TED DROZDOWSKI’S SCISSORMEN RETURN THE FAVOR WITH DREAM SONG “R.L. BURNSIDE (SLEIGHT RETURN)” ON ‘LOVE & LIFE’ (JULY 31)
When he befriended Mississippi hill country blues legends R.L. Burnside,
Junior Kimbrough, and Jessie Mae Hemphill, Ted Drozdowski had been the
primary force in risk-taking alternative rock, a textural music
ensemble, and psychedelic bands. All of these sounds come together in
the tribute song “R.L. Burnside (Sleight Return),” which you can hear
here.
In the full-length Robert Mugge (Deep Blues) 2010 documentary “Big
Shoes: Walking and Talking the Blues,” Drozdowski recalls, “R.L.
Burnside, who I was very close to, R.L. didn’t actually know that I
played guitar until I knew him for seven years. Because I felt like it
wasn’t actually my place to impose my scene on him, you know? Then when
he found out, he was the guy that really kicked my butt and made me
start to play with him live. Even at that I had to be strenuously
encouraged.
On night in Cambridge, MA in 1999, R.L. grabbed Ted by the shoulders and
told him that he’d be calling him the third song from the end, telling
the younger man, “I’m calling you up and I don’t hear any bullshit about
it. R.L. stood up, gave me his amp to plug into, and grabbed his Jack
'n' coke and sang the song while he shook his ass dancing back and forth
across the stage in front of a screaming sold-out house. It was kind of
crazy. We played two more songs that are now blurs — although I think
one of them was ‘Snake Drive.’ I held on for my life!”
Ted continues, “I went up and did it and I felt that that kind of
flipped a switch for me and whenever we saw each other, he’d make me
play with him again. Ultimately, R.L., Junior, and Jessie had a profound
way not only on my playing but on my thinking as a person which fed
back into my playing and those guys just changed my life and changed my
playing and opened the door to the blues for me.” The ex-rocker’s
narrative songwriting and tireless sonic explorations ultimately
benefitted him in his open-minded approach to psychedelic blues.
“R.L. Burnside (Sleight Return)” in particular has a driving, funky
backbeat with a delay-tinged guitar over a tight funk riff. Though
framed as a dream, Ted tells a true story of drinking whiskey with the
legend. “R.L. and his band visited our home in Boston one night, and
after dinner he wanted to watch a movie. He looked through hundreds of
VHS tapes and selected ‘Check and Double Check’ with Amos and Andy — and
he roared through it right from the first joke. When it was over, he
told us about how he and his friends would save their money and ride
their bikes from Holly Springs, MS all the way to Memphis when each new
Amos and Andy movie hit the theaters, and then ride back at night. He
said that when they saw headlights, they'd throw the bikes into the
bushes and hide out for fear that it was night riders.” The guitar solo
goes full-on hallucinatory while Ted utters R.L.’s refrain “well, well,
well.” Like the album on which it resides “R.L. Burnside (Sleight
Return)” is a culmination of sorts, bringing together his
experimentalism with his hill country blues apprenticeship.
The song highlights a particular irony. Ted says, “So for me one of the
interesting subtexts of the song is that Amos and Andy and night riders
are both signposts of racism, and the complication is how much R.L.
loved Amos and Andy. America is a strange prism sometimes.”
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