The Chris Chown Band
The Chris Chown Band
Hotrod Records
2000
10 tracks
If rock and roll were to be reborn, this is what it would sound like. The music of Chris Chown is some of the best rock and roll I've heard in a long time. This is the solid, rocking sound that ripped its way into American culture when young musicians, black and white alike, in Memphis and across the nation discovered The Blues and made it their own. This is the slow, driving beat that rolled over the world a decade later when young musicians in Great Britain traced rock and roll back to its roots and released it from a death of commercial pap. But is it The Blues? You bet it is.
There's a vitality here that's missing from the performances of many [I might even say most] local and regional blues bands in Ontario. I've found it hard to determine what exactly is missing, but many of these bands feel emotionally flat. They play solid, danceable music that's often more rock and roll than blues. The band gets all the chords and riffs just right. Male singers give raw, gutsy performances and females belt the songs out at the top of their lungs. Yet it's still blues without feeling.
Simply by existing, Chris Chown suggests what might be leaving these blues flat. It seems to me that it's a combination of age, inertia, and lifestyle. Look around the club while the band is playing. Chances are it's filled with middle-class folks with good jobs, mostly over the age of thirty. Check out the band. Chances are most or all of the players are over forty. And how many of them play the blues part-time as a break from a day job as a lawyer, real estate agent, high school principal, or college professor? This is white collar blues played for a white collar audience.
These musicians have played the same songs for so long that they can coast, letting their fingers do the playing while they abdicate the bandstand and join the audience to listen to themselves play. Over the years, they have become human juke boxes, playing the same three sets over and over again. The energy is there but not the heart and soul. Sometimes, even the energy is not there. It's true that many blues greats (B. B. King, Alberta Hunter, John Lee Hooker) perform all their lives and never lose that blues feeling. I think the difference is that The Blues is not a nostalgic part-time job or hobby. They live and breathe The Blues full time.
Fifty years ago, it was young musicians in their teens and early twenties who brought the blues back to life. The blues revival grew out of early rock and roll, whether rhythm and blues or the blues based rockabilly music of the southern states. As young rockers became increasingly popular, interest revived in the blues musicians they idolized. Today, young blues musicians like Ottawa's J. W. Jones and London's Chris Chown are breathing new life into this old form. The original rock and rollers gave blues songs their own personal imprint. Young artists like Jones and Chown also impress the blues with their own signatures while always showing deep respect for their sources.
At root, at its deepest level, the music on this release is pure blues. There are other sounds here too. Sometimes the songs sound like the sort of Motown material put out by artists like Jimmy and David Ruffin. Sometimes the songs sound more like early Jimi Hendrix and other times like Stevie Ray Vaughan. Other times, they could have come out of the same Sun Records studios that produced such artists as Charlie Rich and Sil Austin. And, of course, it often sounds like the blues greats of the past. Is it rock and roll or is it the blues. Semantics just means that what I hear and what you hear may be the same thing wearing different clothes. Chris Chown calls it The Blues, and he plays and sings it very well.
That Chown has a real understanding of this music becomes clear when you realize that he wrote all but two of the eleven songs [one's a bonus instrumental track with that Memphis beat]. Listening to this release without a songwriters list, it's impossible to distinguish the Chown compositions from the older songs. Any one of these songs would fit easily into a Forties or Fifties ambience. Only a writer immersed in The Blues could write these lyrics or compose these tunes.
To attempt to describe any one of the tracks on this release would do the others an injustice. All the songs are of equal high quality and need to be heard to be appreciated. Like his writing, Chown's performance has a maturity and understanding of the blues usually found only in artists with many more years experience. I'm confident that, if you do hear these songs, you will appreciate them. Chris Chown is a very talented young man worthy of your attention as he grows into his art.
This is Chris Chown's second release. The first, stompin' grounds, was recorded when he was only sixteen years old and released to critical acclaim. In the five years between that release and this, he has grown and improved a great deal. Now, two years later, perhaps it's time we saw another release from Chris Chown.For more information on The Chris Chown Band and the music of Chris Chown, be sure to visit www.ChrisChown.com.
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