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"I'm Going Where the Water Drinks Like Wine: 18 Unsung Bluesmen Rarities 1923-1929"
For Sub Rosa's second blues compilation, they swing their gaze from relatively unknown blueswomen to unsung bluesmen. Crackling, distorted recordings betray the battered, forgotten nature of these individuals but through the murk of time come songs and voices that sound utterly alive and unblemished by almost a century of pillaging at the church of the blues. Although varying in quality (both in terms of the songs and the recordings themselves), I'm Going Where the Water Drinks Like Wine is a fine presentation of undeservedly obscure musicians long lost in the dusty recesses of personal record collections and thrift stores.
The album begins at the most logical point of all for a recorded history of the blues, the first known recording of that quintessential blues technique: the slide guitar. In 1923, Sylvester Weaver brought his bottleneck style (or knife blade style depending on his mood) to the then blossoming world of recorded music. The results can be heard here on "Guitar Blues;" the fundamental cornerstone of the blues just about audible under the gravelly surface noise of the ancient 78 record. It is a simple, beautiful and unassuming piece of music with buckets more feeling than the decades of clichéd slide guitar that has followed.
Clichés in general are put to the sword throughout the album, even lines like "my mama’s dead, my daddy too/that’s the reason why I’ve got these weeping, moaning blues" sound shockingly genuine to this day. As someone who generally finds the blues to be a sometimes interesting musical relic rather than a moving artistic experience, I'm Going Where the Water Drinks Like Wine pushes a lot of the right buttons for me. Like a lot of early blues recordings, the sense that this music was still a living, breathing and evolving form of playing as opposed to a bunch of similar scales trotted out by overpaid rock musicians is strong here.
The sweet fiddle of Andrew Baxter, accompanied by his son Jim on guitar, on "K.C. Railroad Blues" shows the co- option of contemporary folk and country playing into the early blues, a natural and perfect marriage of styles. Willard Ramblin' Thomas' "No Job Blues" strikes a particular chord, its encapsulation of the harshness of the Great Depression finding some parallels in the spiralling unemployment and financial turmoil of today (although luckily things have not hit quite as hard now as in the twenties). His deft guitar playing sounds deceptively simple; notes spiral from his fingers like water from a sprinkler.
Despite such a massive trawl through early blues recordings by the likes of Alan Lomax and Harry Smith throughout the 20th century, I'm Going Where the Water Drinks Like Wine is evidence that there is still much detective work to be done. The scant biographical details (even some of the artists’ names are up for debate) included in the sleeve notes paint these recordings as lost snatches in time by men that remain almost totally anonymous in the public eye. That is part of the appeal of this album, these songs are being sung by voices on which we can concoct our own stories; the trappings of myth and history not clouding the music like the songs of infamous bluesmen like Robert Johnson or Leadbelly.
samples:
- Andrew Baxter, "K.C. Railroad Blues"
- Arthur Petties, "Down South Blues"
- Noah Lewis, "Devil in the Woodpile"
 
