Sonny Landreth – Bayou Blues
A northerner with a failed career as a new-wave rocker behind him, Hiatt was coming from a different angle than the Goners, but they had very similar record collections, and Landreth was fascinated by Hiatt’s songwriting. The Lafayette guitarist had always written originals, but now he was traveling with a master.
“It was great watching John’s process as he worked on songs. I’d hear him working on a melody; at first it might sound like a Beatles tune, but a few days later he had changed it so it sounded original. I was blown away by his seemingly endless well of creativity. The man just writes and writes and he turns them out so quickly. I can write a lot of songs, but few of them I’ll ever want to hear again. But John’s were all keepers. I kept hoping some of it might rub off on me.”
It did. Landreth’s next album, 1992’s Outward Bound, shifted the emphasis from blistering blues-rock guitar licks to singer-songwriter craftsmanship, with Ranson and Blevins supporting him the same way they had Hiatt. Landreth soon attracted such admirers as Dire Straits’ Mark Knopfler, the Subdudes’ Tommy Malone, Beausoleil’s Errol Verret and New Orleans R&B legend Allen Toussaint, all of whom joined Ranson, Blevins and Conn on Landreth’s next album, 1995’s South Of I-10.
His songwriting ambitions climaxed on 2000’s Levee Town. This time the core quartet of Landreth, Ranson, Conn and drummer Michael Organ were joined by such guests as Hiatt, Doucet, Bonnie Raitt, Herb Pedersen and Stephen Bruton. The title track was typical of the album in the way it drew from Louisiana imagery, slide guitar licks and swampy rhythms to evoke a specific place and universal themes. This time the details depicted a hurricane on the Atchafalaya, when “the river is high and the sandbags are sinking” — but anyone could grasp the feeling of coping with the immediate crisis and looking forward to better times ahead.
“That trilogy of Outward Bound, South Of I-10 and Levee Town was united by a sense of place and a thematic concept,” Landreth claims. “I recognized that there’s a rich heritage here that I could draw on, so the idea was to write story songs and use the guitar almost like a soundtrack to project and support the lyrics of these songs. The music evolved with each album, and I felt it all came together for me — as a guitarist, singer, songwriter and producer — on Levee Town.”
Like Richard Thompson, Bruce Cockburn and Dave Alvin, Landreth has one group of fans that cares about his guitar solos and another group that cares about his songwriting. Like his peers, he often has to perform a delicate balancing act to keep both camps happy. After the song-dominated Levee Town, Landreth knew it was time to put the guitar out front again.
“When people buy the albums and really listen to these songs, they go beyond the guitar,” Landreth maintains. “The guitar is the hook to get them in the room, but I hope the song gets them to sit down and stay awhile. The guitar crowd is up front in the club, and that’s great because they’re my brothers in arms. But the fans who really live with the songs and know all the words are just as important to me; I don’t take them for granted. But after I had completed that trilogy, I felt it was time to get back to the blues.”
That led to 2003’s The Road We’re On and this year’s Grant Street, both of which focus on Landreth’s blues songwriting and blues solos. But the results have a distinctly different flavor than the more familiar blues coming from Chicago, Texas or the Mississippi Delta. Landreth adds the spice of South Louisiana, that telltale taste of swampy syncopation and bayou phrasing which has won Landreth invitations to play on sessions by Dr. John, Shelby Lynne, Jimmy Buffett, John Mayall and many more.
“It’s something we bring to the table,” Landreth says of his fellow Louisianans. “In music, it’s not what you can’t do; it’s what you can do. Any good producer will recognize that. Anyone who can bring something special, some flavor to the proceedings, has something more important than all the chops in the world.”
ND senior editor Geoffrey Himes recently wrote the book and the string-band songs for A Baltimore Christmas Carol, a stage musical that updates the Dickens novella to 1970s Maryland. The show had its premiere at Baltimore’s Patterson Theatre in December.