It takes a bold man to bill himself the Doctor of the Blues, but Edmonton bluesman Marshall Lawrence’s credentials check out.
Because up until December 2009, Lawrence was using his doctorate in psychology to help troubled children. Well, that and his guitar.
“I used my music to help connect with them,” said Lawrence,” who plays the Owl Acoustic Lounge, May 14 with Johnny Greenshields.
“I worked with kids for the last 10 years.I’d be working with some pretty tough kids, but they were pretty cool. I’d visit them in their homes and there would always be a guitar lying around, so I’d pick it up and play a couple riffs and their jaw would drop and all of the sudden, now I’m the cool doctor. After we were done talking, I’d teach them a few things on the guitar,” said Lawrence.
“The blues has a lot of parallels with therapy. I’d get them to write lyrics as part of their therapy. They’d write about their problems in the third person and then they wouldn’t be so scary, getting all that stuff out in the open. They’d write rap songs or country songs,” continued Lawrence who decided to quit that gig in 2009 at age 53 to do somthing for himself and concentrate on his other passion— playing blues music. He has played rock and roll, funk, punk and R and B, though no jazz or country. His first love is the blues.
“That’s what you have to do for young people to listen to it, reinterpret blues standards and add as much of yourself as you can to it while respecting what came before,” he said.
He has released three CDs — his plugged in, rockin’ debut “Where’s the Party,” the acoustic follow up “The Morning After,” and his latest — the acoustic “Blues Intervention” which was released last year.
“Blues Intervention” has been really well recieved all over the world, including getting a glowing review in “Living Blues Magazine, describing his music as “neo-delta music.”
“I looked at it and asked myself ‘is that me they’re writing about?’ I mean I’m not Robert Johnson or Charlie Patton, and I wouldn’t want to be. I’m not black and I’m not from the delta. I mean Robert Johnson is Robert Johson and I’m me. I’m definitely not a blues purist. In fact I’m sure what I do pisses off a lot of blues purists. I combine all of these different influences into what I do,” he said.
Recently the Blues Underground Network has renamed their Ambassador of the Blues Award, who was the first one to win the award when it was founded in 2010.
While he started off playing electric blues, he moved on to the acoustic Delta style in part to the inspiration of harmonica great John Wilds who passed away during the recording of “The Morning After.”
“I met him at a bluegrass festival. He was a harmonica player. He plays on the Taj Mahal song “Light Rain Blues,” Lawrence related, noting Wilds wasn’t feeling well during the session, and the next thing he knew there wereambulances.
“And John passed away. I guess his last words were ‘I don’t want to let Marshall down.’ So ‘Morning After’ is dedicated to him,” he continued adding that lead to the move to acoustic blues.
Lawrence is presently searching for harp player to play on his fourth CD.
While Lawrence played in the backing band for Kat Danser at the Lethbridge Folk Club Wolf’s Den several years ago, he has never played a solo show here, though he has played the Calgary Blues Festival last year as well as the Tongue On The Post Festival in Medicine Hat and will be playing Medicine Hat the night before the Lethbridge show.
“I just love how an aocustic guitar feels when you lay it. It resonates close to your heart. That will be my show, just me and my ladies, that’s what I call my guitars
— Esther, Marg and Rosie. It’s going to be a fun show with music from the last two albums. We’ll see what happens.”
There is no cover for the show. John Greenshields will be playing first, followed by Marshall Lawrence at approximately 10:30 p.m. There will be no cover.
