SPENCER BOHREN – Blackwater Music
Blues Review, October 2011

Spencer Bohren, a Wyoming native now based in New Orleans, has traveled all over, yet still possesses a strong sense of place. He mounted an almost never-ending tour throughout the 1980s, but did so in an Airstream trailer with his wife and kids.

In keeping, the spare and simply put Blackwater Music is a family recording in the most complete sense of the word, with son Andre sitting in on drums and piano, wife Marilyn co-writing on the CD opener, and son Django designing the CD package. This homey sense of vernacular makes for a welcome embrace, in particular on a troubadour blues like “Your Home is in My Heart.”

Yet when the album moves into darker themes – as with the opening of “Old Louisa’s Movin’ On” or on “Bad Luck Bone,” with its echoing portent – Bohren’s lived-in authority carries a similar weight. Often accompanied by nothing more than his own Delta-infused guitar stylings, Bohren sings with a humid closeness, like an old friend sharing stories on the other end of the swing on a late-summer night. He recalls bad times and worse, as on the post-Katrina elegy “Has Anyone Seen Mattie?” with its lonesome accompaniment from violinist Matt Rhody. He wonders what it would take to right his many wrongs, as a lapsteel curls around each carefully sung lyric on “It’s Gonna Take a Miracle.” He considers salvation and what comes next on the National steel-driven “Borrowed Time” – referencing again, this shattering memory of a flooded New Orleans: “The water is rising, and the night is deep” – then lets loose another soaring lapsteel moan on “Blackwater Music.”

“Listen to the Wind,” which closes out Blackwater Music, laments a land and a lifestyle, lost forever by the Native Americans. Andre Bohren makes a memorable contribution, adding a thrumming drumscape that sounds like a repeated accusation. Before long, however, Bohren is skipping along with a tuba-honking quartet on “Take Me to Rampart Street,” celebrating a life-saving relationship on “Your Love,” then settling in for a comfy reminiscence on “The Old Homestead.” As happy as he is talented, Spencer Bohren remains that rarest of things, a talent who’s made a life of blues picking.

- Nick DeRiso –

SPENCER BOHREN/ BLACKWATER MUSIC
Threadhead Records
Released April 2011

Spencer Bohren has always had a keen sense of how to turn the everyday events of life into meaningful songs that touch listeners on many levels. His latest recording gathers eleven original songs that explore a variety of issues and musical styles. His son, Andre Bohren, plays drums on six tracks and piano on another. Some of Bohren’s friends from the New Orleans musical community help out on five cuts.

Three tracks feature Bohren in the solo format. “It’s Gonna Take a Miracle” starts out with Bohren on lapsteel guitar, picking out a delicate melody. The lyrics tell a darker story about big money overpowering love as Bohren preaches that we can still prevail against the odds. His intricate picking on “The Old Homestead” frames the tale of a wandering soul yearning for the comforts of home and family. The title track is a highlight as Bohren draws otherworldly tones from his lapsteel guitar while describing the effects of the “holy ghost boogie.”

“Bad Luck Bone” finds Bohren’s taut guitar licks weaving around the snaky rhythm his son coaxes from his drums. Andre takes you to church with his gospel-influenced piano behind his father’s stirring vocal on “Your Love.” The duo hit the mark on “Old Louisa’s Movin’ On” with Andre laying down a shuffle beat that Spencer cuts through with a thick tone and ringing notes from his guitar. Matt Rhody’s fiddle creates a mournful tone for “Has Anyone Seen Mattie,” Bohren’s moving tale of the ravages and human suffering unleashed by the failure of the levees.

Reggie Scanlan, from the Radiators, joins the Bohrens on bass for “Borrowed Time,” another look at the darker side of life with Spencer using a National steel guitar. Bohren lightens the mood by switching to traditional New Orleans jazz on “Take Me to Rampart Street” with Aurora Nealand on soprano sax, Amasa Miller on piano and Tim Stambaugh on tuba helping to make this track worthy of its own second line.

Two members of the Iguanas, Rod Hodges on electric guitar and Rene Coman on bass, bring depth to the ballad “Your Home is in My Heart.” Their contributions and Bohren’s earnest vocal make this performance another highlight rather than just another maudlin love song, Nealand returns, this time on accordion, for the closing number. “Listen to the Wind” is a somber look at our nation’s treatment of the Native Americans. The combination of Bohren’s lapsteel and the accordion creates an eerie sound that will linger in your soul.

The attractive package includes a list of the vintage guitars Bohren used for this disc along with pictures of some of the instruments. Combined with striking material, Bohren’s expressive vocals and remarkable guitar playing, this high-quality release is highly recommended to anyone who appreciates blues music that successfully celebrates the music’s traditions while addressing the issues of our modern world.

Mark Thompson
Crossroads Blues Society / Rockford, Illinois

Feature Reviews: Spencer Bohren, Blackwater Music, The Blues According to Hank Williams, and Born in a Biscayne

• Blackwater Music (Threadhead Records [2011])
• The Blues According to Hank Williams [Valve Records (2011)]
• Born in a Biscayne [Valve Records (2011)]

Call it the final chapter of Spencer Bohren‘s previously uncompleted works. The New Orleans bluesman had scraps and pieces of unfinished songs that had been stacking up for the past quarter of a century since Bohren, well, was too busy being Bohren the booking agent, Bohren the educator, and Bohren the touring artist to be Bohren the songwriter. But after a few secluded days at a Gulf Coast beach resort, Bohren finally brought these songs—mostly random lines jotted down in scrapbooks—to life, resulting in perhaps his most realized piece of art yet. Playing a variety of vintage guitars—one of which is 114 years old and another is a 1922 Kalamazoo Carson Robison—Bohren transforms himself from Bohren the “All Strings Considered” wizard to Bohren the enchanting raconteur. “The Old Homestead,” a warm acoustic number, recalls a musically inclined family that drifted apart; the lazy country blues of “Has Anyone Seen Mattie?” is based on the catastrophic 1927 Mississippi River flood. Interestingly, “Bad Luck Bone” was inspired by a young girl who seemingly appeared out of nowhere and advised Bohren not to touch a perceived ominous animal bone. “It’s a bad luck bone, you better leave it alone,” Bohren recalls the girl saying.

Bohren judiciously alternates between his eight acoustic/metal-bodied/lap steel guitars for diversified sounds, tones, and arrangements. “Old Louisa’s Movin’ On” feels like a North Mississippi hill country artifact—sparse and raw but with a polished edge. The title track finds him sliding away on lapsteel for a sinister and swampy effect. Not all the arrangements are guitar-based, however; he’s sans guitar on “Your Love,” accompanied only by son André’s New Orleans crash-and-roll piano playing. “Take Me to Rampart Street” is a joyful Dixieland strut with sax, tuba and Amasa Miller’s prancing ivories. No doubt, Bohren has raised the bar this time.

Besides Blackwater Music, Bohren has been industrious as of late, releasing a collection of Hank Williams tunes as well as reissuing his first album, Born in the Biscayne.

Bohren is no stranger to the Williams cannon: On 2004′s Southern Cross, he covered “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” and “Lovesick Blues.” Those tunes are rendered here as well, but as fresh interpretations that are totally different from their predecessors. Instead of trying to emulate the honky-tonk daddy stylistically, Bohren interprets em his way with intricately rich acoustic guitar picking and occasional lap steel and dancing mandolin. The unencumbered ambience and the mid-tempo pace allow Bohren to really stretch into the songs and express them. Of course, most selections lean towards Williams’ bluesier side, but “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” finds Bohren playing lap steel as if he were part of a country dance band. Overall, a peaceful, relaxed interpretation of one of America’s most endearing songwriters.

Recorded in 1984, Born in the Biscayne is an early sonic snapshot of Bohren, who constantly toured the countryside with wife and family in a ’55 Chevy pulling a shiny Airstream trailer. Dr. John’s brilliant piano playing bookends this John Mooney-produced affair that opens with the sizzling “Straight Eight” and closes with the classic New Orleans-styled “Snap Your Fingers.” On the comical, sax-powered “Shoppin’ For Clothes,” the good doctor plays the role of the shyster suit salesman (‘those buttons are solid gold’) while Bohren’s hustler protagonist attempts to sneak the suit out of the store. “Eloise” and Sleepy John Estes’ “Drop Down Mama” feature Bohren thrashing away on his National Steel guitar while the laid back “In-Between Friends” is Americana enough to feel like a Band chestnut. There’s a fair amount of diversity here—remarkable for a debut—but delta blues is at the core of these proceedings that, coincidentally, foretold of the fortuitous things to come.

—Dan Willging (Denver, CO)

The unsettlingly strange yet strangely settled life of blues singer Spencer Bohren, his wife and his four children as they crisscross America

Bob Cataliotti for WAVELENGTH
November 1989

Long before Jack Kerouac ever reeled off a stream-of-consciousness travelogue, American musicians were crisscrossing the U.S.A. and creating the mystique of life on the road. Whether they were in big bands moving between dancehalls or lone bluesmen headed from juke joints to house parties, the lifestyle was marked by an unencumbered simplicity and spontaneity that sharpened their survival skills and broadened the scope of their creativity.

In more recent times, singer/guitarist Spencer Bohren has enthusiastically embraced life on the road, even though his version might not be as simple as Chuck Berry’s hero who “carried his guitar in a gunny sack.”

Bohren’s life on the road actually shatters a few stereotypes. No lonesome wanderer looking for shelter from the storm, Bohren travels with his wife, Marilyn, their four children, and tows their lodging along, too. When the family originally pulled up stakes in New Orleans and headed out on the road in 1983, they were cruising in a cherry red 1955 Bel Air Chevrolet with a vintage Airstream trailer. But after logging over 250,000 miles, the Bohrens recently put together a new touring rig consisting of a 1985 one-ton Ford van and a 1985 thirty-four-foot Airstream.

Comprehending the scope of the Bohrens’ travels might be difficult to many people who lead sedentary lives, but some of the sights the family has encountered as they make various gigs lend a certain perspective. “Over the period of last year,” said Bohren, “we saw Yellowstone Park, we looked at the Oregon Trail from many different places, we were in the Redwoods, we were at Niagara Falls, the Bonneville Salt Flats. We drove through Reno at night, so we saw all those lights. We were through the Rocky Mountains, St. Augustine and Key West, Florida, New York City, Los Angeles, the Mojave, Big Sur. We saw the Space Needle. We did the Jazz Fest in New Orleans, saw Mount Rushmore, the Grand Tetons, and both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans and the Gulf Coast.

People they meet often have expectations of hearing highway horror stories, but the Bohrens try to maintain a fairly normal existence. “We’re just leading our life. We are not really out here to be wild and crazy,” explained Bohren. “It was wild and crazy when I was out on the road by myself – all the typical barroom crap. This way I go home at night and sleep in my own bed, with my own wife, and I get to eat three square meals a day, and I get to watch my kids grow up and help them learn.”

Life on the road is not looked on as some great odyssey by the Bohrens. They are more impressed by the small “daily miracle” that simply helps them get by. “We live our lives so much in the moment because that’s the nature of it,” said Bohren.

“We’re in one town, that’s where we are. When we leave there, it’s gone because we’re thinking about the next place. You get into a new town and there’s a whole new set of people to visit with.”

Of course, there are memorable moments that stand out, even if they’re not grand adventures. One “daily miracle” Bohren recalls involved a shop of Cuban mechanics in Miami who dropped all their other work one afternoon to do a valve job on the Chevy so Bohren could make it to a gig that night. He also remembers running out of gas somewhere in Kansas and receiving help from back-country folk who had him autograph their Army surplus gas can just in case he got famous one day. Recognition has brought them everything from a good laugh to major financial assistance.

When they went to apply for a loan to buy their new rig, the bank manager in Alabama just happened to have read a profile on Bohren in a local paper a few minutes before Spencer and Marilyn walked up to the desk. The banker was so charmed with their lifestyle that he bent some rules and got their loan approved. Bohren also remembers driving through some highway construction in Montana and having a crew of flagmen drop their flags to their hips and jam on imaginary guitars. It may not be Kerouac stumbling upon the key to the universe, but the simple things, the “daily miracles,” are what the Bohrens fondly look back on as they travel the road.

The demands of the lifestyle are many and the main purpose is not simply to sightsee and log miles. The Bohrens are working on developing a musical career and expanding the audience. While Bohren is constantly honing his musical skills, Marilyn has become an able booking and promotional agent. The family is demanding, too, and both parents devote a large portion of their time to nurturing the children, especially through a commitment to home schooling.

After six years of plugging away, including some mighty lean times, the Bohrens’ dedication seems to be paying off in some well-deserved success. This summer, an independent French label, Loft Records, released Snap Your Fingers, Bohren’s first compact disc. The CD is a compilation of Bohren’s first two albums. Loft is run by two young music enthusiasts, Anne Ojaste and Christian DiNatale, based in Vichy, France. Their aim is to work with American artists not well known in Europe and to help them build up a reputation and following.

Ojaste explained how they discovered and were attracted by Bohren’s brand of the blues: “We first came across Spencer’s debut album Born in a Biscayne last year in a Parisian record shop that specializes in American imports. I remember getting home and playing the record full blast . . . it was so good that we immediately phoned the record shop to ask them if Spencer Bohren had any other albums. Naturally, we ordered his second album, Down in Mississippi, and received it within two days. We fell so much in love with Spencer’s voice and guitar playing that we decided to contact him personally.”

Ojaste and DeNatale eventually made their first trip to the States in December of last year and met with the Bohrens in New Orleans to discuss the licensing of twelve tracks from the two albums for European release. They fondly recall meeting Bohren in person for the first time outside of Tipitina’s, followed by a night of genuine New Orleans-style partying. The tracks were digitally remixed by Bohren and engineer Rand Everett at Terminal Studios in Jackson, Mississippi, and the CD with vintage Imperial/Ron Records- style cover art was released in mid-July.

Another recent boost to Bohren’s career was the release of a third album, Live in New Orleans. The New Orelans based Great Southern Records held an option for Bohren to record an album since Born in a Biscayne had been leased for distribution. With the option due to run out at the end of 1989, Bohren, along with ownld/executive producer John Berthelot, decided to develop a live album project. In March of this year, Bohren invited old buddy, harmonica player JAB Wilson to accompany him, and they performed a warm-up concert at the Columns Hotel in New Orleans. A live audience was invited to Ultrasonic Studios and the album was recorded in concert format.

Live in New Orleans accurately captures Bohren’s versatility and amiable stage presence as he moves through a repertoire deeply rooted in the sounds of the American south. There’s plenty of strong blues material on the album, ranging from the lap-steel rendition of “The Sky is Crying” to the driving, Delta-style “Dark Road” to a bouncy, Piedmont-flavored “Eight More Miles to Louisville.” But Bohren does not exclusively serve up a blues menu: he also delivers a soul ballad (“When a Man Loves a Woman”, an a capella gospel number, a couple of electric R&B boogies (“Your Mama and Your Papa” and “Hoodoo You Love”, and even a finger-picking showcase (“Maple Leaf Rag”).

While Born in a Biscayne mixed solo acoustic blues with rocking New Orleans R&B numbers featuring Dr. John and John Mooney and Down in Mississippi focused mainly on Delta blues, Bohren found many of his fans wanted a record that captured the sound and variety of his live show. “I have so many people ask me, “Do you have a record that sounds just like what you’re doing?” Bohren explained, “I felt for me, selling records from the stage, that it would be a good thing to have a live record.”

Bohren’s mastery as a guitarist is one of the most appealing aspects of Live in New Orleans. He adds variety to his repertoire by applying his talents to four very different guitars: a 1928 National Triolian, a 1975 Krimmel Acoustic, a 1959 National Ranger, and a 1949 National Lap Steel. While he considered himself primarily an acoustic guitarist for years, the many performances on the road have made him realize the potential of the different guitars.

“I like to use all those guitars because each one brings out different things,” Bohren commented. “Obviously, the electric guitar, aside from volume, is kind of tricky to play alone because it’s got that big electric sound. The National, well that Mississippi Delta sound only comes from the National guitar. It doesn’t come from a dobro or anything else. It comes from a National. And the lap steel is my new baby. I’m just so in love with the lap steel. It speaks to me.”

The versatility that Bohren displays on Live in New Orleans makes it clear that he does not approach his music with the kind of blues purist mentality of many modern blues players. “I’ll take great liberties with a song,” said Bohren. “I figure as an artist I have poetic license, and the folk process is something I believe heavily in. And at this point I feel I am a legitimate folk-processor.”

Just as Bohren sidesteps some of the stereotyped images of life on the road, he also doesn’t fit into the typical “bluesman” mold. “I feel that the basis of what I’m doing is definitely coming straight out of the Southern blues idiom, the Delta blues. But obviously I’m not a ‘bluesman.’ I love singing blues songs. I’m touched deeply by these kinds of songs. I think that is particularly so because I come from a gospel background. But as far as being an archivist or one of these cats that has to lead the blues life, I’m a very happy man. I’ve got a lovely wife and four beautiful children, and I try to be as normal as I can be under the circumstances.”

Despite preconceived notions about his lifestyle or image as a performer, the important thing about the years Bohren has spent on the road is that his music has gotten across. Audiences hear his singing and guitar playing and they recognize his talent, hard work, and ability to keep the “folk process” alive. “Right now, we’re doing exactly what we want to do, and we’re doing it on our own terms, and I think we’re actually starting to become a success. I mean, we’re not broke all the time,” said Bohren. “We beat the streets for all these years and it has worked. It’s like the American Dream,” he continued. “You bust your ass, you put one brick on top of the other, and one foot in front of the other . . . not that we’re making it but we have a good week now and again.”

Spencer Bohren and his family will continue on the road, carried along by his love for singing the blues and people’s appreciation for his art and craft. “The amazing thing to me is that we’ve been able to hang in there,” Bohren concluded, “by hook and by crook and with a lot of help from our friends.”

June 27, 2008

It was over two years ago that Bohren last performed at the Arts Centre and a great deal has happened to him since then, in particular, his home in New Orleans was severely damaged by Hurricane Katrina. It was wonderful to hear that like so many fellow residents he has overcome that tragedy with great courage and optimism, and it was a particular delight to see him perform with such tremendous energy and commitment.

This was a magical evening enjoyed by an enthusiastic audience who were spellbound from the very start. This was the first gig of a short UK tour, which also included a festival held at The Hawth theatre in Crawley. The two-hour acoustic concert was not only a show of tremendous music but Bohren showed that he is also a humorous storyteller.\There were titles from the likes of Leadbelly, Mississippi John Hurt, Robert Johnson, and Son House, all backed with superlative guitar playing. There was some intricate picking on the classic tune “Maple Leaf Rag” performed on a gorgeous vintage jumbo Gibson guitar, and his slide guitar work, played on a borrowed vintage National steel guitar, was gutsy and commanding. It was his atmospheric lap steel guitar playing that really captured the attention of the highly appreciative audience. His version of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah, Hallelujah” was one of the very fine moments where his lap steel guitar really came into its own and I, for one, would have been quite happy if the whole set had been played on it!

There was much to enjoy about his concert in which his anecdotes and stories added much to the enjoyment but it was Bohren’s very compelling vocals that made the greatest impression. It is his singing that sets him apart from many of his contemporaries and, since he was here last, it has become even more powerful and committed.

This was a very engaging and thoroughly enjoyable set where Bohren truly illustrated that he is not only a strident and distinctive blues performer but is equally at ease with other genres, all performed with tremendous commitment and energy. Bohren is a unique performer and if he comes your way you should certainly check him out.

- Bob Tilling, Blues in Britain

Every New Orleanian knows about the long black line, the dirty bathtub ring left by receding floodwaters. Folk/blues troubadour Spencer Bohren threads that indelible image through a post-Katrina landscape laced with the menace and moan of a slow-crawl, doomsday acoustic slide guitar. His unflinching narration resonates with the authority of an Old Testament prophet. “The Long Black Line” could serve as the soundtrack to a Katrina documentary, but video footage would be redundant – Bohren’s song paints an all-too-vivid picture.”

Also performed are an array of topical songs that give the listener the feeling of reading the news of the day.

- Keith Spera for the Times Picayune.

By David Greenberger

Spencer Bohren Cafe Lena, Saratoga Springs, Sept. 20

Mixing, gospel, folk and blues, Spencer Bohren has a similar sensibility to Geoff Muldaur. Equally affecting as a singer and guitarist, his vocals are resonant and believable. Last Saturday’s show at Caffe Lena found him alternating between electric slide guitar, an acoustic Gibson and a banjo. Adept at each, his playing and singing were intermingled in the best possible ways.

Performing since the sixties and now based in New Orleans, the Wyoming native spent the better part of the eighties touring the country in an Airstream trailer with his wife and children, towed by their ‘55 Chevy Bel Air. Not surprisingly, Bohren’s got a troubadour’s eye for detail, taking notice of the towns he passed through and the people he continues to meet. His two sets mixed originals with worthy covers. The former included his “Night Is Fallin’,” which sounds like the classic it deserves to become. The latter ranged from Woody Guthrie’s “Deportees” to Fred Neil’s “Blues on the Ceiling,” a couple by Hank Williams (”Long Gone Lonesome Blues” and “I’m So Lonesome I could Cry”) and the Rolling Stones’ “No Expectations.”

Bohren’s first set ended with one of numerous stories he told with a hypnotic ease. This one recounted a road trip he’d made which took him past the infamous Parchman Farm prison. This led into an acapella blues he learned from a tape a friend at the Smithsonian supplied him with, and which he was listening to when he happened upon the facility. It was a searing number originally recorded by Alan Lomax at Parchman decades earlier. With his eyes closed and his voice moving from a whisper to a wail, Bohren captured his own personal connection to the song as well as the dignity in the performance that inspired him.

In fact, Bohren’s storytelling had a life of its own. While most stories prefaced specific songs, one did not and it reveled in a life of its own. This tale of a woman named Dawn Petty from Bird City, Nebraska had the masterful strokes and unforced confidence of a natural storyteller. Free of the hyperbole of a raconteur and nuanced with the subtlety of music, Dawn Petty came to life and wanders around in *my* memory now.

Spencer Bohren

Call me a godless heathen and a musical philistine to boot, but I just assumed nobody could make me want to sit through old-timey standards like “Amazing Grace” or – sweet Jesus! – “Gospel Plow” ever again. But, friends, Spencer Bohren has changed all that, and I’m here to testify that his Carry the Word is no mere history lesson. With an ear for uncanny arrangements and an otherworldly acoustic and slide guitar style, Bohren has injected this roots music with the same rawness that turned the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack into a shocker of a success. The topper is a bone-chilling, pitch-black version of Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “One Kind Favor” (a.k.a. “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean”) that drives the song through Springsteen’s Nebraska on its way to the haunted graveyard of Howlin’Wolf. Henfling’s $8-$10; 8 p.m. (Steve Palpoli)