Chaos & Country Blues

'Chaos is the inspiration, Country Blues is the music.' So said the elusive Reverend Freakchild before his untimely death. These Resonator-rippled recordings you hold in your hands bubble up from the city streets like puffs of redolent smoke exuded from the fire and brimstone of a bygone existence. He is said to have died in 2005, at 33 years of age, only as old as Jesus, in a mysterious accident in India, then been cremated on the banks of the Ganges - a strange Hindu ending for a Buddhist. But no one really knows. He's said to have been born and raised in Hawaii and sung in traditional island choirs before traveling the world and finally settling in New York City and singing as a soloist in a gospel choir in Harlem. They say he made his guitar out of a coffin and another from a cross rescued from a church. Others say he was studying to be a Native American contrarian Shaman. At one time he was called New York City's undisputed king of stoner country blues before he found sobriety - proof perhaps in the inclusion of the version of 'Tightrope.' Reviewers of different eras described the Reverend Freakchild as the best 'blues-eyed soul' artist they had ever heard. And this 'Best of...' collection of classic blues tunes shows the Rev's real core love, which lies in the stripped-down acoustic sounds of country blues, and, of course, in the legacy of great musical Reverends and other blues-infused or spiritually inspired singers like Rev. Gary Davis and Son House. Rev. Freakchild always celebrated the blues with his own take on the tradition. A little unorthodox and not nearly note for note, but the spirit was all there. The soul of the lament aching toward a redeeming cure. Caught perhaps somewhere between Jesus and jail. Or like Son House, with whom Freakchild kicks off this album in a new arrangement of 'Preachin' Blues,' being in a tug-of-war between traditional true-religion preaching and playing, and the good-time blues music of sexual sinnin' and livin'. It's a fine line between Saturday night and Sunday morning. Just when you feel like you've been transported body, mind and soul with tunes like 'In my Time of Dying' and 'I Can't be Satisfied' and to some psychedelic futuristic fictitious Delta while listening to these raw tracks with sounds from the likes of 'Guru' Hugh Pool accompanying the Freakchild on harmonica on a strange pre-Robert Johnson type version of Rollin' and Tumblin', in peeps Jay Collins of the Allman Brothers' touring band playing the Indian bansuri flute in a deliciously fresh new chaotic version of 'Death Don't Have No Mercy' or Jon Bones Ritchie Robinson skittering his acoustic bass under 'You Can't Judge a Book by the Cover.' Freakchild then tries to escape the delta with a couple of Willie Dixon tunes, 'Judge a Book' and 'Little Red Rooster', but seems more at ease when covering Texas troubadours like Blind Lemon Jefferson's 'See that my Grave is Kept Clean' (over which Freakchild apparently used to rap Dylan's lyrics in live performances) or in a wonderfully haunting version of Sam 'Lightnin' Hopkins' 'Death Bells' - perhaps this ease comes from the fact that the Rev's roots echo his ancestors, said to be some of the first German settlers in Houston. Freakchild came out of the blues, but was never locked into it. 'Using the blues as a starting point, I try to keep in the tradition, and take it one step further,' he says in the rare radio interview included at the end of this disc, elsewhere explaining that he aims to 'capture the chaotic coherence and the spirit of the tune' - never was a phrase better tuned to describe the life and music, if not the times, of this occluded figure. Those who knew him know that Rev. Freakchild was a virtual blues encyclopedia, telling stories with great enthusiasm, and reading and learning all he could about the amazing American tradition we call the blues. Now gone, it seems he has become part of the myths he so loved. Culled from some of Freakchild's most intimate recording sessions, these tracks uncover a beautifully troubled soul inspired by the blues and ro