|
February 11th, 2007 @ The Rutledge—SANDERS BOHLKE Sunday night at The Rutledge, Nashville proved that it is completely worthy of the oft-used moniker "Music City." Rather than squatting on the couch to watch the Grammies, many ventured out to watch (I predict) future Grammy contender Sanders Bohlke perform an intimate in-the-round set alongside Micah Dalton and Drew Holcomb. These three talented artists are currently on a brief tour of the Southeast promoting their latest studio efforts. Sanders Bohlke hails from Oxford, MS, and this young artist has evidently identified with the rich history and influence of the Delta Blues. Diffident and unassuming, this jeans and t-shirt wearing young man delivered genuinely mournful meditations on love, loss, and redemption that—had I not seen it with my own eyes—could have only come from an elderly black streetcorner bluesman putting years of oppression and despair into song. Alternating between acoustic guitar, keys, and lap steel, Bohlke combines his soul-filled vocals, which are already on par with the likes of Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder, with poetic "wise old soul" lyrics that shed new light on old blues themes. Lyrically, Bohlke is a man of few words, choosing to sing only what is necessary to convey his emotional position—and doing so with precision. Writing such lines as "had to cut my throat just to breathe," and repetitively hovering over painful phrases in a kind of black-church spiritual fashion, Bohlke easily conveys both despair and hope in lyrics such as "I am going to make it."
|
