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Few blues musicians have trod the path Bert Deivert has taken during the past four decades as a professional entertainer. We have heard tales of young men becoming entranced with the likes of Son House before, but it is rather unusual that this would lead to an equal interest in the slide guitar and the mandolin. Deivert spent time in San Francisco as a street musician, befriended in fact by fellow troubadour Peter Case, long since established as a pop/folk/rock singer/songwriter of note.

Though many have taken the path from the streets to the stage, Deivert is one of the few American blues players who moved to Sweden as a young man to establish his career.

Blues musicians don’t always stick strictly to playing the blues. We’ve seen the same people play rock, or jazz, or soul, or even a little hip-hop. Deivert, however, has pursued a parallel life in the world of Irish traditional folk music, partnering with Christy O’Leary. In fact, as attested still further by his collaborations on some new tracks with musicians from Thailand, Deivert just might be the most open-minded, diversely influenced, and just plain unusual blues musician working today.

Bert Deivert's Kid Man Blues

Kid Man Blues is the most recent recording in a ten album discography that also included three albums with Eric Bibb over 30 years back. Booking studio time here, there, and everywhere he could over the last few years, Deivert has achieved a surprisingly cohesive and extremely satisfying set of blues performances.

With one foot in the Mississippi Delta, and the other striding across continents to grab ideas and musicians the world over, Deivert’s new album is a deep, intensely beautiful work.

It takes almost no time at all to realize this record is out of the ordinary. “Goin’ Down South” is a familiar song from the repertoire of R.L. Burnside, but Deivert re-imagines it as something darker and more mysterious than the original (and that is saying something). Deivert plays both mandolin and overdubbed lap steel, which whirl around the trance-inducing violin of Nina Perez and Janne Zander’s acoustic guitar. There is no lead instrument, as all four parts twist and comment on each other and Deivert’s moody vocal, somehow keeping the original riff of the song alive. Throw in the Peruvian Indian percussion box known as a cajon played by the Asian Indian musician Suchet Maholtra, and some inspired backing vocals by Emmy Deivert, My Sohlin, and the American bluesman Memphis Gold, and you’ve got a recipe for turning the blues into a world music.

Rob & Steal

This is not to say Deivert has abandoned his American roots. Mandolinist Carl Martin’s classic “State Street Pimp” is a barrelhouse blues featuring terrific piano from Willie Salomon, and Deivert’s best crooning of lines such as “You took all my money, gave it to your state street pimp / And you had the nerve to tell me I was just a small town simp.” Deivert’s mandolin solo flies, and then Brian Kramer’s acoustic slide guitar crawls on its belly while Salomon keeps the groove bubbly and incandescent. “Rob & Steal” is another number from the Fat Possum stable, this time written by Paul “Wine” Jones. With Clarksdale, Mississippi guitarist Bill Abel and the magnificent drummer Sam Carr (who passed away less than a year after recording this in 2008), Deivert celebrates that magnificent slipshod rhythmic play of the Delta.

Deivert hooked up with some very talented folk musicians during a tour of Thailand, and three songs on Kid Man Blues were recorded there. “Come Back Baby” is a weary yet hopeful lament for a lost lover, with the band pushing Deivert to keep trying to get her back. A version of Skip James’ mournful “Cypress Grove” is stunning, going straight to the gut with slippery, queasy, and beautiful sounds from Deivert’s National resonator guitar and the overdubbed harmonica of Swedish folk player Mats Qwarfordt. The album closes with a duet between Deivert’s mandolin and the acoustic guitar of Dulyasit “Pong” Srabua, a haunting and purely cathartic interplay of melodies taken from the Thai province Isaan merged with the blues. It’s not like anything else heard here or elsewhere, but it demands to be heard again and again.

Keep On Truckin'

Deivert is not a show-off player, but his mandolin (and acoustic guitar) skills are impeccable. He prefers to blend in with other musicians, and support his vocals. The grooves provided for these songs are irresistible thanks to the special rapport he develops with all the many friends who recorded with him these past few years. “Kid Man Blues” is sung by Deivert, Sohlin, and Memphis Gold, as fiddle, guitar, and mandolin dance over a powerful double-bass rhythm put down by Per-Arne Pettersson. Tom Paley, once of the New Lost City Ramblers, teams with Deivert for a nicely rollicking “Keep On Truckin,” the Blind Blake song which R. Crumb appropriated into the American lexicon back in the 1960s. The original instrumental “Lula,” brings back Bill Abel on guitar and Sam Carr on drums for a thumping romp that could keep playing as long as one’s feet can keep dancing, if the feet have anything to say about it.

Blind Blake also contributes “Diddie Wah Diddie,” a number which inspired the Manfred Mann hit of similar name, but which here is just an enjoyable double entendre ditty. The Son House masterpiece “Death Letter Blues” has been played as much as any blues song, and Deivert’s version stands its own ground with the best of them. With just his own vocal and driving acoustic guitar, he mixes passion and power and sorrow and anger into musical terms. “Special Agent (Railroad Police Blues)” is a Sleepy John Estes song for which Deivert made up his own Yank Rachell-styled mandolin part, and the result is just plain enjoyable.

Steve's Bottom Line

The blues don’t have to be as original, personal, and occasionally unconventional as Bert Deivert makes them. The beauty of this genre is that even the most mundane performances can still contain enough essence of the form to succeed in moving an audience. But Bert Deivert isn’t interested in just doing the bare minimum. For this record, with the aid of a whole world of guest players, he takes the blues outside the conventional comfort zones, and makes these old songs sound completely alive, bold, and deliriously enchanting. (Hard Danger Records, released October 11, 2011)

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