The Gospel According to Peter May
There’s an old rugged wooden cross standing in a weed strewn field. A battered resonator guitar with kudzu entwined round the neck leans against it. That stark image is the outside introduction to Winston-Salem, N.C. singer/guitarist Peter May’s latest release, Blues and Gospel. On the inside, May and his
‘34 National resonator guitar take on God and the devil with a fistful of originals, both celestial and secular.
The son of a preacher man, May sang in the Moravian choir of his dad’s church and dabbled in classical music in college before switching to blues and forming The Creeping Gizroids. He turned to rock for an 8 year run with Worried Sick before going back to classical then back to blues. “I got one Robert Johnson song to where I could play it and it was just like freedom, man,” he says of his blues rebirth. His trio Terraplane roared around the area for years dispensing Delta blues with the help of May’ resonator lead, and May released an album of covers with that band called Straight Drive in ’03. He’s also fronted The Rough Band since 1998, representing the Piedmont Blues Preservation Society in the international competition in Memphis last year. His latest project is a rock band, the MayByrds, with Andy Mabe on bass, Jay Johnson on drums, cousin Elmon May, Jr. on organ, and May on guitar.
Blues and Gospel is a solo record. But May says he didn’t intend it to be that way. He had asked a frequent accompanist to collaborate on the gospel songwriting, but he wasn’t interested, so May wrote ’em all himself, with one exception, a co-write with Darrell Blackburn on “Ain’t No Way To Roll.” May started the process in March of 2014, but has had to schedule around his full time job as a nursing assistant at Wake Forest Baptist Health.
“You Are Sacred” sounds like something Eric Bibb would be comfortable with, a delicately plucked, soft- spoken melody with some sparse but succinct lyrics: “You may be hungry/you may be naked/you may be in jail/ you are sacred/ you are stardust/ you are God’s dust/ you are sacred.” But May says his first crack at the song was anything but sacred to him. “I was writing the song, and 99. 99 % of it just really sucked when I went back to look at it,” May says. “But I did like that I had rhymed “naked” and “sacred,” so I took that and wrote the song about a little bit of God being in everybody.”
May conjures up the spirit and voice of a wizened Delta bluesman on “You May Get Hungry.” His ’34 resonator ringing like a railroad spike being pounded by a nine-pound sledgehammer, May cautions would-be lovers about the dangers of picking the wrong partner: “You may get hongry/ you may get broke/ you wont know no sorrow/till she turns your love into a joke.”
Sounding like Randy Newman in tone and text, May gets back to the Bible on “Thomas,” offering some advice and a plea for help to the Apostle Thomas who earned his place in infamy as doubting Thomas by doubting that a resurrected Jesus had appeared to the other disciples. He had to be convinced by Jesus himself appearing before him, telling Thomas to put his hand in his wounds. “We didn’t get to stick our fingers in/ where the spear had been,” May sings. “You might have to intercede/ tell Jesus to set his people free.”
But its not all bloody gospel or down-hearted blues. “Haw River Lullaby” is a quiet instrumental, May plucking the strings as softly as a man can pluck a resonator without making the baby holler and blow the whole thing.
He closes with “In the Arms of Jesus,” a tune his says he didn’t realize until he was recording it that he was trying to sound like “Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground,” by Blind Willie Johnson. “All the blues people liked him cause he played a really mean slide,” May says of the Texas bluesman preacher composer of “Motherless Children,” “John The Revelator” and “You’re Gonna Need Somebody On Your Bond.” May was writing the song to his mom, who had recently passed away, but Johnson’s tune kept creeping in. “He doesn’t really sing the lines on ‘Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground,’
he just kinda moans,” May says. “My moanin’ felt real good, but when I listened back to it, it wasn’t so hot, so it turned out there’s just a little bit at the very end of it.” May’s guitar speaks for him in this sparse, Ry Cooder-ish hymn, his moans relegated to the background at the end as May utters a heartfelt “Help me Jesus” before signing off with a glorious, ringing chime.
“If I was Gary Davis, this is what would come out,” May says of his original gospel songs. “I’m not preaching to anybody, I’m not particularly a Bible-thumper or anything. You can call it the universe, or Buddha, or whatever you want to call it, it’s all right with me.”
Calling it mighty fine works as well. Thank you Jesus. Now turn it up and let’s all get righteous.