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Good news for the blues >> Local blues vet Stephen Barry and his band go for the gold by RUPERT BOTTENBERG
Barry and his band provide ample proof of that proposition, be it live, on stage or on their latest disc, The Gold Record. It's a bumping, thumping barrel of uptempo blues that frequently tips its hat to R&B, swing and even contemporary pop rock. At no point do the Stephen Barry Band attempt to emulate the misery of the sharecroppers of old. "It's a whole other thing to be living in a culture where the very earth sings the blues," says Barry, a lifelong Montrealer. "It comes from the cotton fields. We just don't have the cotton fields here. The fact that I write songs the way I do has got to be in some way a product of my surroundings." The result is that the Stephen Barry Band take liberties with the blues that might leave many a purist aghast. "Horrors! We've written a pop song," chuckles Barry. While they're not competing with the Spice Girls ("We're more like the Old Spice Boys," he observes), the band tempers their profound respect for the traditions of the blues with plenty of good-natured fun. The Gold Record, Barry's fifth, intersperses covers of gems by Willie Dixon and Howlin' Wolf with daring originals, such as the snarky tune "Only Jerks Care" or the chiming "Goodbye Love," a song that glitters like the Las Vegas-style suit Barry's band members bought him for his 50th birthday last year. Another track, "White Noise Rain," sounds like Bruce Cockburn, no joke. The hardliners may whine, but that suits Barry just fine. "I think there are a larger number of people who are happy that we do originals and don't just regurgitate old blues standards." To that end, ironically, Barry has a whole other project set aside. Same band, only the set list rolls through a chronological evolution of the blues, from the bare bones acoustic roots right on up to electrical instruments. Having seen its debut at the Jazz Fest a few years back, "The Blues Anthology," as the show is entitled, seems to have struck a chord (probably a 12 bar E) with blues fans in Quebec, and pops up from time to time. For the time being, though, The Gold Record takes priority. In the roughly dozen years the band has been in its current line-up, they've managed to cement a following in Quebec and make inroads into Ontario, Europe and (figure this one out) Brazil. Their modest success is due in no small part to Barry's role as fearless leader, although he's loathe to admit it himself. "As much as I'd like to be the exalted leader, it's really not quite the case. It's just that the band has my name... maybe because I owned the truck we travelled in so many years ago." Of course, by his own admission, Barry does write most of the songs and make most of the decisions, even if the others are given a very democratic voice in such matters. Barry himself has had a long enough tenure on the blues scene to speak authoritatively on its history, both locally and abroad. "It's like anything else," he notes, "it's had several heydays. It's gone up, it's gone down. I remember talking to John Lee Hooker one time, in the late '70s. He said he'd seen the blues come and go about a dozen times in his life." Funny thing is, Barry says one can't always spot an upswing when right in the middle of it. "Whether there's a resurgence now or not, it's kind of hard to tell until after the fact. You figure you had a few more gigs this year than the last, and you think, 'Hmmm, there must be a new wave.'" If there is, you can bet Barry and the boys will be surfing it in style. At Club Soda, Saturday, Feb. 28 with guests Catfish. $11-13, 8:30pm
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When Stephen Barry drops names, they carry enough weight to punch a hole in the floor. In the 30-odd years the trooper has been plucking his bass guitar professionally, he and his bandmates have had the chance to back up the likes of John Lee Hooker, Big Mama Thornton and Bo Diddley. In the process he's seen the cliché of the bummed-out blues pretty much demolished. "The thing that we learned from playing with those guys," Barry points out, "is that they are the funniest, hippest, funnest people to be around. The idea of the blues being sad was the furthest thing from our minds."