Black Hen BHCD0087
living blues.
Canadian singer-guitar player Kat Danser planted her feet even firmer in the blues than on predecessor ‘Baptized by the mud’, a title which is exemplary for her rootsy approach.
On that album from 2013 Danser already worked together with master guitarist/producer Steve Dawson and they continue that co-operation in the eight songs she wrote and two covers by Sam McGee and Mississippi Fred McDowell.
Dawson did not only produce the album, he also played the guitar, something he did on her previous one too. He also brought along drummer Gary Craig, bass and mandoline player Jeremy Holmes, fiddler and mandoline player Matt Combs and saxophone and harmonica player Jim Hoke. They accompany Danser’s hoarse and swinging voice by fierce grooving, but leave much space for her vocals and Dawson’s emotional solo guitar.
Danser often sings sincerely about a wandering existence in which train or car are saving her from an always disappointing love. She does not only sing about Kansas, but imagines to be blues town Memphis too. In the latter song she sings that Mavis made her see the light, thus referring to the gospel influences in her vocals. That way it is not more than logical, that she holds a symbolic mirror up to the USA in ‘Light the flame’, just as passionately as engaged.
Danser, who became a PhD. in ethnomusicology recently, is also personal in acoustic ‘My town’: in it, she sings about her childhood, characterised by battering and abuse in a small town where everybody knew that, but only talked about it.
This way Danser does not sing the blues, but lives it.
***1/2
Ruud Heijjer