A past winner of the AUK readers’ Poll for Male Performer Of The Year, Nathan Bell has been a firm favourite in roots venues in the UK and in Europe ever since he ventured over here back in 2017. Over the course of a dozen albums, he has staked his claim to be considered a chronicler of the regular “American working man,” via his initial trio of albums, which were based on life, work and family, with Bell working firmly in a blue-collar folk singing tradition. Later albums reflected America’s slide into populist politics and its attendant dangers, culminating in the pointed anger contained in “Red, White And American Blues (It Couldn’t Happen Here)” which raged against the dimming of the day in America.
Bell’s latest album finds him in the guise of The Right Reverend Crow, a moniker he used on some of the songs on “Red, White And American Blues (It Couldn’t Happen Here)”. “Demokracy Blues” is an album of gutbucket electric blues, and it pulls no punches. Bell is on fire as he rants against the mess that is the USA today, saying that, “I grew up knowing that America was a flawed country with its own attempted (and mostly successful) genocide of Native Americans and the use of black and brown people as slaves and disposables to build itself. But it was a country that had developed promise, in great part due to its population being a mix of cultures and ideas, all under the umbrella of the idea of Democracy. I believed that our Democracy was important to others like me. Now I feel like an outcast as I watch our government and many of my fellow citizens abandon the principles that gave this country promise. I think that is expressed in this album, and it certainly makes the album feel angry. This album was a wonderful accident. We were recording a follow-up to “Red, White and American Blues,” and producers Frank Swart and Brian Brinkerhoff of the label, NeedtoKnow Music, suggested that drummer Alvino Bennett and I take a shot at a few songs with electric guitar and a distinctly blues approach. Those tracks had enough promise that, over the next six months, we continued down that path until we had a full electric blues/soul album.”
Many folk have compared the current volatility in the USA to that of the 1960s, a decade stained by the assassinations of two Kennedys and Martin Luther King and Bell alludes to that on the album artwork which, aside from spelling Democracy with a K, a practice which harks back to the equation of America as a fascist or, at least, a racist state as in the Yippies spelling of Amerika, features black icons from the era. There’s Hendrix along with the black athletes who offered the black power salute at the 1968 Olympic games. Of the artwork Bell says, “The album cover is a work of art by American artist Milton510 that he designed after listening to the album more than once. It is remarkable how he independently landed on two critical touch points in my life: the 1968 Olympic protest by John Carlos and Tommie Smith (which is one of my earliest memories of social justice in action) and Hendrix at Monterey (the album and movie influenced the direction of my electric guitar playing more than just about anything, although my playing isn’t necessarily recognisable as Hendrix influenced). The line at the bottom, “there is always hope”, is meant to counter the angry tone of the album and is from one of my father’s poems. Right now, you could call me an angry optimist. And I’m just writing the truth in an angry world. But there is always hope.”
“Demokracy Blues” is available now and Nathan Bell will have copies on board at the gigs.
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