Musical journey leads bluesman home

PROLIFIC: Kelly Joe Phelps has been cutting a clear path through what is often referred to as acoustic blues, or country blues. PHOTO/JAMES REXROAD

Jimi. Stevie. Kelly.

Or so the legend proclaims beneath a You Tube clip of American bluesman Kelly Joe Phelps, who stages his debut Wairarapa performance at King Street Live tomorrow night.

Phelps, who has released 11 albums after migrating from jazz to blues, has been lauded by a legion of his celebrity peers including Steve Earle, Bill Frisell, U2's The Edge, Leo Kottke, and Cameron Crowe.

Contemporary peers who have, in turn, captured his admiration include "incredible" Grammy Award-winning musician Alvin Youngblood Hart from California and South African singer songwriter Gregory Alan Isakov.

Phelps, an Oregon native, shifted to country blues guitar and slide after realising improvisation underpinned much of the folk-rooted form, which "tied a lot of loose elements together for me and gave me a way to make sense of a lot of things within myself. It's all about music and being passionate about music and having it occupy such a large part of my emotional and spiritual core," he said.

"It was kind of a long road getting there and it's a very specific sub-set of blues that I use. Fundamentally, it has to do with early country blues or some of those Delta players like Fred McDowell and Roger Peeples and Skip James.

"Those kinds of players who have an underlying, dark kind of broiling spirit and passion dealing with a lot of imagery and not very much humour.

"That music is directly connected to jazz for me. I understood it viscerally. I resonated with it, yeah, absolutely resonated."

Kelly Joe Phelps and special guests Reeb Willms and Caleb Klauder play King Street Live tomorrow night from 8pm. Pre-sale tickets cost $30 each and door sales will be available. Buy tickets online at eventfinder.co.nz.