Wednesday, February 15, 2017

Delphinium CD And Its Amazing Blues Power

By Jerry Collins


Late bloomers in the contemporary music scene offer the most distinctive works, and there are a lot of them who have become popular. Great music is being made by people of all ages today, and age groups here do not relate since most things are available on YouTube and other sites. Some discovered playing late while others started young, stopped and then rediscovered their playing roots.

A musician who took the longer road and found himself entering the world of recorded music is Dean Maser. He made the rediscovery one night during the open mic of a hootenanny and went on to record Delphinium CD. Those lucky enough to know him listen are in for a treat.

Maser has wandered around a bit, and he is entirely within the tradition of American blues minstrelsy, with many greats coming before him. There are many masters, and Dylan has been lately recognized with a Nobel in literature, a conundrum for all American music makers. Maser, though, has skipped into a unique space with a the visual and rural Gothic perspective in this album.

Delphinium is a way into seeing a legend filled world which partakes of spiritualism in the American West and the wide open skies of the Midwestern plains. The title is derived from the flower of the same name, which horticulturists know to bloom late, around June or July. This summer flower is broadly distributed, from the meadows to the uplands of pine.

He started out with church music, ukeleles and guitar and the song Kumbayah is deeply imprinted like a bad and unwanted tattoo on his soul. Perhaps it took those years away from music to make him shake of the early influence and come to see a real spirituality in nature and the world. He goes on to say that he really went for the prize in high school and ended up making a 3 record EP that not one person heard.

The musical artist also blogs, and this one is named The Good Ancestor, a deep reflection on influences and musical roots. He has traced the deepest roots for his art. As an artist, he has thus become awake from all these years of study, something his first album expresses well.

Maser also plays with a blues band, experienced musicians like himself and they have eclectically influenced new album coming. They call themselves SoulShine, and the album wander the discography of the idiom, from BB King to ZZ Top, from Cash to Dylan, Hendrix and Clapton. Blues fanatics should watch out for the work of this trio.

He recorded the album in studios in Boston and Minneapolis, with players coming from the Dakotas and Africa. His stand is all about making his influences come at as native to the album. Despite the eclecticism, all things that stand for the Blues are there, as defined by the first ditty ever dedicated to its source Old Man River.

Song titles include Heart Be True, Heroes, One Time and Strong Love. Others include the title track, Fall Apart and A Little Older, and you cannot help but notice their strong echoes of tradition. The Blues are all about tradition, about the travails of Biblical Christians and their replication in the American tradition, about love, life and death felt so deeply it opens up a spring of tears.




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