Seasick Steve - I StartedOut With Nothin' and IStill Got Most of it Left

Wed 25th Feb, 2009 in Music Reviews

Here are some facts about Steve Wold: he’s 68, was born in Oakland, California, spent a large part of life as a vagrant and before 2006 was relatively unknown outside his immediate family…

…and then, for no obvious reason, fate gave obscurity its marching orders and Wold (aka Seasick Steve ) suddenly found himself performing his brand of homespun blues to a full house at the Royal Albert Hall, entertaining muddy festival-goers at Glastonbury and collaborating with rock luminaries such as Jack White and Nick Cave (he’s also worked with K.T. Tunstall, but naturally – œTunstall’ and – œluminary’ have no business together in the same sentence).

Wold’s breakneck ascendency seemed to bemuse even the man himself, “I can’t believe it, all of a sudden I’m like the cat’s miaow.” The thing is, Wold’s incredulity might be more than modest self-deprecation. It could also be interpreted as, “how on earth did a nuts and bolts blues-man like me wind-up here, with all this?”

Seasick Steve’s fourth studio album I Started Out With Nothin’ and I Still Have Most of it Left is straight down the line blues. It’d be churlish to call it perfunctory, but misguided to call it inventive. He’s clearly honed his abilities over many years; tackling the chord progressions on Walkin’ Man and St Louis Slim with nimble fingers and accomplished precession. However, it’s surprising that the opening numbers seem to be less about taking blues into the 21st century and more about teleporting an above-average busker to the world stage.

It’s not that the album gets the thumbs down. Happy Man is arresting enough; Wold’s slight grizzle sings of a life endured surviving the tough stuff, while a gospel choir envelops Ruby Turner’s honeyed promise that she could make Wold “a happy man”. Further down the track the boogie-woogie notes on One True are pulled this way and that for a sufficiently down and dirty account of how much Wold loves his, err, canine companion.

It’s all perfectly fine, but for anyone who was fortunate enough to spend time with James – œBlood’ Ulmer during his recent visit you’re likely to wonder why it’s Seasick Steve who’s been charged with reintroducing blues to the masses and not someone like Ulmer (who gives the genre a fresh lick of paint without straying too far from its roots).

Seasick Steve’s itinerant tales possibly have something to do with it. Wold spent time travelling the States jumping freight trains and seeing the country through the glass bottom of an empty liquor bottle. Stories from his time on the road are the album’s lifeblood. From his paean to the tipple of choice for the under-aged and the under-paid ( Thunderbird ) or the instruction manual on how to get rid of Harvest Mites, “take a hot bath, as hot as you can stand” ( Chiggers ), Wold’s fuss-free narratives are an honest, and sometimes amusing, take on hardships most listeners aren’t troubled by.

Still, the blues aren’t called the – œblues’ without good reason, and regardless of how stirring Wold’s tales are it’s doubtful they have significantly more resonance than those of other 12-bar proponents who got the short end of life’s stick. The appeal of Seasick Steve, is therefore something of a mystery. I Started Out With Nothin’ and I Still Have Most of it Left is an acceptable, if rather prosaic take on a style of music that has been mined by plenty of artists with arguably more flair and imagination than Wold.

Perhaps it’s his on-stage presence that really justifies Seasick Steve’s successes. He’s scheduled for a series of live appearances in Australia during April – maybe we’ll then get an opportunity to see what all the fuss is really about.

I Started Out With Nothin’ and I Still Have Most of it Left is out now on Warner Music.