I’ve been given the name “Bluesman†by some people around me who know me. I have for a long time seen it as a nice complement but I wasn’t sure I lived up to the title. It’s only recently after playing the blues for 20 years that I found out the hard way that when it comes right down to it, it’s what I really am first and foremost above al else.
Actually I’ve decided to go on as a one man band and to call myself Bluesman because I’m so sick and tired of being in bands, where the attitude was. “Well Albert you’re a nice player but just try to get away from that Blues and play something like punk or rock because that’s what the people want to hear. Well excuse me, but this is as I polite as I can express my feelings about this, when I say “FUCK’M ALL!â€.
It’s kind of cocky to just go out and Call myself “Bluesman†and… well it may not be terribly original. I kind of feel on shaky ground when I think about my heroes like Johnny Shines, Son House and Hound dog Taylor. I have never been to the Mississippi delta or Chicago.
And maybe to some people what I play may not even seem Blues.
Still It’s a name given to me by people dear to me and being squeezed into a corner this last year with only but one way out I feel it’s a declaration of war on the world around me as much as anything else.
Let’s face it, when you call yourself Blues man nobody is going to come up to you and ask you if you can play Metalica, Zappa or Nirvana or whatever.
The X reveres to the generation I belong to, the generation-X the lost generation, the one that was already designated a failure before it hit it’s prime. It also reveres to the X-MEN from the marvel comic books, who in my mind are a symbol for people with special qualities and who are because of that different and often outcasts, and not able to lead a normal save life.(Come to think of it, that description may fit most of my friends here and elsewhere.)
So “Bluesman X†it is.
