Sonny Landreth has been, over his intriguing if too-often-underrated career, the very personification of gumbo — that savory, everything-in-one-pot dish from his adopted home of Louisiana.
An astonishingly inventive slide player, he’s never been content to stay too close to home. Over the years, we seen him veer off into Zydeco (during a stint with Clifton Chenier), R&B (with Allen Toussaint), fusion (2012’s Elemental Journey), goofball pop (with Jimmy Buffett) and Americana (with John Haitt). All of it, in his able hands, tends to boast the flavor of the blues, but often it’s worked more as a spice than as the basic roux.
“Bound by the Blues,” the title track from Sonny Landreth’s forthcoming June 9, 2015 release for Provogue Records, makes a definitive return to those roots. Landreth, in fact, directly references Muddy Waters, even as he tears into a humid, Delta-kissed riff.
At the same time, “Bound by the Blues” remains determinedly inclusive, both within the evocative lyric — Sonny Landreth reminds us all of our basic commonalities, rather than our peripheral differences — and in the way the song brings in subsequent influences like Jimi Hendrix. Listen, too, as the chorus adds new layers of harmonic complexity.
You didn’t expect Sonny Landreth to play it straight, did you? That’s the stuff of soup, not a good gumbo. No, he understands — after all of his many travels, his many musical excursions — just how important the blues is, as both foundation and (maybe most importantly) as launching pad.
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