Back on this highway & don't know what to do
In December the night falls early in the South. It's a quarter past four on the road from Memphis, Tennessee, to Clarksdale, Mississippi. Twilight has set in. I throw another CD in the machine & set the cruise control to maximum. Just when I see the exit to Helena, home of the King Biscuit Flower Hour blues tradition, a very danceable out-of-left-field version of Willie Dixon's "Hoochie Koochie Man" starts rocking the car. I don't need seven doctors to say I'm born for good luck: got my lovely Deb'rah on my side & a 'hoochie koochie son of a guitar' almost blasting the windows out. For a moment or two my heart skips a beat when an officer behind me turns on his blue lights. Maybe I'm 20 decibels above the local limit. But he turns around on screeching rubber on the way to a worse crime. "Rock ' roll, I'm on a mission" my man Jewan-Paul belches out & the pedal hits the metal to get us in time to the Crossroads of the Blues, where Highway 61 meets Highway 49. Standing on the crossroads, not knowing what way to choose." Where Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil. With a Dutch voice electrifying me on the way to the cradle of it all. Where Ike Turner went to school to become the inspiration for the greatest guitar-moments of the Spencer Davis Group, the Yardbirds, Manfred Mann, Jeff Beck, the Stones (& other British rockers 'pillaging the blues') & three generations of Dutch heroes, from Cuby & the Blizzards via Barrelhouse to Julian Sas. In this part of the States more blues than oil wells up from the soil. We're on the holy grounds of Muddy Waters, Model T-Ford; Junior Parker, Super Chikan Johnson and his Fightin' Cocks, John Lee Hooker, Sam Cooke, W.C. Handy, Eddie Boyd & Ike's sidekick Jackie Brenson (who invented rock 'n roll with "Rocket 88").
The sound mellows down for an instrumental featuring Bas Kleine's harmonica. Time to halt for a plate of fried catfish and hot cornbread. The gosp'ly girls behind the counter seem shocked to see my eyes still rollin' & steam coming out of my ears, I'm recuperating from Ruben Byther's bass manipulating my walk. When I sink my teeth in a cob of corn I gather enough rust to iron up for the rest of the ride, the rest of the album. It's pitch dark when I step into my Explorer to hear Jean-Paul claim that "I know damned sure that the sun ain't shining for me - hard and cold that's what I am - but I know that somewhere someday love will get me, too, and I'll rest my soul and I forget all about you." JP's gonna like it here. He's never even been close to Northern Mississippi, but out here they'll recognize his voice & his axe & he'll feel at home, back home in the Greater Mississippi Delta, at Hopson's Plantation, the Shackup Inn, club Ground Zero, Red's Lounge, the 61 Sports Bar or Cat's Head. I'm gonna sit his ass with Jim Dickinson to wax some more sweltering tunes. In Jimbo Mathus' Knockdown South blues shop, to make sure every next morning he wakes up 'finding the sun so blue' & lay down a couple of moisty but sizzlin' traxx with the man who like JP is another complete failure to compromise. Coz Jean-Paul is just like JM "a link in what I call the 'crazy Mississippi white-boy' chain of music that goes all the way back through Elvis Presley to Jimmie Rogers... white musicians playing black music and influencing people in both cultures" (quote stolen from the one & only Luther Dickinson, courtesy Jimbo's website).
Somewhere around here in the secret American heartland we must find that very chicken-shit chicken-shack where Steve Verrocca produced Link Wray's album "Beans and Fatback". In '75 I lured Steve into producing an akin grit & gravel album, at another basic studio, Mike Vernon's Rockfield near Monmouth in Wales, with my friends the Bintangs, a Rolling Stones kinda group that has survived the hand of time even longer than Jagger & Co. The result, "Genuine Bull", is still acknowledged as one of the finest moments in Dutch rock-history. When I first met Jean-Paul, a huge guy with big hands from The Hague, the city where the Dutch Queen lives & where the Congress resides, he played me a rough demo of "Low Down". The worn-out ragged-to-death speakers sounded terrible, but I immediately felt we had a new Genuine Bull by the horns. That was two years ago. As a singer and as a player Jean-Paul since has grown a lot. He has a new album ready to be rolled out in Spring '07 & I'm listening to right now it in a rural area of where chicken-shacks & cornfields have yet to be replaced by burger joints & malls. & driving around & boogying to the grooves I realize that this is the album that Bintangs chief Frank Kraaijeveld should have made, but never did! The Bintangs and Jean-Paul Rena's new album have that 'onopgesmukte' that would best describe Steve Verroca's work with the late Kevin Coyne on the 2LP "Marjorie Razorblade". 'Opgesmukt' is a Dutch word for which the dictionary gives: 'bare', 'stripped', 'naked'. But it's more comprehensive, it's like a simple girl that will always look beautiful, even dressed in rags. Jean-Paul and Frank are, like Kevin was, basic, rough, jagged, raw, elementary, straightforward, uncomplicated, primitive, essential, honest, powerful. You have to move your ass to their music, you have to rock your body, you can't sit still or refrain from humming or moaning along. I feel like turning up the volume to 11, standing up behind the wheel to strum my air-guitar so hard that the virtual strings break on impact! Boogying and woogying... On Highway 61! Revisited!
I got it! Jean-Paul is The Boogieman! Him being different may be genetic, it may run in his jeans: Pa was a rather successful painter & home was full of music & art. African chants, jazz & Rock & Roll mixed with a little Bob Dylan. All the sounds that the Netherlands opened up to when in 1945 the German oompah music was replaced by what the liberators from Canada and the US were grooving to. From a historical point of view I have to stress that the Polish soldiers played a pivotal role, but the Dutch never fell for their Polka music and Vodka Wyberova only hit the progressive music scene 35 years after the Great War. Jean-Paul's father wanted our Hero to join the ranks of Mesdag, Israëls and Weissenbruch, painters of the ' Hague School', early impressionists. But the only shape that fascinated Jean-Paul was that of the electric guitar, his mind was set on becoming a 'guitar slinger'. And still today, apart from JP's fascination for his lovely and ravishing Maschinka, his guitar won't have to fear competition. A few times JP strayed from the musical path, but fortunately it didn't take any 12 step program to get him back to the real thing, to the Blues, to Rock & Roll. I'm firing up the car again, thinking of the places where we're going to spread JEAN-PAUL RENA's gospel... And contrary to the title of this album: I WILL be satisfied!!!
-Evert Wilbrink, Corazong Records A&R
For more information: www.jprena.com
For more music that matters: www.corazong.com
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