One man's show

Kelly Joe Phelps echoes the solitude of Delta bluesmen

by Don Fluckinger

People repeatedly ask Kelly Joe Phelps -- whom Dave Alvin, no slouch himself, calls "the John Coltrane of the slide

guitar"-- if he's interested in playing in a band. Perhaps Phelps could anchor a group as the blues guitar hero; he could parlay his formidable skill into a commercially viable venture. For the record, his answer is no.

Phelps is a true solo artist, a lone acoustic musician riding the fence between folk and blues like his modern counterparts Corey Harris and Bill Morrissey. Exposed on stage without the cover of loud companions banging drums or thumping keyboards, he covers the entire musical and dynamic range with only a finger in the slide and his deep, emotionally saturated voice. On tour he brings his six- and 12-string lap guitars as well as traditional acoustic models -- and usually plays them all in the course of a show. A master at creating his own music, Phelps says joining a band would be as foreign to him as "changing into an iguana or something.

"It's similar to being a poet or a painter or an author -- something about being solitary has always fit, has always made the most sense, for better or worse," says the Washington state-based Phelps, who rolls into WPI for a show at Riley Commons next Tuesday. "For me it carries over to music as well -- there's nothing cooler than hearing someone playing guitar and sing[ing], whether it's Muddy Waters or Mother Maybelle Carter, Doc Watson, Chet Atkins, Leo Kottke, Bruce Springsteen. . . . Anybody who plays guitar and sings, whenever I hear them just play guitar and sing, I find amazing amounts of power and beauty in that."

After hearing Phelps sing you'd guess he'd endured the trials and tribulations of several lifetimes. But he's been recording for only five years. His Burnside Records debut, Lead Me On, was recorded in 1994 and came out the following year; 1997 marked his Rykodisc debut, Roll Away the Stone, which included six of his own compositions, a couple of traditional numbers, and covers of Delta blues tunes by Skip James and Blind Lemon Jefferson.

Phelps recently finished recording a new Rykodisc album, currently in production and slated to come out in July. The new album -- solo acoustic like his others, this one with a harmonica player on a few tracks -- includes seven originals and four traditional tunes. First played by legendary Appalachian twangers such as Roscoe Holcomb, Phelps says, these tunes sound a lot like blues but back when they were popular "fell under the hillbilly category, based on color more than music."

This new album is the latest sonic installment documenting his lifelong search through the annals of folk for inspiration wherever he can find it. It started with the Delta bluesman Mississippi John Hurt, Bukka White, and Fred McDowell. Phelps moves several hundred miles north, crossing state lines and the color line -- yet the journey turned out to be not that far down the road.

"In this case I was looking for more ways to understand the music that all the people were playing back then in the teens, '20s, and '30s, not sticking so tight to the Delta musician but coming up north a little bit to Tennessee and Kentucky," he says. "But it's not country music at all, it's as tied to the blues as ever, just adding a bit more color to the palette."

His willingness to explore acoustic blues as it meets with old country and folk tunes attracts a different crowd than the rockers who want to be blown away by the latest electric axeman playing Stevie Ray in a string tie and black leather hat. A more eclectic-music fan takes in Kelly Joe Phelps the kind of fan who's been around since the folk explosion of the '50s. They're the people who are bored by current pop music and derive equal pleasure listening to solid melodies and great blues chops.

Back then, those people consumed culture, eschewing the bubblegum rock; today the same people are connected to the Internet and have cell phones and pagers blaring in their briefcases, yet long to be unplugged from their daily routine. For them, Kelly Joe Phelps offers solace in the technology-free simplicity of one man playing acoustic blues.

Kelly Joe Phelps plays at 8 p.m. on April 13 at WPI's Riley Commons. Tickets are $5, students $3. Call (508) 831-5509.