MICHAEL JEROME BROWNE
The Road is Dark
Borealis 209

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While Michael Jerome Browne plays a variety of roots styles (from Appalachian traditional music to RnB) and just about any instrument with strings, blues has been the dominant genre in his repertoire, much of it from or inspired by artists from the first half of the last century.

Whether or not you buy into the mythology of Robert Johnson at the crossroads at midnight, the blues can be a scary music when it delves deeply into the dark places of the soul. And that’s where Michael takes us on many of these songs: six taken from earlier artists and eight created by Michael and songwriting partner B.A. Markus.

Among the highlights from the adaptations is “Doin’ My Time,” which sounds like something Furry Lewis might have played if he played electric guitar. In fact, it’s from bluegrass pioneers Flatt and Scruggs, an example of the stylistic cross-pollination of black and white music in the American South. Another is Michael’s intense version of Reverend Gary Davis’ “Death Don’t Have No Mercy.” The sustain on Michael’s solo electric guitar playing allows the notes to seemingly cut deeper than on familiar acoustic versions of the song.

Highlights from the original songs include “Graveyard Blues,” played on the fretless banjo and sounding like a bluesy Appalachian folk song, in which the narrator, seemingly near death and seemingly without regrets, talks about the facts of his life; “If Memphis Don’t Kill Me,” a good-timey jug band song featuring Michael on mandolin with fine back-up from Steve Marriner on harmonica, and Ball & Chain (Michael Ball and Jody Benjamin) on fiddle and guitar; and “Sing Low,” a haunting song inspired by the code songs African American women sang during slavery and dedicated to the struggle of Afghan women to emerge from their oppression.

— Angela Page