Renowned Montreal based folk and bluesman Michael Jerome Browne returned to Lethbridge to play for the Lethbridge Folk Club, April 12 at the Moose Hall.
He held an audience of approximately 60 people enraptured as he played an array of old blues songs, folk standards and originals on an old 12 string guitar, and acoustic, violin and a fretless gourd banjo made out of a squash.
I arrived as he was having his way with Blind Willie McTell’s “ Broke Down Engine Blues.”
He had a strong, smooth smoky voice that reminded me of Paul Simon.
He told stories and jokes and gave each of his instruments a workout.
He said the fretless gourd banjo, made out of a squash with “the skin of a random critter stretched over it,” was inspired by the first banjos which came overseas from Africa. He laughed as he retuned, saying “ this is called the critter’s revenge.”
He accompanied himself on it as he sang “On Top of Old Smoky.”
He also accompanied himself on it on a beautiful new original he wrote with his partner Bee, called “ Sister Sing Softly” about “women in Afghanistan, who can’t even congregate to talk.” It was touching and heartfelt.
He turned things a little more lighthearted as he switched to violin and talked about how the definition of Creole changes over different parts of the South, and even in different parts of Louisiana itself. He advised the crowd “ This is a waltz,” and noted in Quebec people automatically stomp along. He picked up the tempo with a French song.
He switched back to the 12 string to stay in the Louisiana theme as he played a Randy Newman song about Louisiana and followed it up with another moving traditional song about the 1927 floods of the Mississippi River.
He lightened the mood again after that by trying a bright, brand new song which he hadn’t really played live before, which he wrote with Bee and finished his set with a “’60s soul classic by James Carr ” — “ Pouring Water on a Drowning Man.”
