Pokey LaFarge & the South City Three

(audio clip with intro by Bob Boilen) - NPR

St. Louis' Pokey LaFarge is getting national and international recognition for his swinging take on acoustic jazz, ragtime and blues. This year, LaFarge released his third album, "Riverboat Soul." He's also working on music for Bill Streeter's documentary "Brick by Chance and Fortune: A Saint Louis Story." (You can download the track "Brick Thieves" here.) We caught up with him as he was heading out the door to pick pumpkins.

• You feel that St. Louis doesn't get its due in terms of musical history. Why is that? When most people hear about St. Louis, they only hear about the Arch and the violence. Musically, St. Louis is right up there with Mississippi, New Orleans and Memphis. But because it didn't have a title, like Mississippi's Delta blues or New Orleans' jazz, or Memphis, which had so many big stars come out of it; because it was so versatile, it kind of got swept under the rug as far as history is concerned.

We're just trying to pass on the tradition. We're doing it little by little. We're traveling around constantly and we're definitely influencing some people. You gotta measure your positives when you get 'em.

• How did you come to be interested in this kind of music? Early jazz, ragtime, string-band music, Western swing... 'Cause it's the greatest kind of music ever recorded! (laughs) It just kind of hit me. I started with my grandfather. He was a historian, kind of on his own terms. He was a woodcarver and a Civil War re-enactor and a World War II vet. He went out and he hunted with a musket and black powder. He was always kind of ensconced in the past. So from an early age, I was watching old slides and watching documentaries and reading books and stuff like that. I was just interested from a young age. Anything that was old, I just had an eye toward that. When I heard acoustic music -- that tone of the acoustic instruments -- it just hit me, and it's something that stayed with me forever. Just that richness of acoustic music.

• Were there specific records or specific artists that you were drawn to? This is the thing with blues: I don't even think of blues as a music. If you ask any of the old cats, they will tell you, "Blues isn't a music, blues is a feeling." Blues doesn't have to be some guy and a guitar, fresh out the cotton fields, walking to the crossroads to sell his soul to the devil. The blues was recorded by women with horn sections before men even recorded blues. (When) I heard the real blues, when I heard the acoustic stuff, the old stuff, the real blues music, I thought, "Oh, this is a totally different thing." People who like blues music these days, they don't even care about that.

But anyway, I heard Muddy Waters' "Folksinger" album when I was 13 years old. That's the one where he has an acoustic guitar, Willie Dixon is playing upright bass, and Buddy Guy, who was 19 years old at the time, was backing him up. It's a Chess release. I'd heard Muddy Waters' electric stuff and I really liked that, but when I heard his acoustic stuff, I was head over heels after that.

• That's not what I think of as a typical 13 year old's reaction. At that point, you start getting into high school, and some people get into punk rock, some people get into rap. Either way, you're trying to rebel, right? That was just my way of trying to be different.

• It's not so much rebellion, but trying to define yourself. Yeah. I think that's still happening. I'm still trying to define myself. You have to redefine yourself all the time as an artist, but when you're a person who enjoys music that's almost 100 years old, you don't have a lot of people to relate to. So I guess I'm still like that 13-year-old kid.

• You got rave reviews at this year's Newport Folk Festival. What was it like to play there? Newport was wonderful because of all the legendary musicians that have played there in the past -- Newport being a safe haven for Southern blacks to come up and do their thing. It was tough for blues guys to get work, especially with the Jim Crow South. It was hard for them to make money. So guys like Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters were discovered on a national level specifically because of Newport, it being the center of the folk revival. That festival was the one. One of my favorites of all time, Robert Wilkins, played there. Son House, Skip James, and then of course, Mike Seeger, and then Doc Watson. Doc Watson played the very first Newport Folk Festival and then he played it this year, which was like the 50th or 51st year. It was amazing, you know? The biggest honor of my musical career so far.

• Is it difficult to match your original material with the sounds of the past and somehow strike a balance? That's one of the most important questions. I've always played acoustic music. I've never played anything else. To me, music is a language, obviously, and I've learned the language. That's what I speak. If you play jazz and pick up a horn, you're going to play jazz. That's what is going to come out. I pick up a guitar and I write a song, and it comes out in a certain way. It's like I've studied this music, I've researched this music. This music is in me. So when I write a song, it comes out swingin'.

• Do you feel like an analog guy in a digital world? Yeah, I do. I collect '78s. But I'm sitting in front of a computer right now. So it's weird. - St. Louis Post-Dispatch

At the end of a year, it’s become a tradition for entertainment writers to look back and select the best – and sometimes the worst – concerts, performances, recordings and events that took place during the previous 12 months.

But this article is a little different. It’s an attempt to look ahead to 2011 and predict which three St. Louis-based musical artists may have the most significant impact in the coming year. Certainly, there are many noteworthy musicians and bands that could qualify for possible inclusion in that very limited list of only three artists to watch. But after much deliberation – and with apologies to those whom I was not able to include – here are three musicians I believe will take their music to another level in 2011.

POKEY LAFARGE

Anyone familiar with what singer/songwriter Pokey LaFarge achieved in 2010 should certainly not be surprised to see his name included on this list. After all, LaFarge, singing and playing guitjo (a six-string banjo with a guitar neck) and backed by his band, the South City Three, traveled to England and Scotland twice last year for tours – and also landed a spot in the lineup of the prestigious Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island in August.


lafarge300Pokey

Photos courtesy of the artists

Pokey LaFarge and the South City Three
Early in the year, LaFarge released Riverboat Soul, his third recording but the first with South City Three - Ryan “Churchmouse” Koenig on washboard, harmonica and vocals, Adam “Boss Hoss” Hoskins on guitar and vocals and Joey Glynn on upright bass and vocals.



The addition of the group sound gave depth and definition to LaFarge’s take on traditional blues, country string band sounds, ragtime and popular music from the 1920s era – as well as his own original material – which is decidedly based on those earlier traditional styles.

LaFarge (not his real name, although he insists Pokey is one of his early nicknames while growing up in Benton and then Normal, Ill.) also presents a retro visual image on stage with outfits that include suits, bowties and a porkpie hat. The look is obviously created to fit the retro theme Lafarge delivers, but when you catch him in concert, it just seems right.

LaFarge will be touring quite a bit in Europe and around the U.S. throughout the coming year, and already has a showcase performance scheduled for the International Folk Life Conference in Memphis in February – as well as dates in New Orleans, Nashville, Virginia and New Jersey.

But you can still catch him right here in St. Louis at Schlafly Bottleworks in Maplewood on Jan. 7 and Feb. 4, and at Schlafly Brewery downtown on Feb. 3. For more info, check out Lefarge’s website.

LESLIE SANAZARO

Singer/songwriter/pianist Leslie Sanazaro’s impressive resume includes two recordings -- 2006’s Stars In the Attic and 2008’s On Your Roof -- solo tours throughout Asia, Canada and the U.S., music degrees from DePaul University and the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and a nomination as “Best Singer-Songwriter in the 2009 “Riverfront Times” Music Awards.

But she’s clearly raising the bar for 2011 with a new project that includes a recording, a tour of North America, performances in Southeast Asia and raising funds to start a girl’s school in Cambodia.


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Leslie Sanazaro
The project, called “Daughters of Cambodia,” is designed to raise awareness and funds for the fight against human trafficking and forced prostitution throughout Southeast Asia and Africa. According to Sanazaro, the issue came to her attention when she read “Half The Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide,” a book by New York Times writers Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn.



According to Sanazaro, after she read the book, she was at first devastated – then inspired. “I spent a week crying,” she explains during a recent conversation before a performance at Monarch in Maplewood, “Then I started to think about what I could do as an individual to at least raise awareness about human trafficking of young girls. I hadn’t really written songs for about a year and was actually thinking of taking a break from music. But suddenly song ideas began pouring out, and I decided I had to record a CD, get a tour going, raise awareness for this issue -- and also raise funds to start a school for girls in Cambodia.”

Sanazaro started getting studio sessions going a little more than a week ago and is looking to have a CD recorded by early spring, a tour started in May and also aims to get to Cambodia in June or July for concerts and fundraising for the proposed school.

“At first, I felt completely overstretched in what I was trying to do,” she explains. “But as I move ahead, I’m finding more and more people who want to help – and who want to get involved. It’s easy to feel helpless in the face of such an enormous issue. But this is a project that feels right. And it makes me feel right doing it.”

On Jan. 11, which happens to be Human Trafficking Awareness Day, Sanazaro will be performing at the Wine Press, 4436 Olive, debuting several of the new songs that will be included on the upcoming Daughters of Cambodia CD. To find out more about Sanazaro and her project, go to www.lesliesanazaro.com.

TEDDY PRESBERG

One of the most interesting and musically exciting performances I witnessed in 2010 happened at the Old Webster Jazz & Blues festival on Sept. 18, when guitarist Teddy Presberg and his band, the Resistance Organ Trio, took the stage in the afternoon.

Combining a jazzy, blues-drenched hardbop organ trio foundation with layers of contemporary funk and jam band sensibilities – than swirling in sound samples and riffs by a DJ -- Presberg and his fellow musicians definitely opened some ears with a performance that was always surprising and unpredictable – but somehow made perfect stylistic sense.


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Teddy Presberg
But unpredictability – and musical excitement – has always seemed an essential element in Presberg’s music. He earned a scholarship to attend the prestigious Berklee School of Music, but headed to Portland, Ore., for eight years before returning to his native St. Louis.



Presberg has been a fixture on the local music scene since coming back, and his two recordings, 2007’s Blueprint of Soul, (issued nationally on the Rope-A-Dope label) and Outcries From a Sea of Red, released in 2009, showcase his edgy, exploratory, always funky improvisational approach.

Heading into 2011, Presberg has a new CD planned for release in the spring, followed by a tour that will take him across the U.S. He’s also collaborating with other musical artists in terms of producing their music (including working with Leslie Sanazaro on her Daughters of Cambodia project at his home studio) as well as composing music for video games and television.

Presberg will also be performing every Wednesday when he’s in town at Schlafly Bottleworks. But don’t expect much in the way of musical repeats each week. According to Presberg, “I’ll be working with a different project or band every week.” For more info, go to www.teddypresberg.com. - St. Louis Beacon

Pokey LaFarge is a voice from America's past. The young singer/songwriter from St. Louis offers a modern take on traditional string band music that is rooted in the muddy banks of the Mississippi River on his new album. It's nearly impossible to accurately describe or classify LaFarge's music, so just imagine throwing acoustic blues, ragtime, old time string band, folk, swing and traditional New Orleans Jazz into one big blender and hitting the mix button. This might give you some faint idea of what LaFarge is all about.

Prior to "Riverboat Soul," LaFarge functioned primarily as a solo artist. But for his third album, he recruited Joey Glynn, Ryan "Church Mouse" Koenig and Adam Hoskins to back him and dubbed the trio the South City Three.

LaFarge and company kick off the 12-song set with a wallop courtesy of his La La Blues, a snappy harmonica-driven tune, thus generating the musical momentum that carries the album throughout. Another LaFarge original, Two-Faced Tom, with its swiftly moving call and response chorus and its nicely placed kazoo solo, is a real standout.

The only slow moments on the album are LaFarge's tender ballad Bag of Bones and the mellow and smoldering Daffodil Blues.

The chorus to La La Blues, features the refrain, "I'm so happy you got me singing la la la." LaFarge's unique and diverse sound might just be infectious enough to cause listeners to have that very reaction.
- Country Standard Time

Boy, did someone misname ‘Pokey’ LaFarge. Perhaps, he was born in a school zone or maybe they recorded him at 33 1/3 and then played it at 45 rpm—Pokey isn’t pokey any more. This is speedy stuff with a lot of fast delivery of lyrics, which I like to think of as jazz comedy. This band is reminiscent of the bouncy jug bands of the 1930’s, the wild anything goes of Bob Wills. To introduce the band: Pokey on vocals, guitar gitjo,

kazoo; Joey Glynn on upright bass, guitar at times; Ryan ‘Church Mouse’ Koenig on harmonica, washboard, percussion; and Adam Hoskins on guitar, slide guitar. They all sing and there are a few guests like Ketch Secor on fiddle, Tommy Oliviero on mandolin, and Travis Stinson on some harmonies. These are difficult tunes delivered with that spit polish that makes you say “how’d they do that?” Bootlegger ‘Claude Jones’ has a tribute paid with banjo-playing Eddie Peabody would love. There’s exceptional guitar work. ‘Hard Times Come and Go’ is another of good songwriting examples, full stories to accelerated beat-more great guitar. ‘Two Faced Tom’ is a fun ditty, Pokey writes some catchy hooks. ‘In the Graveyard Now’ is a new version of Jimmie Rodgers ‘In the Jailhouse’ via the Memphis Jug Band. Great vocalizing and wonderful harmonica. ‘Bag of Bones’ is done with a Carter family harmony. If you want a pick-me-up CD to throw on now and then, this is nicely done. - Victory Music (Seattle, WA)

BEST DISCOVERY: POKEY LAFARGE & THE SOUTH CITY THREE
This 26-year-old St. Louis troubadour is all about reviving the roaring 1920s -- and onstage Sunday he did a fine job. Wearing a high-waisted gray suit with perfectly slick-backed hair, LaFarge strummed an acoustic guitar and lead his three-piece band on old-school jazz and blues standards like the snappy and fun "Right Key, Wrong Key Hole," plus ragtime, swing, and Delta-meets-Appalachia tracks off their aptly-titled new release, Riverboat Soul. "This is a folk festival and we are playing American music, people," he announced from the stage. Amen. - Spin Magazine

HE looks and sounds as though he comes from the era when artists recorded their music onto 78s instead of mp3 and has a name which sounds more suited to a travelling musician plying his trade in the dustbowls of Roosevelt's America, not Obama's.

Yet "musicianaire" Pokey Lafarge does not entirely fit the label of "old-timey" which some are tempted to add to his music, even if he readily acknowledges the influence of the past.

"Modern is a relative word," Lafarge said, firmly ruling out the use of synthesizers, tight pants and make up.

"I certainly don't expect us to be on MTV any time soon. But it is modern in the sense of me writing about what's going on in my life. I'm just trying to speak honestly. I'm not writing about picking cotton or when booze was illegal, just love and death and sex and whiskey - things people have been experiencing for a thousand years."

If not quite that old, his style of music has a long pedigree. Lafarge - Pokey is a childhood nickname - pointed out that even when this style of music was first recorded in the inter-war years, many of those first recording stars were already in their 50s so would have been performing back in the days of Queen Victoria.

"I think that's pretty cool when you can trace something back into the 1800s," he said.

"The music is part of our culture and I take a lot of pride in trying to preserve it. I think people should know about it. When they hear this music, it sets their minds racing, they don't know what to think about it, but they can feel it."

Lafarge and his band, The South City Three, appear at Eden Court on Sunday having already made a successful foray to Scotland with a star-making set at Glasgow's Celtic Connections Festival.

They return across The Pond on their biggest European tour to date fresh from the Newport Folk Festival - where Bob Dylan arguably dealt the biggest blow against Lafarge's lo-tech style of music by going electric 45 years ago.

With Lafarge and company being hailed as the biggest discovery of the festival, it looks as though there are signs of musical fashions turning full circle.

"There's a lot of people playing acoustic instruments, but I wouldn't say they would be playing them the right way - they're strumming banjos like they would guitar - but there are pockets around the country where playing acoustic instruments is more prevalent," Lafarge said.

"Things are changing and we're certainly doing our part. We meet a lot of people who, humbly speaking, we seem to be influencing by keeping this music alive and putting our own spin on. That's what you've got to do. I'm not out to copy anyone. I'm out to make music the way I think it should sound.

"I guess we're harking back in the sense of what I feel is right. I feel that this kind of music has a lot of integrity to it. It's pure and it's honest. It's simple, but it's American music - it's ragtime, it's blues, it's jazz, it's western swing - but it's not just one specific genre. I'm just a singer of songs."

He is, though, a singer of songs in a tradition he is very closely connected to and it is not just the music of the past he believes we should revive for the 21st century. There are some good old fashioned values he reckons we could do with.

"My grandfather was a banjo player, a historian and a Civil War re-enactor, so my first movies were Civil War movies and World War II documentaries and I've always been ensconced in the history," he said.

"I feel today's people should maybe take a look back at some of these moral codes that people used to have. I think we could learn a lot from things like that."

Things like manners, integrity and - judging from Lafarge's individual but dapper stage persona - perhaps some old fashioned sartorial elegance.

"Like with the music, I feel there's a way people should look when they're on stage," he declared.

"There's nothing wrong with combing your hair and shining your shoes." - Inverness Courier (Inverness, Scotland)

Pokey LaFarge is riding shotgun with his girlfriend through the outskirts of Orlando, coming up on Sea World, heading to a car show, eating oranges and tossing off bon mots like a carnie on speed. He's probably wearing suspenders, a straw hat and wing-tipped shoes. If the casting call comes through for the young Jimmie Rodgers, he's ready.

The question isn't how this 26-year-old, guitar-plucking blues singer — who was born in Benton, Illinois, and is now based in St. Louis — got to Florida. That's easy: Love and Interstates 10 and 75 took him there. (Only for now; he'll be back.) The real question is this: How did the diminutive songster, in the thrall of once widely popular but now fairly obscure blues and early jazz artists such as Blind Blake, Ma Rainey and the Dixieland Jug Blowers, become so popular? He's landed a record deal with the Trade Root Music Group, amassed a bounty of press, scored a Daytrotter recording session and recently returned from a UK tour that, bizarrely, took him to the Celtic Connections festival in Scotland.

"We did six shows in England, two in Scotland," he says of the winter tour with his band, the South City Three. "Humbly speaking, we blew it up. We're going back for six weeks in August. The biggest reaction is: What in the hell kind of music you call that? That's the main thing. But people are very appreciative, more so than a lot of places over here. They're enthusiasts and fairly knowledgeable about old-time music, very articulate, and they want to talk about how it was back in the day and how it is now in America."

LaFarge is the first to recognize the absurdity of his role as spokeman for the good ol', bad ol', old-time blues days, but he's not shirking the responsibility — and he knows his shit: His grandfather played in the St. Louis Banjo Club and taught him about the Civil War and World War II history. But he's the first member of his immediate family to take music seriously.

"I've been a student of this music for years," he says. "I feel like I'm not talking out of my ass. I think people are just excited that young people are into old-time music."

Pokey met the blues — really met them — when he was fourteen years old, living in Normal, Illinois. He liked to hang out at a pizza parlor run by a guy named Juice.

"He was a bald, white, mongrel-looking dude," LaFarge recalls. "He was a sad motherfucker. He drank, listened to the blues and made pizzas all day. It was a blues haven. The thing that really started me was Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters. The Muddy record was the Folk Singer album with Buddy Guy and Willie Dixon, all acoustic. Fucking incredible. That's when I learned that blues could be acoustic. I was like most people are today, that the blues are Albert King or Stevie Ray Vaughan or B.B. King, who hasn't made a good record in 25 years."

Over the phone, he's cagey about his birth name, but "Pokey" is a nickname he's had since youth. "LaFarge" echoes folk legend Peter LaFarge, but probably just sounded right to him. His quirky but precise take on Depression-era barbershop fashion matches his street-corner harmonica, guitar and kazoo sound. It's a cultivated persona — which to some may border on shtick — but for LaFarge, it's not an act: It's who he's become.

"It's hard to see the balance between what's fateful and what you create yourself," he says. "I don't know, man. I always wanted to be different. I realized that the blues was something that hit me in the heart. So it was true. I wanted to sing, and I was already a writer, so I wrote the songs to sing them. I was hitchhiking, performing on the street, and that's how I learned to sing so loud. First town was Eugene, Oregon. I didn't know shit. I don't think I made a dime the first day. I just knew I wanted to go west. Thank God I wasn't like Buster Keaton in the movie Go West. I didn't fall in love with a cow."

Riverboat Soul, which was officially released on February 16, is Pokey's third and strongest record. Driven by the guitar, rhythm section and voices of the South City Three — Adam Hoskins, Joey Glynn and Ryan Koenig — Soul was recorded over two days in July 2009 in Nashville through the old Neumann microphones once used by John Hartford and Norman Blake. The sound and songwriting, brimming with blues and country diction and rhythms, are faithful to the pre-War string band style, but not too faithful. Opener "La La Blues" swings brightly, "Bag of Bones" drifts like an elegiac John Hartford classic, "In the Graveyard Now" jumps like a cricket, and "Migraines and Heartpains" captures all the hilarious hokum of a medicine-show tall tale.

"I'm pretty happy with it," LaFarge says. "It's good to have the band represented. It will probably be a couple more years before I get the sound I want, and that will be with a bigger ensemble."

What shines through most on Soul isn't LaFarge's style or studiousness, reflected off a scuffed and scratched mirror of the past. Instead, it's the same spirit that animates anyone who plays music to begin with: because it's so much fun you can't stop. And that spirit and sound seems to be translating to audiences across continents, ages and cultural divides.

"I am who I am," LaFarge says of his persona. "What they see is what they get. If people are coming out for that, then that's part of it. You can't take one away from the other. Do you think people went to see Elvis because he could dance like that? The image is a reference point. I've cultivated my music, and I've cultivated a style as well. I love clothes and hats. Some girls think I'm cute. Some guys think I'm goofy. But it is what it is. When you hear the songs, you refer to the human being they came from." - Riverfront Times (St. Louis, MO)

Pokey LaFarge, like his new album title, is a Riverboat Soul. Not an old one at 26, certainly an enthusiastic one. It’s like he’s been reincarnated from the inside-out-world of a lost Mark Twain story; he jumps off the page and into our Americana imagination, by way of St. Louis. He lives in a ragtime world of his own creation. It’s an extended washtub childhood that refuses to let go of his soul. He was raised in the Midwest on a ragtime-rhyme with a goodtimin’- glee in his eye. If others dance to the beat of a different drummer, Pokey dances to the rhythm of a washtub and kazoo. His songs are a reflection of times gone by brought solidly to the present. He drinks whiskey all night; runs his fingers over the fret board with the ease of a carnival barker outside of a hall of mirrors. His music is America, past and present. It’s been called ‘old-timey,’ but there’s nothing old time about this ramblin,' traveling, guitar-picking, goodtimin’ boy. Looking like a very young Jimmie Rodgers and even sounding a bit like him had Rodgers been fond of espresso; his songs move us through the America most don’t see. Many think it doesn’t exist. But he’s been there and returned to tell us about it. Pokey found it on the road when he was 18. If there’d been a freight train nearby, he would have hopped it. Pokey has hitched rides storing up impressions and experiences that have informed his writing in a unique way. He took to the American back roads unseen, unheard and ignored by the mainstream media bent on pre-packaged music and the latest American Idol contestant. Pokey insists, this is not old timey music. The only thing old fashioned here is the attire of Pokey and the musicians known as the South City Three. They are respectively, Joey Glynn on upright bass, Ryan “Church Mouse,” Koenig on harmonica, washboard and percussion and Adam Hoskins on guitar and slide guitar. The guitar, kazoo, vocals, gitjo and harmonica are all handled on various songs with poise, ease and confidence by Pokey.

He takes his ancestry from troubadours, vagabonds, bojangled alleyway jail-bound bums and street singers of the past; However, he brings us into the present with songs like the ragged “Hard Times Come and Go” and the comically woeful, “Migraines and Heartpains.” Pokey LaFarge’s River Boat Soul is a universal spin on music once considered race music or of a regional nature. But, these days there’s nothing regional about Pokey and The South City Three. When I caught up with him via cell phone in his car, he was on his way from St. Louis to Texas. He was on a national tour of pubs, clubs, festivals and colleges. And he is on his way up in his world of music. He spoke with fondness of the many musicians who travel the same road, making the same kind of music. He has his ear to the others who traveled before him. Ragtime has been around for a while. Jugband too. Of course, the subject of Jim Kweskin came up while we talked. As he talked he returned again and again to theme of making this music last, getting heard by everyone he can. Like many touring musicians, Pokey sees the need for music as an instrument of cure and healing. At one point in our conversation he asked…’is there anything you just have to have and you won’t be satisfied by anything else? Like a good drink, a smoke. You’re just fulfilled as soon as you have it. That’s what this music and playing it is like for me.’ He said with a chuckle.

He told me stories of hitchhiking through America that sounded as though he had been on the road with Woody Guthrie and Jack Kerouac for the last decade. The more he traveled, the more his skill and talent developed. He didn’t eat or sleep in favor of playing, practicing and learning his instrument. He has one foot planted in the past, one in the present as moves into a future where he will continue to bring his own unique vision. He is Americana music at its finest.

To think, this album was recorded in four sessions and then mixed and mastered in just as short a time, with no overdubs, is a reminder of how these records were once made. There is only pure, live, acoustic music found on this album. It’s impossible not to smile as you listen to his near gypsy-jazz guitar leads; The music comes as fast as he talks, drives and records.

River Boat Soul, opens with a speedy high-end guitar strum and a Piedmont bluesy harmonica that would make John Sebastian grin, on the song “La La Blues.” It’s as though welcoming him with open arms is Jesse Fuller as he tells a story of womanizing to the tune and bounce of these happy blues.

The song, "Claude Jones," bemoans the inevitable fate of a bootlegger. Poaky’s kazoo jumps in and around the musical acrobatics leading the way into more skillful acoustic lead guitar. “Hard Times Come and Go,” sounds like a retro song from The Great Depression but still figures in today’s world. But, Pokey won’t let us whine. He’s too busy bringing a smile to our faces.

His performance style runs counter to his frenetic song and playing style. Judging from You Tube, pure acoustic-bluegrass style playing is used. The one-mic technique of the early days of mountain and blue grass music and live radio shows. His demeanor is cool, low-key with an attitude that defies any world weariness of older blues musicians. This could be the birth of next Bill Monroe creating such a fine mix of ragtime, jugband, blues,folk and country,he has found his own genre. For now, he’s solidly in the contemporary Americana genre, only because the music is hard to catatorize. And I think Pokey LaFarge prefers it that way. Catch him on record and live before he leaves us all in his dust. - No Depression