My Internet is slow as hell lately, so I can't upload the video I want to talk about, and I can't figure out how to embed YouTube videos in the correct dimensions, so I'm just going to hotlink the video here.Oakland, California-born bluesman Seasick Steve, the newest signee to Jack White's Third Man Records, first blew me away in this video from this year's South by Southwest. This past weekend, Seasick Steve played at the iTunes Festival in London, England and who joined him onstage for a cover of legendary bluesman Mississippi Fred McDowell's "Write Me a Few Lines" but Kills/Dead Weather frontwoman Allison Mosshart, Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones (who is actually now one of Steve's touring band members and might have even appeared on Steve's Third Man debut album You Can't Teach an Old Dog New Tricks) and of course, the very man who signed Seasick Steve, Jack White.
I love the raw simplicity of most of Seasick Steve's furious, slide-heavy blues (his "arsenal" of instruments include a three-stringed guitar with a duct-taped pickup, a one-stringed diddley bow and his "MDM" Mississippi Drum Machine: a small, carpet-covered, wooden box that Seasick Steve stomps), but Seasick Steve's new fuller sound on Old Dog doesn't quite do it for me; the drums are far more pronounced, and even the guitars are cleaner - far less rough-edged. And as cool as it always is to watch Jack White drum, especially alongside John Paul Jones and Allison Mosshart, musically, even the group's iTunes Festival performance doesn't impress me much. Oh, well. I'm sure as is the case with most live videos, it's one thing to watch the performances recorded and a complete other thing to witness the performances live. Seasick Steve et al.'s performance is good overall (I can't really argue with Jack White playing with John Paul Jones), and at the very least, it makes me want to listen to Zeppelin.
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