KELLY JOE PHELPS
Thursday, March 8, 8:00 PM, $15
(Please call to reserve, as usual.)

I remember sometime back in 1998 or so and we had been listening to a fellow on our cd player through the interests of our longtime cooking partner here at the Cafe Carpe, Dennis. We had no idea at the time that we would one day soon have this stunning practitioner of all things blues at our own cafe. It was just one of those fine recordings we had appreciated. So when Kelly Joe Phelps was offered to us we felt, as we do on occasion, just plain lucky. This was the period after Mr. Phelps had recorded his first two albums, “LEAD ME ON” and “ROLL AWAY THE STONE”. We feel just as lucky to have him back now. We only had contact about his passing through our area a week ago so this comes to you as a surprise offering.

A writer at the San Diego Troubadour described guitarist and songwriter Kelly Joe Phelps as, “The Phantom Monk Of Folk- Blues,” and rightly so. Over the past 17 years of recording and touring, Phelps has been talked about as much for his passionate, spirit-driven, lone musical ways as for the inventiveness of his playing and singing. A New York Times concert reviewer wrote: “…his airy playing conjuring a pocket of supernatural space. He manipulated his fretboard to create eerie harmonics as he slipped from a mumble to a falsetto, as if to follow the soul beyond the physical realm.” Uncut magazine, reviewing a London show, wrote: “…to ripple and snake into unknown territory for the country blues he allegedly played, to squeeze out sounds touching the searching jazz that had once been his trade, to mutate through more layers than twelve strings should hold. And the songs – their pleas for mercy beyond the grave healed the spirit in ways disbelievers, in bibles or blues, could feel.”

Kelly Joe is an improviser within the world of folk music. He’ll likely use the same group of songs during one show that he used the previous night, sure enough, but the skew will have changed, the colors and shading moved around. Sometimes, it seems like the song might even be playing him, rather than the other way around. “I approach music this way,” he says, “to give it a chance to breathe, walk, or whisper. Improvising, even in small amounts, turns a piece of music into a conversation, in real time, with all of the unexpected twists and turns that any conversation is going to have, even if it’s with someone you talk to all the time. The emotional complexity of us, in any one moment, can be musically represented through improvisation as a moment in motion, like someone thinking, or worrying, perhaps, right this second, here and now. If there isn’t some part of the unknown or unexpected present, it seems like an important aspect of being human goes missing. That’s the beauty of spontaneity, even in the supposed confines of folk music. It allows a character, a note, or a chord some time to be alive, to look for themselves…if I’m doing my job well, that is.”

Phelps refers to himself as a folk musician. He deems the folk music story as one continually being written, and its ultimate definition in fluid motion. “There’s still a lot of work for us musicians to do,” he considers, “and a lot more music to find. We have to keep our eyes and ears open, and keep moving forward, and continue to learn.” The culture website PopMatters, reviewing Kelly’s CD ‘Western Bell’, figured he had work to do as well, but clearly as the Phantom Monk: “When a listener resigns him or herself to intently listening to Kelly’s lone guitar, fighting back the darkness one plunk at a time, an odd sort of poetry arises: like a hero of the high plains, roaming nameless to wherever God deems his services necessary, Phelps speaks directly to your soul. If that isn’t the stuff of legends, I don’t know what is.”

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So March is coming in like a lion and this year it is going to go out as a lion too, at least in our back room. With April 1st having Dan Navarro on stage we complete another great run of performances. For Instance:

Claudia Schmidt, Friday March 9, 8:30, $12.50 — Still upward bound after 40+ years performing. “Claudia Schmidt belongs to the genre of hyperliterate songwriters, a word-monger of the first order, sometimes bursting at the boundaries of song form. In addition, she’s a firecracker of a singer, irrepressibly emotional, and a radiant, almost overwhelming performer. It’s the folksinger trifecta, and in this Schmidt is nearly in a class by herself.”

New Pioneers, Thursday, March 15, 7:00 $7.50 — our very own house band of bluegrass featuring the cream of the crop.

And on the final weekend we have one of those Carpe music festivals anchored by the aforementioned Dan Navarro and preceded by Danny Schmidt & Carrie Elkin on Thursday March 29, Jim Post with Randy Sabien on March 30 and the quirky and not to be missed Malcolm Holcombe on Saturday March 31. You simply must visit our website to find out more about all these nationally known performers.

In between this lionized collection of gifted troubadours we offer local talent such as “LOS ZOMBIES”, Karen Johnson, Mare Edstrom with Kenn Fox and the Midwest Guitar Trio and perhaps a surprise Madisonian performer on the 17th. So let Kelly Joe get us on a roll and make a show or two. – BC

Who
among you would embrace the idea of the occasional Tuesday with TED, featuring a TED talk followed by discussion?