OR   Search for Artist/Title    Advanced Search
 
you are not logged in...  [login] 
All Reviews    Edit This Review     
Review: 'STEVENS, MIKE'
'Breathe in the World Breathe Out Music'   

-  Label: 'Stony Plain Records'
-  Genre: 'Blues' -  Release Date: '20th May 2022'-  Catalogue No: 'SPCD1452'

Our Rating:
Mike Stevens is a Canadian bluegrass musician, songwriter, composer, author and humanitarian of whom the late Roy ‘King of Country Music Acuff once said: “I’ve never heard anyone play the harmonica like you play the harmonica.”

His career spans 35-years and he has performed on stage at the Grand Ole Opry more than 300 times but this record is not the sound of an old man content to go through the motions.

While the harmonica is, unsurprisingly, the dominant instrument on this ambitious 12 track, 53 minute album, electric blues rather than bluegrass is the dominant style.

Although listed as a solo record, it is the fruit of a collaboration with numerous guest artists including Cory James Mitchell, Kevin Breit, Jeff Getty, Jesse Wells, Art Hratchian, and Jeff Bird.

Despite having gone on record as not being comfortable as a singer, Stevens nevertheless provides gruff, half spoken lead vocals on four of the twelve tracks. This is a measure of how his approach and perspective on music making has altered recently. The only other lead singer on the album is Polly Harris on the opening track, Like A Little Bird .

The sea change in his methodology partly came about as a result of being forced to cope with a late-stage Lyme disease diagnosis that meant he experienced difficulties with walking, cognitive function, and joint pain often to the point of often being unable to hold instruments. Stevens says: “I played differently than I have on any other record because I didn’t have much memory. I was just reacting to what was there in the moment. It was strictly reactionary.”

Several tracks are re-recorded and significantly expanded from his 1990 album, ‘Harmonica’. For instance, his new take on Amazing Grace is much freer and more experimental in tone.
And, certainly, if you listen to the frenetic, showstopping instrumental, Grumbling Old Man Grumbling Old Woman, you wouldn’t think this to be the work of an artist with any health issues.

Although half of the tunes are instrumentals, including a version of Gordon Lightfoot’s The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, the expert sequencing of the record means that these blend fluidly with the vocal tracks.

There’s a definite energy and vitality to the album as if the disease Stevens suffered from has given him a new lease of life.

It’s bang up to date too with the closing track, Put Your Phone Down, humorously addressing the paranoia-inducing potential of the internet.   

The album lives up to the confident invitation that greets visitors to Stevens’ website: “Step into a world of music that inspires possibilities.”

Mike Stevens’ website
  author: Martin Raybould

[Show all reviews for this Artist]

READERS COMMENTS    10 comments still available (max 10)    [Click here to add your own comments]

There are currently no comments...
----------



STEVENS, MIKE - Breathe in the World Breathe Out Music