DAVE MYERS & KIM WILSON
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Guitarist and bassist Dave Myers was a founding member of the Aces, a band that in the 50s freshened Chicago blues with the swing and harmonic sophistication of jazz. Left to himself, though, he specializes in just the kind of down-home Delta shuffle the Aces helped make commercially obsolete. Lately he’s been working closely with a fellow traditionalist, harp blower and former Fabulous Thunderbirds front man Kim Wilson. On Myers’s current CD, You Can’t Do That (Black Top), the two dig deep into the gutbucket–and come out with a handful of pearls. They recast Lowell Fulson’s tender “Reconsider Baby” as a grinding boogie, and Myers’s own numbers–the title track, “Ting-a-Ling,” “Blues in Mexico”–sound like an after-hours rent party circa 1945: half-borrowed lyrics, a casual approach to intonation, and a nonstop tub-thumping stomp. Wilson owes a debt to pioneering harpists like Little Walter, both Sonny Boy Williamsons, and Big Walter Horton, but his loose, sinewy melodic lines also bring to mind a vintage Texas-style roadhouse saxist like Arnett Cobb. His harp bends and swoops from octave to octave, tubular and sweet one minute and a harsh squall the next. Myers often simply solos straight out of a chord: he lets it ring, plucks its arpeggio, and then follows the spread-out chord like a map, rumbling uphill and back down in time for the 12th-bar turnaround. Friday, 8 PM, and Sunday, 6 PM, 39th Annual University of Chicago Folk Festival of Traditional American Music, Mandel Hall, University of Chicago, 1131 E. 57th St.; 773-702-9793 or 773-702-7300. Also this weekend, Wilson will sit in with guitarist Billy Flynn at Smoke Daddy–expect a slicker, more contemporary sound. Friday and Saturday, 10 PM, Smoke Daddy, 1804 W. Division; 773-772-6656. DAVID WHITEIS
