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Concert: Harry Manx
Venue: The Triple Door, Seattle, Washington
Date: December 15, 2004
Reviewed by Eric Steiner
Harry Manx is one of my favorite blues discoveries of the past few years, and he was working solo on the last leg of a 40-date tour that began at the 2004 Chicago Blues Festival when he played Seattle's Triple Door last month.
Manx' mastery of six strings, both guitar and banjo, and the 20-string Mohan Veena shone through over an hour and a half at what likely is Seattle's most acoustically-perfect venue. Harry's diverse set included originals from his CDs on Canada's Northern Blues label and his own Dog My Cat Records.
He also honored contributions of two Pacific Northwest musicians, Jimi Hendrix and coffee roaster/folksinger Danny O'Keefe. I never thought "Foxy Lady" would work on an acoustic, but with Harry at the helm, it does. I last heard "Goodtime Charlie's Got the Blues" when O'Keefe sang it at a benefit for his foundation devoted to songbirds, along with Tom Robbins, Keb' Mo, Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt several years ago and I know that O'Keefe would be pleased with Harry's no-frills version of this song tonight. Harry turned Van Morrison's "Crazy Love" into an East Indian raga with complex strumming and flourish on the Mohan Veena.
Harry told the story of his discovery of East Indian music and his five-year pilgrimage to study under Rajasthani Indian musician Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, who gave Harry the Mohan Veena that he designed. Bhatt and Ry Cooder earned a Grammy for their world music effort A Meeting by the River in the mid-90's.
"I played my six string for Vishwa Mohan Bhatt," Harry reminisced. "He looked at it and said, 'those six strings look lonely. I am going to add 14.'" The Mohan Veena adds tinges of world beat to the blues, and while it's an unlikely musical melding of two cultures, Manx' music will surprise fans of traditional acoustic blues.
The Mohan Veena has two sets of strings atop one another; in the guitar making trade, they are called sympathetic strings. Manx teases many different notes and nuances from not only this instrument from Rajasthan, but also his six-string banjo and lap steel. He called his version of Howlin' Wolf's "Sitting on Top of the World," "Indian bluegrass, or a kind of 'Himalayan Mountain Breakdown'."
Tonight's set included several songs from his new West Eats Meet CD (Dog My Cat), as well as his earlier releases on Northern Blues, like Dog My Cat and Wise and Otherwise. Dog My Cat won Harry the Canadian Independent Music Award for Best Blues recording in 2002; his follow-up, Wise and Otherwise, was nominated for a Juno award, as was his third CD, Jubilee, which he made with guitarist Kevin Breit. This month, Harry is honored by the Toronto Blues Society Maple Blues Awards with nominations in the Acoustic Act of the Year, Songwriter of the Year, and Recording of the Year. Since his return to the West in 2000, Harry has picked up Maple Blues Awards for best acoustic act twice, and I hope he'll cross the stage at the gala blues event in Toronto this year, too.
Road Ragas, a CD from his live shows, was on my top-five list of CDs of the past year, and West Eats Meet are his first two releases on his own record label. Road Ragas is taped with no overdubs, and if you haven't heard Harry Manx play, Road Ragas (available at www.harrymanx.com) is an excellent place to start.
© 2005 - Eric Steiner