Kelly Joe Phelps
Kelly Joe Phelps
An artist doesn’t see or hear a fixed reality. 2+2 does not necessarily equal 4. There is no up or down. No 2 AM. No 3 AM. Artists hear colors and shapes, moving like a dream. That is what they’re doing, they’re dreaming, about who they are, about who they might be, and what they’re becoming. In that sense, there is no time. No past. No future. Time is a river. Not an ocean. But flowing, like a river.
Kelly Joe Phelps is timeless, even if I can hear his modern use of those timeless roots. In his musical imagination he is as deep in the past as the memories of his grandparents, whose music and art is his, as well, passed thru the generations. That’s how generations work. Offering a faint echo of things even more distant.
Kelly Joe Phelps appears to be the creation of Kelly Joe Phelps. Just as Hank Williams was the creation of Hank Williams. Even Johnny Cash, apparently, was a figment of his own imagination.
It may be that artists hear differently. Because they clearly do. They see differently. Have brains that are wired for creativity. They don’t just hear music. They hear life—and stories, thousands of stories, arcing like lightning. That’s the artist's brain. Not better than, but certainly, different.
That’s how Kelly Joe Phelps tells his stories. The once avant-guard jazz guitarist and bassist, now tells musical stories, rooted in an Americana, right at home with, Blind Willie Johnson, Robert Johnson, or Doc Watson and Clarence White, and even Hank Williams—lost in the America of The Great Depression, Sunday church picnics, and Oklahoma dust bowls.
More real than Cecil B. DeMille. But not as real as Abraham Lincoln. Close enough, though.
In that sense, Kelly Joe Phelps is America, searching for itself, across the past, into the future, a billion or more Americans, those born, those not born yet. Those born a long time ago. A literary/musical Americana—William Faulkner, Mark Twain, and John Steinbeck, put to music, old and new.
How Phelps got from avant-guard jazz bassist to Bill Monroe’s ghost, might be more predictable than one might think. After all, Miles Davis and Charles Mingus are every bit as much Americana as Jimmie Rogers ‘The Singing Brakeman.” Or, even Jesse James. With Ry Cooder, possibly, as the musical connecting tissue.
That’s Kelly Joe Phelps. His own man. His own musician. His own creation. An American revolutionary-tradistionalist--and one-of-a-kind.
Mark Magula
An artist doesn’t see or hear a fixed reality. 2+2 does not necessarily equal 4. There is no up or down. No 2 AM. No 3 AM. Artists hear colors and shapes, moving like a dream. That is what they’re doing, they’re dreaming, about who they are, about who they might be, and what they’re becoming. In that sense, there is no time. No past. No future. Time is a river. Not an ocean. But flowing, like a river.
Kelly Joe Phelps is timeless, even if I can hear his modern use of those timeless roots. In his musical imagination he is as deep in the past as the memories of his grandparents, whose music and art is his, as well, passed thru the generations. That’s how generations work. Offering a faint echo of things even more distant.
Kelly Joe Phelps appears to be the creation of Kelly Joe Phelps. Just as Hank Williams was the creation of Hank Williams. Even Johnny Cash, apparently, was a figment of his own imagination.
It may be that artists hear differently. Because they clearly do. They see differently. Have brains that are wired for creativity. They don’t just hear music. They hear life—and stories, thousands of stories, arcing like lightning. That’s the artist's brain. Not better than, but certainly, different.
That’s how Kelly Joe Phelps tells his stories. The once avant-guard jazz guitarist and bassist, now tells musical stories, rooted in an Americana, right at home with, Blind Willie Johnson, Robert Johnson, or Doc Watson and Clarence White, and even Hank Williams—lost in the America of The Great Depression, Sunday church picnics, and Oklahoma dust bowls.
More real than Cecil B. DeMille. But not as real as Abraham Lincoln. Close enough, though.
In that sense, Kelly Joe Phelps is America, searching for itself, across the past, into the future, a billion or more Americans, those born, those not born yet. Those born a long time ago. A literary/musical Americana—William Faulkner, Mark Twain, and John Steinbeck, put to music, old and new.
How Phelps got from avant-guard jazz bassist to Bill Monroe’s ghost, might be more predictable than one might think. After all, Miles Davis and Charles Mingus are every bit as much Americana as Jimmie Rogers ‘The Singing Brakeman.” Or, even Jesse James. With Ry Cooder, possibly, as the musical connecting tissue.
That’s Kelly Joe Phelps. His own man. His own musician. His own creation. An American revolutionary-tradistionalist--and one-of-a-kind.
Mark Magula