The Prague Post
October 6th, 2008
Endowment Fund     Business Listings ONLINE      Reservations      Classifieds    Subscriptions
Hotel Prague Centre
Prague Real Estate

Home » Archives » Night & Day

Memphis via Prague

Jeremy Saxon delivers a taste of the Deep South
Stage Review | Search restaurants | Archives

By Darrell Jónsson
For The Prague Post
August 1st, 2007 issue

Jan Přerovský/The Prague Post
When Saxon plays with sidemen Kreuzberg, left, and Holícká, they could be straight off the turnip truck.
enlarge
Jeremy Saxon

Where: Globe Café
When: Thursday, Aug. 2 at 9
Where: Blatouch Café
When: Friday, Aug. 3 at 8:30
Tickets: The performances are free

For more information, check www.
jeremysaxon.com

“Let’s go to prison!” shouts Jeremy Saxon before leading his trio into a rollicking rendition of the Texas prison work song “Down the Line.” Saxon looks every bit the part of a traveling showman in his creased, suspender-held slacks and colorful shirt.
“I’ve always added new songs, though never close to this many at once,” Saxon says of his current prolific spell. A regular on the local circuit since 1993 with a mostly acoustic guitar-based mix, Saxon has been on a definite roll since returning to Prague from a pilgrimage to the American South. As audiences have recently heard at Dinitz, Red Hot & Blues, Globe Café, Blues sklep and the new Hush café, Saxon’s journey from Memphis to Louisiana earlier this year has audibly strengthened his resolve to shape what he calls “back-porch music.”
Despite the old-timey, country and Cajun overtones of much of his work, Saxon insists the core of his musical passion remains tied to Afro-American culture, in particular everyday speech. Saxon’s upbringing in Oakland, a California city that has long prided itself on its mixed-race population, provided him with no shortage of exposure to blues, R&B and plenty of real-time, cross-cultural call and response.
Fortunately, his interest in prison songs was not a direct result of doing hard time. “I got into prison songs through ‘toasts,’ which were spoken boasts popular with black prisoners and pimps and such up until the 1970s or so,” Saxon explains. “My first exposure to the musical treatment of toasts was the Johnny Otis Show’s Cold Shot and Snatch and the Poontangs albums from the late ’60s.”
Saxon’s increasing ration of Deep South interpretations of historic work songs, gospel and country blues doesn’t mean he’s not capable of penning an original catchy tune himself. As Saxon admits, “I’ve heard a couple of complaints from old friends to whom my songs are old friends, who feel a pang when they come to a show and don’t hear ‘Patty’s Room’ or ‘I Was An Angel.’ ” Many of these infectious songs are on Saxon’s Blue Weekend CD, released in 2000 on San Francisco’s Deep Blue Records label. It captures the full range of his work, including a mellow guitar, voice and horn arrangement of Duke Ellington’s “In My Solitude” and the vaudevillian-flavored “The Girl in the Café.”
Not being entirely locked into the blues is part of what gives Saxon’s sound its sauce. In a way, his approach is reminiscent of Leadbelly, who although associated with the blues was first and foremost a hardworking entertainer. Saxon’s capacity for cabaret flair garnered both audience and critical acclaim in 1996, when he wrote and performed live stage music for the Misery Loves Company production of Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui. Directed by Victoria Jones, this parable about the rise of Hitler, with the Nazis portrayed as gangsters in Chicago, enjoyed an eight-month run at Prague’s Divadlo v Celetné theater.
Getting all of this into his “back-porch” vision has required some new tools. “I’ve been getting deeper and deeper into resonator guitars,” Saxon says. “I have this shiny, silver-bodied one now. Coincidentally, it’s what people often use in open tunings, but I play it because I love that growl-y, plank-y sound.” Although Saxon has yet to introduce an accordion into his set, his recently acquired, hand-forged Louisiana triangle rings on some of his live Cajun arrangements.    
Saxon’s longtime friend and collaborator Martín Kreuzberg, whether hammering on the Lafayette triangle or tapping and pounding on his spare, three-piece drum kit, looks like he could easily have just stepped off a bayou shrimp boat. It’s also hard not to imagine electric bassist Eva Holícká as an itinerant American farm worker, leveraging her washtub-bass dues into a honky-tonk moonlighting career. With Holícká’s grunge-punk, electric-bass background and participation in the Prague-based jazz trio known as April Girls, and Kreuzberg’s ongoing work on the local Latin circuit with the Tam Tam orchestra, these experienced Czech musicians have nothing to prove. Instead, they step right into character and gracefully ride shotgun on Saxon’s southbound Highway 61 musical sojourn.
Currently, the Saxon trio is in the studio, recording an admittedly Southern-inflected musical statement. Meanwhile, local audiences have an ongoing opportunity to witness Saxon’s evolving musical pilgrimage.
How exactly Saxon and crew will steer his all-the-way-to-Memphis-via-Prague musical vehicle is hard to say. But one thing is for sure: Listening to it happen is a beautiful thing.

Darrell Jónsson can be reached at features@praguepost.com


Other articles in Night & Day (1/08/2007):

Browse the Current Issue

If you enjoyed this article, why don't you subscribe to the print version!
We accept secure online transactions provided by PayPal and Moneybookers

Be the first to add a comment!


Full Name: *
City: *
E-mail: **
This comment can be published in the print version of The Prague Post
Enter the text on the right:
 visual captcha
Comment: *
* Required field. In order to be approved for display, comments must have a first and last name and a city.
** E-mails are required and will only be used for internal purposes.

Most visited in Business Listings

Provokator
Hotel booking
The Prague Post Online contains a selection of articles that have been printed in
The Prague Post, a weekly newspaper published in the Czech Republic.
To subscribe to the print paper, click here.
Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited.