MISSISSIPPI ROOTS MUSIC WIZARD JIMBO MATHUS
MAKES HIS ROCK ’N’ ROLL MANIFESTO WITH
THE COSMIC, KALEIDOSCOPIC BLUE HEALER
Co-produced by Bruce Watson, the ex-Squirrel Nut
Zippers and South Memphis String Band co-founder’s new album provides a
psychedelia and garage rock drenched tour through the sounds of the
South
Eric Ambel of the Del-Lords is special guest.
OXFORD, Miss. — From the gritty, chiming six-string
stomp of opener “Shoot Out the Lights” to the angelic gospel choir and
piano finale of “Love and Affection,” the new album
Blue Healer is a flat-out, no holds barred, brawling, sprawling excursion through the deep musical soul of
Jimbo Mathus.
Born and raised in
North Mississippi, where the sound of the region’s blues and gospel blend with the echoes of rock and R&B from nearby
Memphis,
Mathus has become a vital link in the chain of great American music. He
built the foundation of the ongoing old-timey/swing revival with
unlikely ’90s hit-makers the
Squirrel Nut Zippers. Then Mathus became an MVP indie producer and sideman who made his bones playing guitar on blues legend
Buddy Guy’s seriously twisted electric groundbreaker
Sweet Tea. He’s also a co-founder of the critically heralded
South Memphis String Band, with fellow roots music rabble-rousers
Luther Dickinson, of
North Mississippi All Stars, and
Alvin Youngblood Hart. And along the way he’s toured internationally and recorded under his own name and with his
Tri-State Coalition band, leaving a dozen untamed, free-ranging albums in his wake.
Now the artist has created his absolute manifesto with
Blue Healer. The 12-song set was co-produced by Mathus and
Big Legal Mess/Fat Possum house studio maven
Bruce Watson at
Dial Back Sound in
Water Valley, Mississippi, an all-analog recording palace that’s perfect for Mathus’ blend of old-school tones and edgy, kinetic energy.
At its core,
Blue Healer is a concept
album with room for acid-fed, supernatural visions, vulnerable love
songs, Saturday night brawls, bad-boy regrets and youthful celebrations —
all embellished by Mathus’ estimable abilities as a natural raconteur
and straight-from-the-heart singer.
“It’s the story of a man in a southern landscape who is swept
insanely apart by internal and external winds,” Mathus explains. “He
digs deeper and deeper into the very fabric of his reality, experiencing
love and lust, despair, hope and sheer animal exhilaration on levels
few ever do. He is tested in every way imaginable and achieves a sort of
enlightenment — gains power and understanding of life’s mysteries. Yet
questions remain. He wonders if the struggle was worth it, or even real.
Is he madman or sage? Con man or honest counsel? Is this
autobiographical or fictional? Only the
Blue Healer knows the answer to the great cosmic heebie-jeebie.”
The Blue Healer — not to be confused with the
Blue Heeler, or
Cattle Dog
— is a mythological figure that makes her appearance three songs into
the album, on the title number. Mathus intones the story of this
mysterious yet comforting female presence over a fever dream soundtrack
where reverb drenched guitars writhe like angry serpents in a Delta fog
and lysergic Farfisa stirs the mists. By then Mathus — or, at least, the
album’s protagonist — needs healing. He’s gotten into plenty of
trouble, raising a raunchy, riff-driven rock ’n’ roll ruckus with help
from
Del Lords’ guitarist
Eric Ambel
on the opener “Shoot Out the Lights,” and ticking off a list of vices
and failings from drug use to pyromania in the confessional “Mama
Please.” “Coyote” briefly changes the setting from the
Deep South
to a peyote-fueled Southwestern landscape, where tremolo’d guitars are
the breadcrumbs along a cosmic cowboy’s trail that runs among the
rough-hewn sonic landmarks of
Neil Young, the Electric Prunes and spaghetti western film composer
Ennio Morricone.
The quiet spirit of “Thank You,” a love song that Mathus sings to
the spare accompaniment electric and acoustic guitars, spotlights the
dusty sincerity reflected in his voice throughout the album. In fact,
his graceful and commanding vocals on
Blue Healer
are the spine and soul of its songs, no matter where they roam — even
when Mathus is serving up hot refried Southern boogie on “Bootheel
Witch” or using weeping pedal steel to abet his country-style tale of
prize winning lay-about “Old Earl.” It all culminates in “Love and
Affection,” which is a breathing compendium of the major elements in
Mathus’ musical DNA: rock ’n’ roll strut, blues guitar hijinks,
backwoods funk and gospel testifying, all framed by untrammeled joy.
For Mathus, who was born in 1967 in
Oxford, Mississippi,
his entire life has pointed toward this uncanny album. “As a boy, I was
fascinated by ancient things and the arcane,” he states. “I saw
visions. I could see and feel the Earth plummeting through the solar
system and it, in turn, grinding along, clock-like. I saw and heard time
being sucked into the gaping maw of infinity. I always felt both
frightened and comforted by these experiences. Then came music.”
His father was a banjo player, horse trader and small-town
attorney descended from Scottish fiddlers and singers. Alcohol-fueled
music and all-night singing surrounded the young Mathus. At age six he
joined his family’s band as mandolinist. “As a small child,” Mathus
explains, “I was sort of self-contained — very adult. I was allowed to
wander the back streets of
Jackson or the hillbilly towns of
Arkansas,
alone with my mandolin absorbing songs. I never had any trouble sitting
in with and learning from the musicians I found there. It was weird
because adults always told me their problems. They would ask my advice,
like I knew the answers.”
When Mathus began creating his own original music in high school
his first composition was “Chokin’ on a Lude,” — fodder for his noise
rock band
Johnny Vomit and the Dry Heaves. “My hometown was a
Pentecostal Church-infested
conservative Southern hillbilly town,” he relates. “Old men sat on the
courthouse steps whittling. Needless to say the band and song didn’t go
over well in my area. I was asked to leave high school for being too
subversive. They mailed me my diploma and said, ‘Please go!’”
Various mishaps led to his being arrested and sent to the
Mississippi River to work as a deckhand. “I was basically an indentured servant to a barge company outta
New Orleans,”
he says. “I had to perform extreme physical labor in the most brutal
conditions alongside big, bad men. But they would pull me aside and
spill their guts, seek my advice on shit with their old ladies or
whatever. Ask about their deceased father or grandmother. They thought I
was some kinda fortune teller.”
Mathus settled in the cultural and artistic oasis of
Chapel Hill, North Carolina in the early ’90s and immediately started assembling the musicians who would become the
Squirrel Nut Zippers. “I already had the background on the
Deep South
musical styles — black, white and creole,” he recounts. “ In Chapel
Hill I was able to use the libraries, record stores, bookstores,
original music clubs – all that shit I had never seen before. I was able
to do the research I’d always dreamed of. I went back to the roots of
American art and music. I found the
Harry Smith anthology. I educated myself.”
Through seven albums and one hit single, 1996’s
MTV
favorite “Hell,” the Zippers negotiated the turf of roots music,
alternative rock and hipster cool like penguins on a slalom course. By
the time the group disbanded in 2000 — although reunions continue —
Mathus had already begun a solo career with the 1997 release of
Jas. Mathus & His Knockdown Society Play Songs for Rosetta, an effort to raise money for his ailing one-time nanny Rosetta Patton, the daughter of legendary early
Delta bluesman Charley Patton. Along with the string of ensuing solo recordings and productions for mostly local bands at his now-gone
Delta Recordings studio in
Clarksdale, Mississippi, he also embarked on a career as a session player. In 2001 he was the second guitarist and creative sparkplug for
Buddy Guy’s expressionist blues explosion
Sweet Tea, and worked on its follow-up, the
Grammy winning
Blues Singer.
Further fueled by an apprenticeship with the great
producer/pianist/raconteur and fellow Mississippian Jim Dickinson —
whose history ran from the beginnings of the Memphis blues festival to
Captain Beefhart’s Magic Band to the
Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers to
the Replacements to his sons’
North Mississippi All Stars — Mathus was ready for an evolutionary leap.
“I was encouraged by great men to take on the full Southern
musical landscape and forge it into my own cannon of songs — to dig deep
inside myself and to look and listen hard at what I found there,” he
says. The results can be found on his albums
Jimmy the Kid, Confederate Buddha, Blue Light, White Buffalo and 2012’s
Dark Night of the Soul, which marked his first collaboration with co-producer Watson. And they culminate in the wild, revelatory contours of
Blue Healer. “And so,” Mathus adds, “the journey continues."
