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THE TRUTH
(Terminus)
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Bryant’s first name couldn’t be more apt. There are few performers in the unvarnished African-American blues songster tradition left. Plus, she’s just damn cool. On this follow-up to her 2002 debut, Fool Me Good (Terminus), the 62-year-old Georgia native’s stylistic interests ramble from gospel to country to diehard blues and backwoods folk, all connected by the melodies of her thin, ringing alto voice. When she’s not playing festivals or club dates, which is most of the time, she’s home watching TV, where her favorite shows are wrestling, soap operas, and Dark Angel. Especially Dark Angel, whose heroine she honors in a song by that name, praising the character’s ability to kickbox her way out of any jam. The demand that Fool Me Good has sparked for Bryant’s appearances has refueled her interest in guitar. This time she explores all aspects of her playing within a gentle electric style that blends Piedmont pick-and-strum, one-chord stomps, and alternating bass-and-melody licks. She also turns all the back pages of her song catalogue, flipping 50 years past to the days when she listened to her father and her uncle play at home and began absorbing songs. That’s also when she first heard Memphis Minnie on the radio (she covers Minnie’s saucy "My Chauffeur") and began singing spirituals in Baptist churches with her sisters. "Morning Train," built over her bass-and-melody picking and lowest, warmest vocalizing, and "If I Could Hear My Mother Pray," with its open-chord strumming, are survivors from that era. Even her original instrumental "Sugar Hill," driven by her son Tony’s 2/4 C&W-style bass, sounds plucked from the 1950s. But as Bryant knows, musical truths are timeless.
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