Glenn Kaiser

Item: Ripley County Blues
Author: Antony Barr-Jeffrey

Ripley County Blues

(2002)

Reviewed by Antony Barr-Jeffrey

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Label Grrr RecordsThe Phantom Tollbooth2002

blues blues rock

Chicago is obviously Glenn Kaiser's kind of town. Thirty years of ministry as a hands-on pastor, teacher, and minor blues / rock legend could probably qualify him for a key to the city. Of course that would be too ostentatious for Kaiser, a regular guy who just so happens to have a history of juggling more ministry balls at Jesus People USA in a week than most of us could in a year! As a cornerstone member of the seminal rock outfit, Resurrection Band, the Glenn Kaiser Band, and various other musical amalgamations, Kaiser has absorbed the city and poured it into his music, from the grittiest classic rock riffs to the smoothest rhythm and blues licks. And while Chicago is a blues town, blues is fundamentally and proudly rural, poor folks' music. No matter how "Chicago" it sounds after a good studio polish, the blues is back porch music and Glenn Kaiser has not forgotten. In order to capture a taste of the "real deal," early this year Kaiser, bassist Roy Montroy, and drummer Ed Bialach found their "back porch," -- a log cabin lodge in rural southern Missouri on the edge of the Mark Twain National Forest, to record Ripley County Blues. Raw, sweaty, funky, and still very "Chicago" at times, Ripley takes listeners back to basics and rewards them for the journey.

As pastor, preacher, and everyman poet, Kaiser, a true bluesman, always keeps it real. At times, with a down and dirty groove, he plainly admonishes the burgeoning hedonist in all of us ("Nick of Time" and "Playing with Fire") and other times resorts to bare-bones 12-bar storytelling ("Keep It to Yourself"). A touch of Hammond B-3 organ here, a harmonica there, and this veteran three piece shows its stripes, pumping through the Robert Cray-like "Workday Blues;" transforming the traditional spiritual "Do Lord" into a rocking shuffle. True to the form of a man who has seen his share of struggle, love, friendship, and spiritual change, Kaiser truly harnesses the heartache and beauty of the Blues on "Blue Rain Fall," "Deliver Me" and the wrenching title cut.

Since it's an extraordinarily rare thing to hear Glenn Kaiser's name in the same sentence with the phrase "mediocre," saying that Ripley is great music is almost redundant. Ripley County Blues shows that sometimes returning to the roots, the back porch, can help even the most experienced players like Kaiser and his band make some new music for the city, the old fashion way.