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)

By Keith Spera Music Writer

Spencer Bohren is not a particularly religious man, but he has a special affinity for gospel groups, both real and imagined.

At The Parish of the House of Blues on Tuesday, Bohren sat in with the Blind Boys of Alabama, adding his trademark acoustic slide guitar to three songs by the famed gospel singers. So impressed was Clarence Fountain, the Boys’ 80-ish leader, that he declared of Bohren and fellow guest guitarist David Lindley, “Those boys played like they’ve been born again.”

When Bohren was recording his much-acclaimed “Carry the Word” two years ago, he communed with a gospel quartet called the Nott Brothers. The Notts grace the CD with rich, warm harmonies, complementing the intimate arrangements of traditional spirituals, songs that Bohren has performed since childhood.

When his mother first listened to “Carry the Word,” she was struck by how much it sounded like Bohren and his brothers harmonizing with their father years ago in church. A Swiss promoter heard it and called to book Bohren and the Nott Brothers for a series of concerts in medieval cathedrals.

Bohren had to decline. And the Nott Brothers won’t be joining him today at 5:10 p.m. on the Lagniappe Stage at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. But in a way, they will: Bohren is the Nott Brothers and the Nott Brothers are Bohren.

A last-minute change of plans during the recording of “Carry the Word” forced him to sing all the parts he had mapped out for a real gospel quartet; he named the fictional group the “Nott Brothers.” Bohren inhabits the soul of this music so completely that most listeners don’t notice the rues. “Carry the Word” was named the best local album of 2000 by The Times-Picayune, and has earned similar kudos elsewhere.

After a 35-year odyssey of many miles and many forms of music, Bohren found his most affecting artistic statement residing almost completely within himself.

“This gospel record has moved people that none of my other records might have gotten to,” Bohren said. “I don’t want to be branded as some born-again zealot—that’s far from the truth. But this music is meaningful to me. It came out so easily. I didn’t have to think a lot about it, its so deep inside of me.”

Crescent City’s siren song

Bohren, 51, was raised in Wyoming. He does not remember learning to sing or play guitar; it was something he, his parents and siblings just did, often in church. At 14, he started playing professionally in 1964 at women’s clubs, church functions, county fairs. The folk music renaissance was in full bloom then; archival recordings of Mississippi Delta bluesmen that found their way to Wyoming fueled Bohren’s early fascination with acoustic blues.

The day he graduated from high school, Bohren set off on three decades of roaming. First came Denver, then the West Coast. He lived on a commune in Oregon, joined a touring Seattle band and bounced back to Colorado, where he met Dr. John at the height of the good doctor’s hoodoo psychedelic period.

“We were hanging around all these people with pirate suits and snake tattoos and glitter and feathers and beads,” Bohren said. “We were hippies, but we’d never seen anything like this.”

Dr. John regaled Bohren with tales of New Orleans and its Mardi Gras Indians and spiritual churches. “I didn’t know anything about this,” Bohren said. “New Orleans was very undercover at that time.”

Intrigued, Bohren and his wife journeyed south. They arrived in New Orleans just before Fat Tuesday. The city “wrapped its tendrils around us, and the next thing you know, we were stuck.”

Gigs were scarce in New Orleans in the mid-’70s, but Bohren landed on eat a place called Spaghetti Eddie’s. He performed with a legendary crew of hard-partying locals, slowly building a following. In 1983 he packed his ever-growing family into an Airstream trailer and hit the road. After seven years of near-constant touring, the family settled in Wyoming.

In 1996, he and his wife made a fateful visit to New Orleans. Sitting in Jackson Square on a brilliant fall afternoon, they had an epiphany: The Big Easy was home. The family packed up once again and landed in Mid-City.

“We were welcomed back with open arms, as if we’d never been gone.” Bohren said. “There’s something real special here. Touring Europe 30-some times, I’ve seen a lot of amazing things, and played with great musicians from a lot of places. All of that experience makes me realize more than ever how truly unique New Orleans is.”

All parts Bohren

For the first 20 years of his career, Bohren didn’t make a record. “I didn’t feel that it was that big a deal,” he said. “You’re at the gig, everything’s cool, you drink some beers and the next thing you know it’s 20 years later.

“It’s hard for me to believe, because now I make records all the time. I can’t imagine that I deprived myself of that kind of pleasure for that long.”

He now has more than a dozen albums to his credit, including several Japan- and Europe-only releases. The seeds for “Carry the Word” were sown with its predecessor, the acoustic guitar and harmonica meditation “Dirt Roads.” Bohren bookended with a pair of old spirituals. Encouraged by positive response to them, he decided to make an entire album of such material.

He entered a friend’s Jackson, Miss., recording studio in April 1999. A Mississippi gospel quartet, the Williams Brothers, was scheduled to come in on the last day of the session and add harmonies. The band’s leader called that morning with bad news: He and the others were laid up with the flu. With no time to find a replacement, Bohren laid down the gospel himself.

He would sing one part, roll back the tape, add another, then do it again, building the “quartet” one take at a time. He rendered the soul-swoop falsettos, the bass parts, all the gospel harmonies that resonate so deeply throughout the album. And he invented the “Nott Brothers” name.

“It was so different than the plan. In the end, I think it’s much better. It went very quickly, because I knew exactly what I wanted. There was no teaching any lyrics; I just went in and sang it.”

The powerful simplicity of “Dirt Roads” and “Carry the Word” made Bohren rethink his methods.

“I realized that maybe all these records that I was making along the lines of John Hiatt or Steve Earle weren’t really what I had to offer,” he said. “These last two records are these simple, rootsy records and they really struck a chord with people.

An artist’s life

As good as they are, they likely will never sell big numbers. Lean times last year forced Bohren to accept his first-ever day job; it didn’t last. Then in February he appeared on “A Prairie Home Companion,” the syndicated radio variety show with Garrison Keillor as host, and played for 4 million listeners. He’ll return to the show May 19, and hopes the exposure will give his career another boots.

Such are the ups and downs of the life of a musician, the life he’s chosen, the life that chose him.

“At this point, I feel real good about my life and myself and my music,” he said. “I realize that the music is just a reflection of whatever life I’ve got going. Maybe that’s why these records are so calm.

“It’s a great gift to be an artist. My daughter once said, ‘It’s maybe not a good living, but it’s a great life.’ It’s true. We’ve made a life that would be impossible to pay for. It’s been quite a journey.”

By Mike Zwerin

The Mississippi Delta was shining
Like a National guitar
– Paul Simon

When I first met Spencer Bohren, the Paul Simon line above was not yet a cliche. And it had taken Bohren a while to come to terms with the idea that journalists are more interested in his lifestyle than his music. I think I was the first journalist to put that on the table with him.

He was an excellent guitarist, sang with conviction, had a warm low-keyed stage presence and ‚ along with John Hammond Jr. ‚ was one of the few white solo blues singers who made a living at it. He would drive a total of a thousand miles to get to four or five one- nighters a week and when he started to raise a family he realized that he’d either have to start bringing them along or lose them. His wife, Marilyn, was a midwife in Louisiana, delivering babies for circus people. The circus people recommended the mobile-home life. Bohren saw that what these people lacked in space and privacy was made up in rich relationships.

The Bohrens first hit the road as a family when their oldest son, Django (named after the Gypsy guitarist) turned six. There were four children, the youngest was seven months. They were all born at home and the older ones were home-schooled. They started with an old Chevrolet towing a bottom-of-the-line trailer. Bohren learned how to repair the engine “with a flashlight in my teeth. I’m a hell of a mechanic on a small-block Chevy engine. I learned in the School of Hard Knocks ‚ or rather valve knocks. I dug us out of some major holes.”

But before I met him, the blues business had begun to look up. He had recently bought what he described as a “maxed-out silver Airstream chrome- home deluxe,” 35 feet long with three axles, a hardwood interior and cedar closets (”it’s a real dish”). And then there was also a new Ford van that was “made to tow, it’s a killer vehicle.”

The fact that the loan officer was a blues fan is the only explanation Bohren could think of for approving a $31,000 loan to someone with $91 in the bank and without “what most people consider a job.” He called it a “dream life, that endless American highway åOn the Road’ thing. We’re not really political, we just know a lot of people who don’t fit the envelope exactly. I think we’re only taking advantage of the freedom America offers.”

It was the old Huck Finn vision of freedom in America, free of school, free of prison workplaces. He ran into some resentment and jealousy, but also a great deal of respect and generosity. A shrimp fisherman in Florida who was touched by his music gave him a mint condition 1928 National guitar. He told Bohren this incredible wartime story about his friend Shorty, who said, just before he died: “Arthur, take this guitar and give it to…” Another time, Bohren was buying a Toyota part from a funky biker who was running what appeared to be a fencing operation in New Orleans when he saw this black 1958 National that looked like a compressed Buick leaning against a wall. The biker said to take it home.

“I guess it’s my good looks,” Bohren said, laughing. He was born and grew up in Wyoming and you get a touch of the prairie when he laughs. They traveled by the old blue highways, driving slowly, stopping often, the kids were always looking out the windows, interested, thinking, asking questions. It took Django four years to learn his multiplication tables but he learned them.

The family was thrown together, they’d become friends. And returning over and over to the same towns, the family accumulated a lot of outside friends, although they only saw them a few at a time. Kind of a horizontal crowd. “My life is horizontal,” Bohren said. “I may not be famous but I’m working everywhere, I’ve got all the local gigs in America, I’m a local everywhere.”

Six weeks a year he worked in Europe, mostly Scandinavia, and then he left the family behind. Early in 1989, he recorded an album with Totta Naslund, a Swedish blues singer, and so that tour was longer than usual. He refused to do it until the record company agreed to pick up the tab to bring over the family. The music has to fit family life rather than the other way around.

On a later tour, while Bohren was working in Paris, Django was sitting in the Airstream, which was parked in his grandfather’s driveway in New York state reading “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Django read four or five books a week. They had no television. If there happened to be one somewhere, Django would turn it off in order to read. “I guess a kid growing up in America without television is rather unusual,” Bohren said, understating up a storm.

He grew up in a church-oriented family. His father was a deacon. He sang gospel songs with the choir. From there it was a short step to the folk movement in the å60s. Moving to New Orleans, he discovered the vast difference between white and black gospel. It was another short step to Robert Johnson.

He lived in Denver, Hollywood, New Orleans: “I had bands, played with bands, endless bands, bands, bands. Then I went out solo, started to build my own circuit. It got better every day. I wasn’t famous but I was popular in blues circles. I used the genuine Delta, Georgia ‚ whatever you want to call it ‚ blues as a jumping-off point. I love the feeling of early blues. It’s so informative, almost like reading a newspaper.”

About once every two years he worked Medicine Bow, Wyoming, close to where he grew up: “It’s a crossroads for two highways nobody ever travels on anymore, 90 miles from the nearest town. Windblown, open range, no fences, mid-Wyoming. My mother stands next to me and points to elderly people saying things like, åThat’s Mrs. Mills, she was your kindergarten teacher.’ I draw tons of people. They tell me what a charming little boy I was. They forget all about the time I was åa nasty drug addict’ and they just about threw me out of town.”

He produced two of his own albums and then sold them to small record companies that barely get them distributed, let alone paid royalties. His wife, who had a business degree, was his manager. Gigs were usually self-promoted. They had a regionalized mailing list and sent out periodic postcards to keep in touch between appearances. The kept a telephone answering machine in a friend’s house and rented a mail service (a packet once every 10 days or so) two blocks from Fats Domino’s mansion in Arabi, Louisiana.

One day they got a letter from Ojaste and Christian Di Natale, an English teacher and a physiotherapist who had started a label called Loft Records in their spare time, of which there was plenty, in Vichy, France. The partners had stumbled on one of Bohren’s records and wrote to the address on the jacket. Bohren became a Loft artist. He said he thought it was “pretty hip to have a record company in Vichy.”

So after Josephine Baker, Sidney Bechet, Jerry Lewis and Samuel Fuller…Ladies and gentlemen, Spencer Bohren. The French are always pleased to discover American talent from under American noses. Business had been better than good, media play out of sight, when he opened at the Platinum Bar of the Meridien Hotel in Montparnasse for a week. “They seem to think I’m some kind of star over here,” he said. “I’m beginning to believe it myself.”

Mike Zwerin has been jazz and rock critic for the International Herald Tribune for the last twenty years. He was also the European correspondent for The Village Voice. Mike Zwerin is the author of several books on jazz and the jazz editor of Culturekiosque.com.

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