Bought For A Dollar Sold For A Dime
- by Little Axe
- Real World Region: North America
- May 2010
Everyone gets the blues, says Skip McDonald, who should know. The legendary guitarist gets them - like, really gets them - more than most. "The blues are a fact of life," he adds in a Dayton, Ohio twang undiminished by two decades of UK living. "It doesn't matter where you are. The blues have no boundaries."
An old school bluesman in the tradition of everyone from, say, Howling Wolf and Leadbelly to Blind Willie Johnson, McDonald channels the past into the future through his internationally regarded project, Little Axe. A project that is more than just a band: "Were a collective of different people who, at certain periods, come together to create great work." Founded in the early 1990s, with five acclaimed albums to their credit, Little Axe are redefining the blues for the current generation.
Their melting pot is large, and bubbling. Here are addictive rhythms. Soulful vocals. Pinches of dub and funk, reggae and gospel. Oh-so-subtle samples and innovative electronics. And underpinning it all, McDonalds shimmering blues guitar licks, conjuring a space where the dirt roads of the Deep South meet the shiny lanes of the Information Superhighway. "We take the tones and feelings of the old blues and put todays stamp on it," says McDonald from his north London base, a home/studio that doubles as Little Axe headquarters. "We make music you can feel, taste and touch."
Little Axe, then, are in constant motion. After a series of studio-based, effects- laden albums - and thats albums, not records ("I like to play tunes that connect, tell a story") - they have returned to their roots on Bought For a Dollar, Sold For a Dime. For the first time in 17 years the original crew met, pressed flesh and played live. "Its old school thinking," muses the diminutive McDonald. "Back in the day when Stax and Atlantic were doing albums everyone would pile into the studio and played together. That was the 60s, the boom time for live music. That was my era: it wasnt enough to look good. You had to know how to play."
A host of musical heavyweights assembled in the Big Room at Real World for this rare and privileged session, with all but the London-based McDonald and his co-producer, British dub maestro Adrian Sherwood, flying in from across the USA. Titans such as soul singer Bernard Fowler, whose voice has graced sets from The Rolling Stones, Sly and Robbie to Ryuchi Sakamoto. "Bernards voice has got everything. Its emotional, changeable and incredibly powerful. We call blues singers like him elephants, cause they sure know how to trumpet." Bought For a Dollar, Sold For a Dime boasts not one but two Tackhead covers. Take A Stroll - itself a cover of a 1930s blues track - is a rhythmic gumbo of dub-reggae and blues that "let us go back to our roots and rediscover ourselves." The rousing, cinematic Hammerhead, a reworked chain gang song refreshed with gutsy horns, big blues voices and compelling female harmonies. "Its all part of a body of music that I know can be confusing to some people," says McDonald of his collectives various side projects (Bernard Fowlers Bad Dog, Mark Stewart and the Mafia and a reformed Tackhead among them). "Its music as a lifestyle rather than music as a career." "I understand the blues better now that Im older," he continues. "But doing this album..." He flashes a grin. "This album has made me feel young again."
Reviews
...contender for album of the year.
Sherwood and Wimbish have always been at the heart of Little Axe, and have total empathy with Skip's desire to hover between many forms, holding the essence of blues, rather than just playing it "straight".
Debut album The Wolf That House Built did this brilliantly with a strong reggae-funk slant, and now almost 20 years on, Bought For A Dollar, Sold For Dime could have surpassed even that....if anyone gives fusion a good name, it is Skip McDonald.
Dollar is highly sophisticated, but never po-faced or showy. To Son House's Grinning In your Face, Sherwood brings a lustrous jazziness to the drumming...the gorgeous soul-blues of Can't Sleep appears to contain the spirit of Massive Attack and features legendary rocksteady singer Ken Boothe.
Beautifully made, deeply felt and richly subtle. Bought For A Dollar, Sold For A Dime is a contender for album of the year.
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