C.W. Stoneking - King Hokum (2005)

► Get the album at the usual place...

More vintage than vintage !

The first track opens with crows cawing in the distance. Suddenly, on the front porch, an old man starts to play an antic acoustic guitar and sings a country blues with a hoarse scratching voice. But the album cover shows a rather young man holding a National Steel guitar on his lap and wearing a back hat and a black suit, with a black bow tie around a snow white shirt's neck like he's just back from the Sunday office at the local church in the 1920s or 30s'.

Is it the re-issue of an old 78-rpm recorded a long time ago by an obscure country blues musician ? No, this reincarnation of a pre-war Deep South bluesman is Mr. C.W. Stoneking, a young Australian of 31 at the time, who amazingly sounds as vintage as most of the early 20th century musicians who influenced him.

Playing strangely tuned guitar or banjo, he's leading a throwback jug band baptized the Primitive Horn Orchestra featuring upright bass, drums, jug and horns. A pre-war roots revivalist ? He denies : “I don’t call myself that, but if someone did call me that I suppose it would be because some of my musical influence comes from pre-war blues. A revivalist would be playing old songs I think, but I play my own music.”

It just happens that the sound and structure of “his” music are rooted in the Afro-American popular music from the Deep South of the early 20th century, as it was played by artists like Blind Willie McTell or Memphis Minnie.

Born in 1974 in Katherine in the Northern Territory of Australia, to American parents who separated shortly after he was born, raised in the back country Aboriginal community of Papunya a thousand km south, Stoneking and his father moved to Sydney when he was 9. At 11 he started to learn how to play guitar and at 13 was already playing in local bands. Meanwhile he became bewitched by the old blues records from the 1920s-30s in his father's collection.

In 1997, he moved to Melbourne where his career started with the recording, by the end of 1998-beginning of 1999, of a blues covers solo album titled “C.W. Stoneking”. At the same period he formed the band C.W. Stoneking & the Blue Tits with mandolin player Charlie Bostock. When Bostock died a year and a half later he put an end to the group, went back to solo playing, concentrated on old pre-war music and, in 2005, released “King Hokum” on his own eponymous label.

“King Hokum is the first album I gave any thought to in terms of song-writing, production, and overall cohesiveness as an album”, he explained.

This gave birth to eleven rejoicing numbers penned by a talented and humorous story-teller. On some, Stoneking is alone on guitar : “Way Out In The World, “She's A Bread Baker”, “Charley Bostocks Blues” in homage to his late accomplice in the Blue Tits), or lightly accompanied, like on the hypnotic “Bad Luck Everywhere You Go” with just drums and percussion, and where, funnily enough, his slide dobro overdubs are close to being out of tune at times ! As a matter of fact, the strange tuning Stoneking uses on his instruments certainly enhances the old 78-rpm atmosphere of the album. On “Rich Man's Blues” he's on banjo, simply backed by jug and clarinet.

For the other tracks, he's backed by the Primitive Horn Orchestra. On “Don't Go Dancin' Down The Darktown Strutter's Ball”, introduced by the alarm bell of a railroad track crossing, Stoneking is alone on banjo until the band appears playing a short New Orleans jazz funeral-like dirge with clarinet, trombone, trumpet and sousaphone.

The next songs have the obvious theatrical flavor of the old minstrel shows and hokum style, which explain the album title . On the outstanding half-talking “Dodo Blues”, Stoneking is doing a hilarious stuttering drunkard stint. He is using the same kind of trick on the New Orleans-flavored old jazz “On A Christmas Day” exchanging phrases with Kirsty Fraser (who co-wrote the lyrics).

The excellent “Goin' The Country”, where he is incarnating two old-time hobos, has an early rock'n'roll boogie-woogie beat. “You Took My Thing And Put It In Your Place”, illustrated by the noise of a man's snoring and by door knocks, is half talked-half sung together with Fraser who co-signed the lyrics again. Stoneking voice is one of a talented actor, as demonstrated again on the final “Handyman Blues”, the story of an unemployed man who sings his résumé !
Quite a tour de force album ! ●

Live videos... are better than long speeches

► Live performances of songs from the album
■ “Dodo Blues” :
→ Australian Blues Festival, Goulburn, 2006 : https://youtu.be/meSc7X7tLgE
→ Rosendale, NY, 2008 : https://youtu.be/gC1LJZwjE0k
→ Sydney, Australia, 2008 : https://youtu.be/CVF1KwgmsmE
→ Cardiff, UK, 2011 : https://youtu.be/M5wDtn5s8Ho
→ Pickathon Fest., Oregon, 2011 : https://youtu.be/HeG5CZnx-EQ
→ Nijmegen, Netherlands, 2011 : https://youtu.be/WXr6Yceye4U
→ Brighton, UK, 2011 : https://youtu.be/52lQLZe-Ruc
→ Madrid, Spain, 2019 : https://youtu.be/LHCuETGPlDM
■ “Goin' The Country” :
→ Pickathon Fest., Oregon, 2009 : https://youtu.be/6qa_O6rqcbc
→ Manchester, UK, 2010 : https://youtu.be/9gUQb3ocpFY
→ Nijmegen, Netherlands, 2011 : https://youtu.be/xFNworYRIC4
→ Dashville Skyline Fest., New South Wales, Australia, 2018 : https://youtu.be/6_pMka6-hmQ
→ New Orleans, 2020 : https://youtu.be/4Am6u9F48DQ
■ “Don’t Go Dancin' Down The Darktown Strutter’s Ball” :
→ Sydney, 2008 : https://youtu.be/iD9RIQ3eQQA
→ End Of The Road Festival, Dorset, UK, 2010 : https://youtu.be/eNiZl0wl6gw
→ London, UK, 2010 : https://youtu.be/1Ue8dsWoeLw
→ Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2011 : https://youtu.be/JmScXUB1lZE
→ London, UK, 2011 : https://youtu.be/l7hngLZ2mMk
→ Barcelona, Spain, 2012 : https://youtu.be/M0H_PJ9bVqQ
→ Athens, Greece, 2012 : https://youtu.be/hcj3hDTpV6M

■ “Handyman Blues”  :
→ Sydney, 2008 : https://youtu.be/0ZsBSSb8teA
→ Philadelphia, PA, 2008 : https://youtu.be/kugfI7JFewA
→ Nijmegen, Netherlands, 2011 : https://youtu.be/aC4KMhvgwxE
→ Wilderness Fest., Oxfordshire, UK, 2011 : https://youtu.be/tekmotw2UkI
→ Paris, France, 2011 : https://youtu.be/lnTf5rdyqYE
→ Pickathon Fest., Oregon, 2009 : https://youtu.be/18U9nAQj2bk
■ “On A Christmas Day”, Sydney, 2008 : https://youtu.be/4aINh2R3CYk
■ “Charley Bostocks Blues” :
→ Byron Bay Blues Fest., Australia, 2009 : https://youtu.be/dqZlkjvNPp4
→ Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2011 : https://youtu.be/0RRqgdDq27Q
→ Oxford, UK, 2011 : https://youtu.be/AozCbf-5bkY
→ Barcelona, Spain, 2012 : https://youtu.be/PnC1XPU0ZgU
→ Brussels, Belgium, 2012 : https://youtu.be/lwv8tdyitmU
■ “Charley Bostocks Blues”/“She’s A Bread Baker”, Montreal, 2020 : https://youtu.be/ae62gS0YolU
■ “She’s A Bread Baker” :
→ Barcelona, Spain, 2012 : https://youtu.be/14df7WCEVcg
→ Brussels, Belgium, 2012 : https://youtu.be/R0gBhKf-RUo
→ Athens, Georgia, 2018 : https://youtu.be/g9TrQ0DnYYI
→ San Francisco, 2020 : https://youtu.be/MoQ9azJ2uDw

■ “Rich Man’s Blues” :
→ Coogee Bay, New South Wales, Australia, 2010 : https://youtu.be/ThRQvEmxFOo
→ Brighton, UK, 2011 : https://youtu.be/o7SP_fvinkg
→ Brussels, Belgium, 2012 : https://youtu.be/auDnd_5txt4

► Full shows
■ Pickathon Fest., Oregon, 2016 : https://youtu.be/JsavCc3R4aU
■ Leeds, UK, 2016 : https://youtu.be/PANThXxfwTs
■ KDHX Rdio studios, St. Louis, Missouri, 2019 : https://youtu.be/FJkK1DBCN3o
■ With the Primitive Horn Orchestra, Victoria, Australia, 2022 : https://youtu.be/CKh96CctjR0