Frank Fotusky and Grant Dermody pay tribute to John Jackson
The acoustic blues duo’s new album Digging in John’s Backyard is a fitting tribute to the late, great John Jackson. Frank Fotusky and Grant Dermody are both among the preeminent practitioners of the country blues today, superb instrumentalists respectively. This project had special personal meaning to them and they created this tribute not by attempting the impossible task of mimicking Jackson. Frank Fotusky said, “We chose a few that were among John’s favorites, his most known original and others that would honor him and reflect the deep tradition of the genre. Hence the title of the album.” Read it here.
Announcing
We welcome a new radio partner to thecountryblues.com. Big Road Blues, hosted by radio producer Jeff Harris, airs on Sundays 5 to 7 PM (17:00 – 19:00 New York Time) on WGMC Jazz90.1, public radio in Rochester, New York, and is streamed live on the web. See the main menu item above for details.
Announcing
Sweet Bitter Blues is a non-fiction book, a co-authorship between blues musician Phil Wiggins and scribe Frank Matheis, publisher of thecountryblues.com and a contributing writer to Living Blues magazine. The authors share a lifelong love of the acoustic blues. Longtime acquaintances, the writing partners rekindled a friendship when Frank wrote a cover story about Phil in Living Blues magazine. In the course of the project, the duo decided to partner up on a book to tell the underrepresented story about the acoustic blues scene in and around Washington, D.C.
The book is published by the prestigious University Press of Mississippi as part of their American Made Music series!
Sweet Bitter Blues took 2nd Place in the 2021 Living Blues Reader’s Poll for “Best Blues Book”
To order the book, go to the publisher’s website:
https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/S/Sweet-Bitter-Blues
Edited by: Dr. David Evans
Foreword by: Elijah Wald
Additional essays by: Dr. Barry Lee Pearson and Eleanor Ellis
50 Previously unpublished or rare photographs
“This is an instant classic: one of those books that offers revelation after revelation, both on the autobiographical level (it’s Phil’s story) and on a broader cultural level (it’s the first deep-and-wide history of Washington DC’s acoustic blues scene). Absolutely first rate. I can’t imagine a serious blues fan who won’t want a copy.”
—Adam Gussow, author of Mister Satan’s Apprentice: A Blues Memoir and Beyond the Crossroads: The Devil and the Blues Tradition. A documentary about his longtime blues duo, entitled Satan & Adam, is currently screening on Netflix.
“Sweet Bitter Blues by Phil Wiggins and Frank Matheis is a great and thoughtful read. Reading this book just gives me an even better appreciation for Phil’s music. He’s a true bluesman and I recommend this book to EVERYBODY!”
—Charlie Musselwhite, Grammy-award-winning musician and Elder Statesman of the blues
“A fascinating first-person account of the Piedmont Blues scene over the past 40+ years from the eyes of one of the scene’s most important players. Full of details and deeply personal stories from Phil Wiggins’s decades of playing with not only his long-time partner John Cephas, but also nearly every other traditional blues artist in the region.”
—Brett Bonner, editor of Living Blues Magazine
“Phil Wiggins and Frank Matheis are great storytellers. I have known some of the Washington DC acoustic Blues Illuminati that Sweet Bitter Blues talks about and others not at all. Phil’s words are so personal and brutally, lovingly honest. Phil Wiggins has survived to tell the tale. This book is treasure.”
—Guy Davis, Grammy-nominated blues musician
“It’s nice to wander down the path our elders blazed before us. Sweet Bitter Blues is a quintessential read for any blues lover.”
—Jontavious Willis, Grammy-nominated blues musician
“Rarely is the Piedmont region discussed with any seriousness concerning the blues. This is corrected once and for all with Sweet Bitter Blues: Washington, DC’s Homemade Blues. This book is culturally priceless, and its history should be enshrined in every mention of the blues.”
—Bruce Conforth, professor of American Culture, Founding Curator of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, and co-author of Up Jumped the Devil: The Real Life of Robert Johnson.
Testimonials
“Frank Matheis is one of the best blues journalists on the scene–a well-informed and independent voice… His terrific new website, The Country Blues, is the fruit of that deep knowledge and fearless engagement with the music we all love.”
Dr. Adam Gussow
Professor of Southern Studies
University of Mississippi
Author, musician & musicologist
“…I have found your website and podcasts to be a fantastic resource, and just plain fun (for a blues lover like me!).”
Prof. Dr. Steve Garabedian
Dept. of History
Marist College
Author of: Reds, Whites, and the Blues: Lawrence Gellert, “Negro Songs of Protest,” and the Leftwing Folksong Revival of the 1930s and 1940s
“This site is the greatest! At last, something that points true fans of country blues to the quality of music that’s out there. I could spend hours, days even, checking it all out. “
Dr. David Evans
Prof. of Ethnomusicology
University of Memphis
Musicologist, musician, author of Big Road Blues________________________________________________________________
“TheCountryBlues.com website that Frank Matheis has so diligently and meticulously created is my main “go-to” source whenever I need information on the contemporary country blues scene. Teaching several university courses in the blues means that I’m always being asked by my students what’s a good source of info on modern acoustic blues. Without hesitation I shoot them off to Frank’s site. It (and he) are a font of inestimable information presented with the care of someone who truly loves (and knows) the country blues! There’s no other site like it on the internet!”
Dr. Bruce Conforth, musician, musicologist, author
Prof. of American Culture – University of Michigan
This resource is dedicated to all the old masters, the itinerant minstrels, blues shouters, songsters and pickers who never saw fame and fortune in their own time, and could hardly imagine the posthumous love and adulation that would be bestowed upon them. All those great “musicianers” before our time : Robert Johnson, Peetie Wheatstraw, Frank Stokes, Blind Blake, Blind Willie McTell, Blind Boy Fuller, Sleepy John Estes, Son House, Willie Brown, Muddy Waters, John Hurt, Texas Alexander, Lonnie Johnson, Tommy Johnson, Fred McDowell… and countless others…and not to forget the generations following, the people we knew and loved in our time: John Jackson, John Cephas, Jerry Ricks, Nat Reese, Flora Molton, Bill Harris, Archie Edwards, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, Big Joe Williams, Connie Williams, on and on. We love and miss you. We also tip our hat to all the blues musicologists worldwide, whether the academics, the writers or those who simply followed out of love and passion.
“Never play a note you don’t believe.”
– Ernest Banks
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