The Songwriter Has the Blues
The Right Reverend Crow plays the Blues, writing the blues, and the legend of Hot Tub Shark.
I took a break from Substack after my last May 2024 tour.
I don’t even know why. It just kind of happened.
I have an account of that Euro/UK tour that went on the back-burner. I will publish that soon.
And I’ll be working my way back to doing whatever it is I do here.
If you missed me, I’m sorry I was gone so long.
And if you didn’t miss me…well, you know how that joke goes.
Don’t worry, I’ll be here all night. Don’t forget to tip your server.
Since I last wrote on Substack, our government has been taken over by cartoon villains intent on an Autocracy/Oligarchy.
People I love are threatened. Our actual future as a free society is in doubt.
I can’t get that off my mind.
I even wrote an entire album worth of songs as a sequel to Red, White and American Blues.
There’s a lot that angers and worries me.
So, why write about the Blues, now?
Why write about MY Blues.
Because the Blues has always been part of how I deal with all…this…shit.
(I’ve got the “Worried all the time” Blues).
The Blues, which is arguably the start of all popular music, beginning from acapella chants, rhythmic dance and ritual music played on whatever was available, was, and is, regardless of who is playing it, a Black music form.
It’s a music that has always been there, long before it had a name, and usually from a culture where oppressors were right around the corner.
Oppressors are here.
They are always here.
As usual, they are after Black people, Women, and anybody who doesn’t fit their idea of a Christian, White, Male Society.
Goddamn.
There’s a lot to talk about.
So, let’s talk about the Blues. Specifically, Blues music.
Let’s talk about my next album, The Right Reverend Crow, “65 Natural” which is a Blues album.
From one old, white, half-Jewish guy’s perspective.
PLAYING THE BLUES (a journey)
The first blues album that blew me away was B.B. King “Live at Cook County Jail.” My teacher/mentor John Bowie loaned it to me with the promise that I return it within a week.
Six months later, I gave the album back.
Except, I didn’t. I just I thought I did, until I went to my record collection yesterday to double check and I have the original that he loaned me. Sorry, John.
John passed away in 1977 so I can’t give the record back.
(I’ve got those “You died and left me holding this record” Blues).
B.B King was my beginning.
Since then my natural creative musical inclination has been toward the Blues.
I’m not unusual. Any electric guitar player who started playing in the early 70’s was either passionately into the Beatles or The Rolling Stones.
If you were into the Stones and Hendrix, like I was, you were on the Blues side.
There were a very few oddballs like me who also went crazy over the rawest blues: Hound Dog Taylor, Johnny Winter, John Lee Hooker, Albert Collins, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Albert King, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Son House and countless others.
I loved simple instrumentation, with just a guitar, bass, drums (and maybe another guitar or piano/harmonica). Even today, 50 years later, when I want to hear blues, I play the same records I played when I was 15. Records that have menacing space and overloaded vocals.
For quite a while I insisted that the addition of horns was a bridge too far and wouldn’t give an album with a horn section a fair shot.
That was the arrogance of youth, and hypocritical because I gave anybody I liked, say BB King, a pass.
(I’ve got the “I know better, more better” Blues).
I listen to so much Blues, and so many of my musical peers do the same that I forget that we are a small minority.
A majority of people’s knowledge of the Blues stops at Eric Clapton, the Blues Brothers, and Stevie Ray Vaughn.
So I think a lot about why was I so particularly drawn to the Blues and the kind of raw, hard blues I love.
But let’s start with the what the blues are to me before we get to the why.
The What
The majority of the songs I’ve written in the last fifteen years owe a lot to the Blues, often playing minor, pentatonic and 7th scales off of major chord progressions, or vice versa.
That’s primarily because my playing comes directly from the Blues and what is referred to as roots music.
And when I pick up a guitar my hands go very naturally to blues progressions.
On my worst days I often pick up a guitar and just meander through the Blues. The Blues are my medicine, my inspiration, and my comfort.
I love the spaces created by playing mostly open chords with a few decorative flourishes.
Even my albums, which borrow from all forms of music, wouldn’t exist without Blues forms and Blues sounds.
But I’ve NEVER been in an actual Blues band. As much as I love the form, I never felt completely at home in the modern blues world.
My Blues playing is jagged and angry and very raw.
(I’ve got the “My mama didn’t want me, I’ve got a new mama now” Blues).
And my soloing, what there is of it, is comprised of bursts of sound.
More abrasive than elegant and fluid like Eric Clapton or B.B King.
As a young musician I absorbed a lot of Coltrane and Zappa, Ornette and Ayler. I can’t play jazz, but what I heard in jazz that appealed to me most was the explosion of sound that could create an instant emotion.
I bow down to the genius of Stevie Ray Vaughn and I’m in awe of the new generation of guitarists who know their instruments better than I ever will.
And I’m moved and impressed by those fluid, heart breaking solos.
But what I do, in both acoustic and electric Blues, is throw punches.
The blues I write are soundtracks for knife fights.
(I’ve got the “To win a knife fight you must die last” Blues).
My next album is a knife fight combined with a shootout.
This is a good time to talk about the why.
The Why
Don’t open the door Let the phone ring Keep everyone Safe at home Something’s coming Nobody’s coming We’ll have to get through this alone I know you’re weary I know you’re worried I’m weary and worried too We are all Down hearted and blue -from the The Right Reverend Crow album "65 Natural" scheduled for release soon in 2025
I grew up with music all around me. From the first people who took care of me when my parents were in school (Gospel) through my teenage and young adult years (Jazz, Blues, R and B) music was as important in our house as anything else.
It wasn’t just entertainment. It was expressions of living, of culture, of deep love.
And in a house of poetry, it was poetic in the starkest manner.
So much of it was poetic in the voices of people and their every day language.
So blues informed even my non-blues writing and playing: if you can’t get the message across using plain English, or in just a few notes, you don’t really know the message you are sending.
(I’ve got the “Everybody’s got so much to say” Blues).
It turns out that my first contact with the Blues happened long before B.B. King.
But B.B. somehow played the notes that set my life as a guitar player and songwriter in motion.
WRITING THE BLUES
I hear what I hear. And what I hear is every part of life, the wonderful to the horrible.
I think that is exactly what they mean when they say “The Blues.”
Lightnin’ Hopkins’s “Blues is a Feeling,” recorded live, and improvised, does a great job of nailing it down.
The blues is a feeling That makes you feel very bad. The blues will give ya a sickness, where there was a pain you thought you ne′er had. Now this is where the blues go it jump on you early in the morning and it worries ya until you go to sleep -Sam “lightnin’ “ Hopkins
The Blues is how you feel.
But for me, it’s also what you see.
And there sure is a hell of a lot to see.
When I decided to write a blues album I wanted it to be intentional.
I wanted to use what I knew about the blues, what I felt about and for the blues, and run it through observational lyrics to sing about how people felt and what they do.
Sometimes saying the feeling out loud tells you everything about what is happening.
I wanted my blues to be about how YOU feel.
And about what is happening, including the seemingly trivial (nothing is really trivial) and the commonplace (nothing is commonplace to the individual).
And I wanted to avoid making the blues about any of the four “pillars” of blues songwriting: Traveling, women, alcohol/drugs, and The Blues themselves.
I especially dislike the way traditional Blues lyricists referred to women: Women are usually mistreaters, selfish, critical, and in one case, so insensitive that she takes off her wig before she comes to bed (the horror!). Women are floozies, hookers, and tramps.
In the traditional blues world of male performers, women were just there to hang a song on.
(I’ve got the “What is one man to do?” Blues).
As an answer to this standard blues “bad woman done me wrong, she’s a mean mistreater” cliche, I improvised a song on stage one night called “She Drinks Snake Whiskey,” about a woman who’s willing to drink whiskey made in Asia that actually has a snake in the bottle.
The short was of saying she’s tougher than me and you combined.
I’m not sure I ever got it where I wanted it, but I got to sing the line “She Drinks Snake Whiskey” over and over again and play the guitar like I wanted to break it.
When I got off the road I realized that I had missed playing the Blues guitar of my youth.
I also wrote and recorded a song titled “A Woman.” You’ll see why when the album comes out.
THE LEGEND OF HOT TUB SHARK
“Hot Tub Shark” is a novelty instrumental that’s less than two minutes long.
It’s damn catchy.
I knew that if I wrote a novelty instrumental that I was taking a risk that someday I’d be in Wikipedia (if I’m ever in Wikipedia) solely for that instrumental and all of my work as a lyricist would vanish.
But I thought that “writing” an instrumental was an imperative for a blues musician. Think “Hideaway,” “Wham,” and “Juke.”
The great Hound Dog Taylor (who in addition to being the reason for the existence of the legendary Blues Recording label Alligator Records, had Polidactylism (having six fingers on both hands)) could whip up an instrumental at the drop of the hat.
So, I needed my own instrumental.
And I only have ten fingers.
I took the first riff I ever learned on electric guitar, added some basic boogie chords and threw in a slower tempo shuffle style bridge. All in under two minutes. It didn’t take much longer to actually write it.
I had no title. I thought about calling it “Zensuit’s Karmic Blues” but that was too weighty a title for a trifling instrumental.
I struggled with a title. Even used the usually tried and true tradition of just using the instrument name with a number: “Sheraton Blues #34,” or “Blues for Six String #7.”
None of the names stuck.
One night I went out to put a Bromide tablet in the Hot Tub when it occurred to me that I might open the cover and find a shark in the hot tub.
In addition to being able to afford food and a place to live our other luxury is a hot tub.
My mind is a maze that even I can’t find my way through.
This led to me imagining a “hot tub shark.”
The rest is history.
(I’ve got the “How can I call this a job?” Blues).
The song was received at every show with amazement and enthusiasm.
It guaranteed a standing ovation.
Thank you, Hot Tub Shark.
More What and Finally, Why
My father was deeply in love with jazz. My earliest baby sitters were south side Chicago gospel singers. The University town we lived in had a roots and traditional music scene that was outsized for our small community.
My first gig was to play harmonica for a local Blues singer at a rally for the Equal Rights Amendment. The Rally was attended primarily by women who were trying to get a simple amendment ratified that said that equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. It was finally ratified in 2020 but idiots have challenged it in courts enough that nobody knows if it will ever be official.
The local Blues singer started off with a bawdy song that included a reference to big-legged women and it all went downhill from there.
That disaster of a gig got me started and soon I was playing regularly at a bar called the Sanctuary in Iowa City. I had half a dozen originals but I filled the three hours with Folk songs, a few acoustic pop covers, and a lot of Blues. By my second year at the Sanctuary I was switching between two guitars that were the staples of the acoustic blues, a Gibson LG-1 and the 1934 National Resonator (wood body Estralita, serial number 09) that had been left to me by my mentor John Bowie.
I had a true bottleneck slide, cut from the top of a wine bottle and polished to keep from cutting my finger.
I had enough Harmonicas to handle most keys in cross and straight harp, and a Harp holder that slipped down every other song.
*note- I did not wear an unusual hat or a vest. I did not wear sunglasses on stage. I did not mimic my idols, and was too lazy to actually learn the exact playing of any tune, a negative/positive trait that has stayed with me.
Iowa City’s legendary sea shanty singer, John Golubowitz (sp?), AKA John Blaine, once told my father that the only thing I should play and sing is the Blues.
This seemed ridiculous.
Harry Oster, famous for chronicling traditional music all over the south and Appalachia, told me I was a blues singer when he heard me in a club. I was 17 at the time and his comment, although flattering, seemed preposterous .
By my second full year playing at the Sanctuary I had started to fancy myself a songwriter so I replaced the LG-1 with a Martin D-35.
I remember it was an intentional move to represent myself as more of a singer-songwriter.
It felt like a better fit for a wordy kid.
I got into Dylan, which I am convinced is a young man’s game, but more on that another time.
I even bought a jeans jacket.
(I’ve got the “Too young to have the Blues,” Blues).
But even in the deepest throws of singer-songwriterdom it was still the Blues that I played when I was alone.
For the next 45 years I kept folding what I knew from the Blues into what I was writing.
There were many years when I would have considered what I was writing more country and folk.
For a five year stretch in the mid-to-late 80’s, with Susan Shore as Bell and Shore, I wrote what I can now say were songs that were precursors to what would someday be called Americana and Alt-Country.
I’d argue that Bell and Shore were, if not the first, one of the very first Americana acts and the album L-Ranko Motel one of the first Americana/Alt-Country releases to receive notice in Rolling Stone magazine.
But I digress.
Our set list still had a few blues.
And I never stopped playing a blues tune or two at every show.
When I returned to recording and performing I had something in mind that I’d been thinking about for 30 years, so I became even more of a witness and storyteller and I jammed every musical influence I had into creating a sound that would support those songs.
It’s no surprise that my guitar technique owes a great deal to the banjo.
The banjo is an original instrument of the blues, although in the modern electric blues age it has been mostly relegated to the niche parts of the Blues Recreator’s world.
Yet through every musical incarnation I always went back to the blues for casual guitar playing, the kind that happens on a porch or late at night.
It is the only music that I play when the guitar is my comfort.
I love the Blues from some place I can’t even identify.
Woke Ass Songwriter Records Blues Album
The Blues isn’t just a Black music form.
It is THE Black music form.
So I have been hesitant my whole career to record a “traditional” blues album.
I’m sensitive to the advantages I have purely by being male and white.
That probably classifies me as being Woke.
At least I hope it does.
It’s a compliment to be called Woke, especially if Woke means I give a shit about others and how my actions affect people.
So, my Woke ass is very sensitive about how I use the music of my heroes and the music of another culture.
(I’ve got the “You can’t hurt me with your right-wing talking points” blues)
This new album (one of two, the other is a folk rock odyssey through America) and my only 100% blues based album in my entire 40 plus year career started as a one song improvisation while recording the tracks for my next full album with NeedtoKnow Music.
To the best of my recollection, the first 6 songs were recorded in, at most, two hours.
I’m sure Alvino Bennett, without a doubt the most intuitive drummer I’ve yet to work with, does his same effortless seeming groove thing with everybody, but having a cat play like THAT makes recording drop dead easy.
So ‘vino and I just played one side of record’s worth of blues tunes like we were on stage somewhere and that was that. It was so smooth and easy that I almost forgot the songs existed.
And the Right Reverend Crow became reality.
The Right Reverend Crow (RRC) has been an idea for a number of years.
He’s an atheist tent preacher, a trickster, anti- authority, and advocate for the hard worker and the person who does the best they can to love instead of hate.
But the RRC doesn’t speak in aspirations.
The RRC is afraid but he isn’t afraid.
The RRC gives a good goddamn.
Right before this tragedy of an election, we realized that one of the songs from the blues recordings, “Roll” was a perfect marching cry for the parts of this country that weren’t interested in an increase in fascism and oligarchy.
So that was the next single.
At first, it was just going to be another Nathan Bell project.
But for years I’ve had this other character, The Right Reverend Crow, America’s first Atheist tent preacher.
I am actually ordained.
Right after “Roll” came out, Brink and Frank decided that we should finish the album.
That was a nice surprise.
They wanted me to write 5-6 new songs, record them in my studio and send them out so Alvino could do his thing.
I’ve never sat down to write Blues and R and B songs. The songs that I have written were accidents.
The Blues is a tricky music form in its seeming simplicity.
But when I was finished writing, I had nine new songs to add to the half a dozen already recorded.
If you look back at the history of the Blues you’ll find every topic imaginable.
It shouldn’t have been hard to imagine that I could write the way I write and still have songs that could be honestly called Blues songs.
Simplicity is the most complicated goal. It’s always easier to keep adding on to tell more and more of the story.
I needed to write the stories that I usually write but fit them into the more limited Blues form.
Here’s an example of a song that is simply one chord for the entire song.
This is Retread Cadillac (Lightnin’) from the album that first uses the moniker The Right Reverend Crow.
That’s how tricky the Blues can be.
The form forces a songwriter and musician to do much, much more with less.
Most of what we know to be the Blues revolves around a repeating chord pattern, often 1-4-1-5-1 or 1-4-1-5-4-1. Then notes that make you see something as bluesy come primarily from the Pentatonic, a 5 note scale that is remarkably flexible and can be used in Major of Minor applications with great effectiveness.
It’s popular now to denigrate players who rely on the Pentatonic scale.
That might be because even a relatively inexperienced guitarist can create a decent facsimile of a solo using Pentatonics.
But nothing quite lands in the gut like a well crafted Pentatonic solo.
Most of the famous guitar solos of the great guitar era (the 60’s and 70’s) start from the Pentatonic scale.
Once again, it’s the magic of doing more with less.
There are plenty of variations that, while not sounding exactly like the Blues, could be categorized as Blues.
There is plenty of music that hints at the Blues, masquerades as the Blues, and pays tribute to the Blues.
And there is so much Blues influence in popular music that even the squarest clap-on-the-one-and-three music owes something to the Blues.
Every issue of Living Blues Magazine has over 40 album reviews.
Type “blues instruction” into any search engine and you’ll have endless choices.
A lot of people play the Blues.
A lot of people play the Blues very, very well.
In 1978 I sat in a Chinese Restaurant in Boston with Paul Geremia, one of the truly amazing acoustic Blues guitarists, and we talked about making a living as a musician. I was 18, Paul was 34 and had already put in years on the road.
A few years later Paul would release what I consider to be one of the great acoustic Blues albums of all time, “I Don’t Mind Living” on the now defunct Flying Fish record label (When Bell and Shore signed to Flying Fish in 1986 I was just gassed to be on the label with Paul).
That night his message to me was that there was a killer Blues Musician in every town and that playing the Blues for money led to a life of futility.
I believed him then and I believe him now.
But I waited at least 40 years to make this album, so what the hell?
(I’ve got the “How long must I wait?” Blues).
I waited until I’d lived long enough and had come through Disappointments, sadness, and the inevitable damage and limitations of being lucky enough to survive for a while.
I waited until what I had learned in 50+ years of playing finally simmered and cooked until it was a true reduction of all the ingredients.
I wasn’t surprised that what I had after all that time was a Pentatonic scale and a need to cut away everything but the essence.
I’m right back where I started.
I wanted to make a Blues album that is really about the Blues we all have.
I wanted to make an honest Blues album.
There is real trouble in our country and I’ve chosen to address it…again.
Interestingly enough, most of the songs were written before the oligarchs and fascists moved in to the White House.
But fighting for justice is an ongoing process, regardless of who is in office, so maybe I could have written these songs any time.
Does it make a difference to write these songs instead of songs about love won and lost, traveling on the highway, or being a musician?
I really don’t know.
But I’ve reached the point where I don’t really care.
I have no commercial instinct.
I’m not sure how many people will hear this album.
There are a lot of people making Blues albums. It’s a crowded field.
And when times are particularly rough, people usually turn to music that lets them escape.
This album may just never find an audience.
But I hope it does, for these reasons:
This is the antithesis of the Tik Tok/Instagram world. This isn’t somebody crafting an image. This isn’t a million dollars going into finding the perfect hook somewhere in Sweden and then having nine songwriters dumb down the lyrics until there’s really no need for lyrics at all.
This is a 65 year old white man’s blues album. A man who has done his best most of his life. An older man in a fast moving, digital, minute-to-minute society who, along with three other older cranks, found some magic in a music that has been and will always be.
It’s also the album of Frank “Funkwrench” Swart, Alvino Bennett, Master and Commander, Producer Brian Brinkerhoff, and some special guests, turning up the heat on all the bullshit, all the cruelty, and all the inhumanity.
I hope you listen.
And some of it is funny.
There’s a Hot Tub Shark.
I’m betting that this album will speak to somebody who believes that there’s a fight left in this country.
And a Left left to fight.
I hope it speaks to somebody who isn’t going to run, take this lying down, or bow down.
That’s what I feel. I feel hope. But it’s angry hope.
I can only write it, sing it, and play it like I feel it.
The Right Reverend Crow feels it.
And I’ve never felt it more.
If you feel it, too, let me know.
Let’s get after it.
Let’s roll right over the liars, the manipulators, the Fascists and Nazis, the Theocrats, the Broligarchs and the Tech Bro’s.
Let’s make the Joe Rogans, Tucker Carlsons and Charlie Kirks of the world embarrassing again.
Let’s get after it.
Let’s fucking go.
I know you’re weary
I know you’re worried
I’m weary and worried too
We are all
Downhearted and Blue.
You’ll get to hear the whole album, soon. I hope you’ll pass it on.
I hope every song burns like a Zippo lighter in the darkest night.
I hope it all brings you something that matters.
(We’ve got the “Love somebody even if it kills you” Blues).
And now…a moment of lightness before you go.
Things I’ve said to Daisy that might be lyrics for the Blues
I’m going to put some chicken in your bowl.
Who let your water run dry?
No, no, no. It isn’t time for that!
Bring it, bring it, bring that ball back to me.
I guess everything fun happens when mama gets home.
Why are you sleeping on my side of the bed?
Your tail is wagging but you aren’t saying anything.
Love Somebody,
N
I enjoyed reading that very much Nathan, thanks! best wishes from London
Really looking forward to the new music Nathan & hope to see you back over in Scotland later this year where maybe you can escape some of the depressing Trump/Musk madness for even a short time. Can’t promise that unfortunately as their brand of politicking has far reaching resonance and we’re caught up in the ripples & aftershocks too. Guess I’ll just pick up my guitar too & join in the worldwide blues! Best thoughts from your friends in Glasgow.