Piedmont Blues Guitarist Shelton Powe Premieres Old-Time ‘Shake ‘Em On Down’

Fresh off a reserving at the 2022 Telluride Blues & Brews Festival, acclaimed Piedmont blues guitarist Shelton Powe will release a new self-titled album of solo acoustic tunes this tumble for Volume 55 of the Audio Maker Foundation’s Listener’s Circle sequence. Arriving Oct 1 for customers and Nov 4 for the general community, the collection is raw and hypnotic, blurring the lines concerning past and present with a timeless combine of century-aged standard music and newly-prepared content delivered with only Powe’s captivating fingerstyle guitar work and gritty vocals.

Funded by Listener’s Circle members, Shelton Powe showcases equally the exceptional musical flexibility and profound psychological range of its namesake, moving easily from mournful laments to righteous exaltations and back again once more in excess of the system of 14 spare and mesmerizing tracks. The spirited “Since I Laid My Load Down” channels the Sunday early morning fervor of a revival tent preacher, even though the haunting “Take Me Back” evokes the sweltering heat of a summer time evening in the deep south, and toe-tapping instrumentals like “One Dime Blues” participate in like the soundtrack to payday at the tobacco warehouses that dominated the economic system of Powe’s native North Carolina in the 1st fifty percent of the 20th century.

Born in Charlotte in 1957, Powe grew up surrounded by gifted instrumentalists, singers, and dancers, but it was not until eventually following the fatalities of his mom and father in the late 1980s that he commenced actually connecting with the rhythms and melodies he’d been elevated all over. Picking up the guitar as a tribute to his deceased mother, Shelton established out to understand previous-time blues and gospel the way he remembered it, revisiting the church pews, back again roads, and entrance porches of his childhood by means of music.

“We had been true down residence Baptists,” says Powe, who now calls Atlanta residence. “My mom and father would go to church a whole lot. Fundamentally, my roots almost certainly would be in the gospel.”

Due to the fact Powe 1st related with Songs Maker in 1997, he’s recorded his very own album, Carolina Blues and Gospel, and played together with numerous Audio Maker artists, including Eddie Tigner, Mudcat, Cora Mae Bryant, Frank Edwards, Cootie Stark and Neal Pattman. Extra than a musical fancy, the Carolina blues is a piece of Powe, and listening to him enjoy right away transports listeners again to the wellspring of the traditions he carries on now.

Premiering solely these days is “Shake ‘Em On Down,” with its stripped down but infectious guitar licks.

Of the music, Powe tells Stomach muscles:

I believed the music had a great previous-time groove sound… I generally swap the lyrics each individual time I participate in it but hold the discussion with a lady in the music asking about shake em’ down. It could be a dance or a mellow groove. It was recorded at Songs Maker studios in North Carolina with a person of Freeman Vine’s Hanging Tree guitars.