Microstoned
STONE
CRAZY BLUES BAND: Microstoned
The
three-piece Stone Crazy Blues Band, featuring accomplished guitarist
Chris Morda, stands apart from the common herd of blues bands
encountered in clubs and at festivals. Morda's personality on
12-Tone Ultra Plus and Fretless guitars has all the communicative
warmth one expects of a world-class blues artist, but there's
more: This recent transplant to New York City from Seattle goes
beyond business-as-usual note-bending and boldly embraces alternate
tuning systems, without losing any of the music's innate sensuality.
He relishes exploring the microtonal notes between the notes.
With blues becoming more and more predictable and clichéd
with each passing day, Morda's creative efforts are, in a word,
refreshing.
Supported
by the expert rhythm team of drummer Todd Zimberg and bass
player Forrest Giberson, Morda succeeds in working out his
own distinct blues language on the new Microstoned album,
the follow-up to the Stone Crazy's acclaimed debut album, Barnyard
Boogie. Combining pitches from the current
Western system of tuning (equal temperament) with uncommon acoustical
harmonics, he achieves marvelous musical results on a program
of familiar songs that have transformed into fascinating and
otherworldly reconfigurations.
Pulsing
with new life are two classics from Chicago blues titan Muddy
Waters: "I Can't Be Satisfied" (Morda
references the version on Waters's 1977 Hard Again album,
not the late-'40s Chess original) and "Trouble No More" (he builds
on Duane and Gregg Allman's recorded live-at-the-Fillmore rendition,
circa 1970). Both songs glow with wondrous displays of
the Ultra Plus-spawned "multi-temperament" combination of pitches.
So does Morda's minor scale-based blues original titled "Time
Will Tell." The song's Jimi Hendrix vibe comes from the harmonic
structure and the outlay of potent guitar lyricism.
 Morda
welcomes the interpretative opportunities offered in the music
of other classics, as well. One can almost hear the tectonic
plates of pop-music history shifting when the guitarist redesigns
Oz visitor Dorothy Gale's "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." Again
showing his mastery of the Ultra Plus, he tweaks the notes of
the beloved melody into a kaleidoscope of shifting emotional
colors--gentle awe, startling anxiety, suspense, happy energy.
Never vain or egocentric, the former student of Ethnomusicology
at the University of Washington-Seattle treats blues-jazz maverick
James Blood Ulmer's "Are You Glad To Be In America?" with the
radiant respect the 1980 UK Rough Trade single deserves while
seeking out his own darkness-and-light revelations in an unnervingly
controlled yet free-spirited performance--hard-to-please Blood
himself might even crack an approving smile. Freddie King's oft-covered "Hideaway" doesn't
wear out its welcome because Morda uses the evergreen unleashes
an impressive showcase of guitar inspiration; note his special
rapport with the rhythm section--the groove's caked with Mississippi
mud. Morda's keen expressive abilities shine new light on "Harlem
Nocturne," the age-old r&b-jump blues number that's been
done to a fare-thee-well by a multitude of interpreters (including
countless sax players in strip joints of yesteryear). Once again,
the native Detroiter finds surprising kernels of insight in a
threadbare song.
 Morda
employs Fretless guitar tuned to Open G in the Just Intonation
tuning system (the distances between pitches represented by whole-number
frequency ratios; don't get it? don't worry, just listen) for
the remaining tracks. He commingles fervor, lyricism and sensuality
in his improvised solo atop a droning loop on "Opening to G." A
student of classical Indian music, he's no stranger to
thinking of music from a modal or melody base rather than a harmonic
structure; and he's open to bringing scales from Indian music
to blues. Artful surprises keep on coming when Morda weds the
radio-friendly melody of Edgar Winter's early-'70s hit "Frankenstein" to
the chord change from late great soul blues guitarist Albert
King's "Flat Tire." The resulting composite, "Frankentire," blazes
with steady flow, intelligence and emotional detail, resisting
easy categorization though "blues-rock" makes for an acceptable
match to Stone Crazy Blues Band music. "Stranger Blues" may
be recalled from Johnny Winter's Winter of 88 album
but here Morda gives it an adventurous makeover and seizes it
his own from the albino guitarist. Last but not least, his take
of Robert Johnson's world-famous "Come On In My Kitchen" attains
an aura of concentrated emotional intensity. True with this song
and all the rest on Microstoned , Forrest
Giberson on bass and Todd Zimberg on drums add just the right
amount of heft and depth without drawing undue attention to themselves.
With Microstoned ,
Chris Morda secures his place in the company of other committed,
forward-looking blues artists of considerable talent: Jon Catler,
Babe Borden, Elliott Sharp, LaMonte Young, Neil Haverstick,
Otis Taylor, Blood Ulmer and, among others, some of the musicians
heard at Chris Johnson's Deep Blues Festival in Minnesota. -Frank-John
Hadley
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