Henry Kaiser & Rome Yamilov - The Lenoir Investigation (2022)

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Henry Kaiser & Rome Yamilov - The Lenoir Investigation (2022)

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The Little Village Foundation run by keyboardist Jim Pugh assembled this band through Indian blues harmonica player & singer Aki Kumar, who brought drummer June Core and guitarist Rome Yamilov, deciding to make the release a "crazy guitar album" by adding Henry Kaiser; along with vocalist Lisa Leuschnet they hit the mark in an exuberantly diverse set of blues performing the music of J.B. Lenoir.

"The Lenoir Investigation may well turn out to be the archetypal Little Village (LV) release, a beautiful mélange of brilliant, cross-cultural playing grounded in a profound respect for musical tradition seasoned with a diabolically creative dash of whimsy, all of which comes out as gorgeous music.

Little Village honcho Jim Pugh started this unique nonprofit label after a lengthy and successful career as a keyboardist (Robert Cray, Etta James) had added up to a few too many nights on the road. He began searching out fascinating music that deserved greater attention, including the extraordinary blues harmonica (accompanied by Hindi lyrics) of Aki Kumar. Kumar brought along a first-rate drummer, June Core, and an accomplished blues guitarist, Rome Yamilov, and before long Pugh said to Rome, "Why don't you make a crazy guitar album with Henry Kaiser?"

A major player in the S.F. Bay Area music scene, Henry seemed a natural for the project; he's a godfather of crazy guitar. After all, Kaiser once used the South Pole-the pole mounted at our planet's South geographic pole-as the slide to play some Antarctic blues.

Rome turned out to be a kindred soul, Henry discovered, "amazing in his precociousness and the authenticity of his blues playing." All of which is impressive since Rome was born in Russia, came to the San Jose area at the age of seven, was decently fluent in English after about a semester, and is even now still well south of the age of thirty. Yet, Henry said with an impressed shake of his head, with only one exception Rome was comfortably knowledgeable with the vast span of musical references Henry has been digging up for the past fifty years, which included Henry's next idea.

"Hey, I've made so many weird guitar duo albums. I bet we could do something more interesting. You're a very fine blues player and we both truly love the blues. So how about a blues album, but a weird one, that's unconventional in unprecedented ways? What do you think of J.B. Lenoir? He wrote so many great songs, but he seems to be almost forgotten and doesn't get anywhere near the attention he deserves nowadays. And there is no reason for us to stick strictly to the blues idioms with his songs" When Rome instantly agreed, they were off and running.

Lenoir (pronounced Len-nore) was born in Mississippi, played a bit in New Orleans, and in 1949 arrived in Chicago, where he recorded many singles and a few albums before he died far too young soon after a 1967 car accident. Although he played with George Wein's Folk Blues tours in Europe, J.B. mostly stayed in Chicago. This, coupled with his inclination for writing very serious political songs about the Korean war and civil rights, insured that neither the blues music world nor its audience gave him the attention he deserved. Henry and Rome had a perfect subject for their explorations.

They studied J.B., particularly his fine acoustic albums with Fred Below on drums, and gave themselves some ideas for genres to use in their improvisational approaches. The band for the recording-June Core (dr), Kid Andersen (bass), Jim Pugh (keys), and the two guitars, with Rome the primary vocalist-was so instantly telepathic that no rehearsal was needed and they hit the ground running; cutting all the songs in one or two takes.

"The Whale Has Swallowed Me." As Rome put it, they wanted to cover songs in styles that weren't necessarily blues…for instance, Henry said, "Let's do this like it's ska, but with a dub section." The dub section here is echoes and feedback that were not uncommon in old Jamaican dub material, but in this version, Henry notes, "Let's hear the dub land on top of the ska live, with our guitar pedals, instead of the typical studio trickery."

"People Are Meddlin' in Our Own Affairs." The two guitarists had planned plenty of space for shredding, but the slow blues songs tended to be the ideal place to freak out. Rome wondered how June and Kid, who tended to be more straight-ahead in their playing, would react…and even Rome was a bit surprised when Henry stormed out of the gate with three blazing choruses…."but I love it." "We go more nuts on guitar," said Henry, "than most people would. Actually, Buddy Guy did stuff like this… anyway, we just thought, 'let's go nuts.'"

"Round and Round." This tune is in a very obscure and difficult style: a BAOEJY from Madagascar.. Rome was a bit concerned before they played it, but Henry cheerfully said it'll be fine if Jim can hit the organ part. Henry had more confidence than Jim did initially, but a half-hour's jam with Kid and he was ready. Lisa Lueschner's vocal at the beginning is truly a delight; she adds an extra positive vibe to J.B.'s lyrics, while the band miraculously manages a groove popularized by the Malagasy salegy great Tianjama.

"Feel So Good." Henry thought of this piece as "late period Meters," a relatively simply approach. "We had to have a funk piece, and there is very little funkier than New Orleans and the Meters," said Rome.

"How Long." Henry says their approach transported Lenoir from Chicago to Texas- style blues on this one.

"Na Er Jeg I Form! / Play a Little While." Given the variety of languages floating around, it wasn't surprising when they began to emerge….in unusual ways. Musically, they transformed "Play a Little While" into a Peruvian psychedelic cumbia. And then, "It's our idea of having fun," shrugged Kaiser, the lyrics became Norwegian. Give the bass player some, indeed-since it was his native tongue, Kid Andersen got the vocal.

The one non-J.B. song opens this selection, "Rollercoaster," by Bo Diddley: "It just wanted to be played," said Rome. And then they sail into a Tuareg (a North African

Saharan tribe)-influenced version of J.B.'s "Mojo Boogie." Aki takes the lyrics here, which is why you hear his version of "I've been to New Orleans" as "I've been to old Bombay."

8. "God's Word" begins, musically, somewhere near the planet of Funkadelic masterpiece "Maggotbrain," which harp, piano, and dreamy vocals lead off into dreamland. "It's the specifically spacey side of Funkadelic," said Rome. "It came out completely natural."

9. "What About Your Daughter" is, musically, J.B.'s encounter with Little Richard and '50s rock, but twisted, says Rome-"Chuck Berry and Little Richard meet the Stooges and Motorhead." "We do these tunes with Aki," Rome said, "I can get crazy and within reason…which summed itself up in a Rome vocal in his native Russian.

10. "I'll Die Trying" was to be in Hindi so that Aki would sing it. The lyrics weren't ready when they recorded it, so for a "scratch vocal" Aki stuck to J.B.'s lyrics in English, and the results were so good that even the highly self-critical Aki liked them, and so they stayed.

11. The last two songs, "Alabama March" and "Down in Mississippi," were J.B.'s main civil rights anthems from his sides with Fred Below. Here, the guitars carry the weight of the words and meanings without any vocals.

Henry: 'This is one really weird gumbo - from both of us. And we had such a good band."