leg snaps up, and OH, he hollers into that harp like no other. There are blow holes in his cheeks so wide and so deep you could hide Mt. Rushmore in ‘em. Old white man, white beard on a pink face, pot belly perfect for suspenders, which he wears striped, which he uses to loop the microphone cord for the harp. He introduces the band after the first number, tells us that they call themselves “2120 South Michigan Avenue,” that they’re happy to be here tonight at Johnny D’s in Davis Square performing before this audience on such a beautiful night. He says it as if the low-watt icicle lights reflecting off the shiny plastic covers of our menus are thousands of bright stars on a clear night out west and we’re sitting directly under ‘em. He tells us a story about falling as a child in the hole out back where the horses shit in the stable. “Now that’s something to be blue about,” he says, before taking back up the harp. His blow reminds me of fine weather, pecan pralines, the word “stringencies.” It keens like pure color, flutters fierce the unhemmed edges of the tablecloth, and I can feel the table legs settling into the floorboards, into the groove of the bass, first-rate line like a kitestring, yanking our hearts out to dangle above our heads like bait for gators. There a gust in this room, or is it just the collective sigh of fifty bodies collapsing table-side on their elbows? I’m listening hard as I can to the woman onstage with the mike, the woman who looks like Kim Cattrall, with a rock to her hips that my friend Jeremiah calls, “SASS!” Soft lamp shinin, and me alone in the night. She’s too country; she might be rolling her hips like a grande dame onstage, but you can tell she knows she’s out of place. It might be her lamp-shinin whiteness, but the old man on the harp is right at home, like he’s sitting on his front porch, and the unspoken looks – those invisible adjustments and cues – in the band are his native tongue. Those boys might as well be slapping each other on the back with their easy, knowing camaraderie, like they’re congratulating each other after the successful delivery of a salty joke. Her accents are different – it’s not blues she speaks but a folksy country-and-western; you can hear the Texas twang in the tap of her heels. She don’t have to open her mouth, and you just know it. Not like Diane Blue, the guest singer for the night, a lightskinned black lady swathed in polka dots and a feather boa; she sings like she means it – and boy, her meaning is mean: Soft lamp is shinin, and me alone in the night. Blues is music you can sink your soul into – it’s mean and a little bald, the way truthful truth always is. No pulling punches; at the end of the day, your bed’s still mighty lonely and nobody treats you right (we all can agree) – but for an hour or so, you’ve got the go-ahead to indulge in a bit of Wagnerian posturing, and that’s what I like about it: rage, and storm, and fling your arms around onstage, bend like your back is going to break on the high E and your whole soul’s redemption is hanging on the word “sad,” stretched out like you’re forced to make ends meet. Now the old man’s voice is shouting, “Got my MO-jo workin!” high over the crowd, only it’s drowned out by the noise in your head, all the rattling and jackhammer reorganizing that has to take place before all the school and the stinting strictured drudgery of straightedge thinking dislodges and shakes loose, and you’re free to respond, to hate it or love it or to fall asleep in your chair like a child after a long, monotonous car trip. Maybe you get up and boogie a little, loose your limbs in a freedom dance. It’s been a long, dry spell. Can’t take no one beside me; need mo’n jest some man to set me right. Sherley Anne Williams
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