Samuel James
And For The Dark Road Ahead
NorthernBlues Music

Samuel James, an original old-school bluesman/storyteller, is a national-caliber performer. International, really (he plays festivals in Europe with some frequency), but given popular tastes and the sorry state of the music industry, he’s restocking DVDs at Videoport instead of selling out Carnegie Hall. It’s enough to give you the you-know-whats.

And For The Dark Road Ahead, James’ fourth album, is the third of a trilogy preceded by Songs Famed for Sorrow and Joy and For Rosa, Maeve and Noreen [insert this album’s title to complete the phrase]. It’s the most downbeat and haunted of the three; the most understated and the most accomplished.

You get it right out of the gate with “Tan Sedan,” a track that loosely marries Seussian blues poetry to some truly wicked and weird dobro. James is an original songwriter playing traditional music, so it’s always a thrill to hear him stretch the form on songs like this. “In my line of defense, in my line of attack,” he says, “in my line of business you’ve got to wear long pants / Every 15 seconds I’m expected to dance and give out advice on the structure of romance.”

“Turkish Curse” adopts the tempo and flourishes of that culture’s traditional music to undergird lyrics apparently lifted from Leonard Cohen’s lost notebook. “Camus” is another novel (pardon the pun) mix of high-brow lit and low-down guitar picking. A spoken-word piece called “The Execution of Big Black Ben,” presented in two parts, wraps up the Black Ben legend, as told on the two previous albums, with a humorous twist. And on the closer, “Ghost,” James goes (gasp!) electric to riff on one of his grittiest grooves to date.

In a recent entry on his blog, James wrote half-seriously of the “trails” of being black/white biracial. “I don’t like Bob Seger, but I do like snowboarding … I say ‘Oh, crap!’ and ‘You motherfucker!’ an equal amount of times on any given day.” One really struck me, though: “As far as professional musicians go, I can play guitar better than almost anybody,” he wrote, “but sing worse than almost everybody.”

The remark calls to mind Jimi Hendrix, who was notoriously unconfident about his singing (and Eric Clapton, who never could sing for shit). A relatively weak singing voice may be the one element keeping James out of Big Leagues, but in general he more than makes up for that with character and delivery.

One hopes the road ahead for James won’t always be this dark.

— Chris Busby

Samuel James plays a CD release show on Sat., Oct. 20, at SPACE Gallery, 538 Congress St., Portland, at 8 p.m., with Darien Brahms, Sontiago, Zach Jones and other special guests. For more, visit therealsamueljames.com.