I demand a recount. The non-attending B.B. King may have won Entertainer of the Year at last week’s W.C. Handy Awards — the definitive annual awards given by the blues industry — but for anyone who was actually at the ceremony Thursday night at The Orpheum it was pretty clear that soul-blues icon Bobby Rush was the real entertainer of the year. Rush’s roughly 20-minute set, which kicked off the second half of the show, was the night’s highlight. Ribald, funny, soulful, and flashy, Rush’s chitlin’ circuit stage show may not have been exactly dignified, but it presented blues as a living music more forcefully than any other performance at the Handys. With five “hoochie mamas” backing that azz up and a crack band featuring a brilliantly suave guitar player, Rush owned the night. They should have just canceled the rest of the awards and let him keep playing.

Unfortunately, that peak quickly devolved into the night’s low point, when Rush brought out Kentucky Headhunter guitarist Greg Martin for a deflating anticlimax to his set. No offense to Martin, but he was about a fourth as skilled and entertaining as Rush’s own house player, and to have Rush reduced to pimping for this great white savior (and trying to coax the crowd into a standing ovation that Rush himself and his great guitarist didn’t receive) was pretty much a travesty.

Outside of Rush’s set, the night belonged to Shemekia Copeland and B.B. King, who each took home the biggest awards but weren’t there to claim them, and Memphis’ younger generation of blues players. The North Mississippi Allstars won the Best New Artist Debut Award, with bassist Chris Chew accepting for the band, and International Blues Challenge winner and local club regular Richard Johnston delivered one of the night’s most memorable performances, winning over the large crowd with his one-man-band traditional blues. Other notable performances came from Corey Harris and Henry Butler, who did two songs from their great Vu-Du Menz album in a set that was slightly marred by sound problems, and Eddy “The Chief” Clearwater, who closed his brief set with the rousing Chuck Berry homage “I Wouldn’t Lay My Guitar Down.”

The night ended with Rufus Thomas and the great Ruth Brown giving the Entertainer of the Year Award, proving, as the Premier Player Awards did a couple of months ago, that Rufus Thomas plus a Memphis audience equals a standing ovation. And rightly so.

The complete list of winners: Blues Song of the Year: Rick Vito — “It’s 2 a.m.”; Blues Band of the Year: Taj Mahal & the Phantom Blues Band; Traditional Blues Album: Son Seals — Lettin’ Go; Acoustic Blues Album: Robert Lockwood Jr. — Delta Crossroads; Historical Album: Otis Spann — Last Call; Soul Male Artist of the Year: Little Milton; Comeback Blues Album: Mel Brown — Neck Bones & Caviar; Soul Blues Album: Irma Thomas — My Heart Is In Memphis; Blues Album of the Year: Shemekia Copeland — Wicked; Contemporary Male Artist: Eddy Clearwater; Traditional Female Artist: Koko Taylor; Acoustic Blues Artist: Keb’ Mo’; Blues Entertainer of the Year: B.B. King; Contemporary Blues Album: B.B. King/Eric Clapton — Riding with the King; Contemporary Female Artist: Shemekia Copeland; Soul Female Artist of the Year: Etta James; Traditional Male Artist: James Cotton; Best New Artist Debut: North Mississippi Allstars — Shake Hands With Shorty; Blues Instrumentalist Guitar: Duke Robillard; Blues Instrumentalist Harmonica: Charlie Musselwhite; Blues Instrumentalist Bass: Willie Kent; Blues Instrumentalist Drums: Chris Layton; Blues Instrumentalist Horns: Roomful Of Blues Horns; Blues Instrumentalist Keyboard: Pinetop Perkins; Blues Instrumentalist Other: Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown (fiddle).

You can e-mail Chris Herrington at herrington@memphisflyer.com.

The latest musical enterprise from Greg Cartwright, one of the driving forces behind local punk/garage-rock bands the Oblivians and the Compulsive Gamblers, The Reigning Sound have established themselves as one of the city’s finest rock bands with a recent string of wonderful club gigs. The band’s recorded debut, Break Up, Break Down (Sympathy For the Record Industry; Grade: A-), delivers on the promise of those live shows, presenting Cartwright’s new band as a more garage-rockin’ update of the Byrds. Break Up, Break Down features the chiming guitars and sweet melodies of the best mid-’60s folk-rock but adds the organ textures (Alex Greene) and rockin’, R&B-oriented rhythm section (drummer Greg Roberson and bassist Jeremy Scott) of the same period’s garage-rock scene. Cartwright then pushes this sound to another level with the smart, subtle songwriting and distinctly soulful vocals that he has brought to all of his projects. The resulting hybrid is an alternate take on what one-time Byrd Gram Parsons called Cosmic American Music.

The record is a pretty big departure for an artist best known for the Oblivians’ trash-punk clamor. Relatively sedate and extremely melodic, Break Up, Break Down boasts a Beach Boys cover (Pet Sounds‘ “Waiting For the Day”) and even ventures into country territory with a cover of the Everly Brothers’ “So Sad” and the lovely “As Long.” The latter features Papa Top’s West Coast Turnaround’s John Whittemore on steel guitar and Lucero’s Brian Venable on mandolin.

The record begins and ends very strongly but sags slightly in the middle. My faves are the two openers — “Since When” and “I Don’t Care.” The latter is a kiss-off to an ex-lover where both the lyrics and vocal phrasing have a distinctly Dylanesque feel, Cartwright spitting lyrics such as “You told me repeatedly that you had aged beyond your years/But you don’t have to scream your mantra standing so close to my ears” as Alex Greene colors the spaces in the music with great organ fills. Easily one of the best local records you’ll hear this year.

The quirky, sunny synth pop on Shelby Bryant‘s Cloud-Wow Music (Smells Like Records; Grade: A-) is bizarre and personal in a way that might conjure other pop oddballs such as Syd Barrett, Daniel Johnston, or Donovan, but the music Bryant creates on this record is really such a genre unto itself that it deserves the unique moniker Bryant has bestowed upon it. Cloud-wow music is an apt description for a collection that sounds and feels every bit as innocent and dreamy as its cover art. The solo debut from Bryant, who might be best known around town as a member of the mid-’90s new-wave band the Clears, is an acquired taste, for sure, but if you can hear it on its own terms it is really quite beautiful.

Full of swooning melodies and sly, weird lyrics, a love-song epiphany on Cloud-Wow Music takes the form of something as ineffably perfect as this moment from “The Walk” — “My pants are tight/My mind is loose/Not frightened The sky above is speaking some inane thing to me.” Bryant might be one of the few people on the planet who could sing the lyric “My mind is on high/A puff above the clouds in the sky” and have the listener absolutely convinced that it isn’t a drug reference.

Bryant will have an official release party for Cloud-Wow Music on Friday, June 15th, at Shangri-La Records. Look for more on Bryant in that week’s issue of the Flyer.

Bugging us haters with their “Orange Mound killer look,” rap collective (more than 10 MCs are credited on the record) Concrete Mound come on pretty strong on their eponymous debut (Po’ Boy; Grade: C+), but unlike early Three 6 Mafia, for instance, the group seems to be merely reporting the facts of a rough life rather than spiking their gangsta tales with calculated sensationalism. The backing tracks, which rely far too heavily on a synth sound pitched somewhere between the horror-movie-soundtrack sound of Three 6 and the laid-back funk of “classic” Dr. Dre, are pretty tepid, but the rapping and the lyrics are more accomplished. Concrete Mound’s “Hard Times” is no match for Run-DMC’s, but it’s still pretty good and contains the following Inspirational Verse: “The system is against us/But that ain’t new/They say we all act alike/But nigga that ain’t true.”

In terms of content — lyrical and vocal — this promising and occasionally powerful debut is better than the letter grade I’ve given it, but I docked it a couple notches due to poor sound quality.

Vocalist and harmonica player in the defunct local blues band the junkyardmen, Billy Gibson goes solo again with The Nearness of You (Inside Memphis; Grade: B), a record that finds him crooning and blowing through a batch of jazz and pre-rock pop standards with solid results. Gibson and his band deliver decent takes on the likes of Duke Ellington’s “In a Sentimental Mood” and Hoagy Carmichael’s title track, while Gibson steps to the mike for serviceable interpretations of songs such as “When I Fall In Love With You” and “Sweet Lorraine.” My favorite track, though, is actually the only Gibson original on the set — the bluesy, piano-driven “Darling, Please Come Home.”

Blues Is My Business (Lucy; Grade: C+), the second solo album from former John Lee Hooker sideman-turned-Mid-Southerner Paul Wood, is a by-the-numbers but well-executed blues-rock effort. Recorded locally at Sounds Unreel Studio with a host of local studio stars — Jim Spake, Scott Thompson, Dave Smith, Steve Potts, Reba Russell — Blues Is My Business features Wood’s workmanlike vocals and flashy, bar-blues guitar and takes the blues itself as subject matter on originals such as “Everything Dies But the Blues” and “The Mojo Man,” which begins with a promise the record doesn’t quite live up to: “I used to boogie with John Lee Hooker/Shook Muddy Waters’ hand/They sent me here to play the blues for you/’Cause I’m the mojo man.”

If we can believe the trendspotters, then hair-metal nostalgia is on the rise, and, judging from their new eponymous disc (RubyFlex; Grade: C+), Bad Apple seems primed to take advantage of that. More old-school arena/boogie-metal than most hard-rock bands around today, Bad Apple’s album is sort of what Saliva might sound like without the hip-hop influences, pop hooks, or major-label sheen. Songs like “Mountain” and “Star” have a bit of a Southern-rock feel, but the most memorable song is also the oddest: It’s hard to tell if the Zeppelinesque “Hippie Festival” is intended to be a joke (it’s very possible that it is), but it’s pretty funny regardless.

You can e-mail Chris Herrington at herrington@memphisflyer.com.

The Handy Awards ceremony may be Thursday, May 24th, but as far as live music is concerned, the real action might be the next night, when the Handy Festival brings a plethora of national blues names to join some of Memphis’ finest in the clubs along historic Beale Street.

Awards host and New Orleans piano man Dr. John will kick off the night’s musical offerings with a concert at Handy Park. In the clubs, Contemporary Blues Female Artist of the Year nominee Deborah Coleman will be at Rum Boogie Café for a three-night stint — Thursday through Saturday. She’ll be joined by Traditional Blues Female Artist of the Year nominee Ann Rabson on Friday and Saturday.

Coleman hits town supporting a new album, the locally recorded Livin’ on Love (produced by Memphian Jim Gaines). As a young African-American woman who not only sings the blues but is a highly regarded lead guitarist, Coleman confound modern blues stereotypes at every turn, yet she’s managed to become a major star on the contemporary blues scene.

Other notable out-of-towners Friday night include Clarksdale native and multiple Handy nominee Big Jack Johnson, whose soulful, eclectic Roots Stew was one of the best blues records I heard last year. Johnson will be performing at one of his frequent haunts, Blues City Café. Contemporary Blues Male Artist of the Year nominee Larry Garner will be at Elvis Presley’s Memphis Friday and Saturday and blue-eyed bluesman Lee Roy Parnell, who performed Dan Penn’s “Memphis, Women, and Chicken” at the Premier Player Awards earlier this year, will open for Levon Helm at B.B. King’s.

Local artists rounding out Friday night’s Beale bill are Blind Mississippi Morris and Brad Webb at the Blues Hall, Kirk Smithhart at Club 152, and Charlie Wood at King’s Palace. — Chris Herrington

Sure, you have lightning-fingered virtuosos like Kenny Wayne Shephard (wake me when he’s through noodling). You’ve got fine traditionalists like Keb Mo. You’ve got gritty journeymen like R.L. Burnside and soulful pickers like Clarence Spady. But given the fact that most contemporary blues players tend to drive their three chords down the middle of a much-traveled road, I’ve never been able to muster too much excitement for the Handy Awards. Sure, it was great seeing Ike Turner play an impromptu set at King’s Palace last year. And Bonnie Raitt showed why her reputation as a guitar monster looms large at the previous year’s all-star jam. But overall, I’d rather just go to Wild Bill’s, soak up the Hollywood All-Stars’ lurking electric blues, drink Crown Royal, and shake it till my hangover sets in. This year’s Handy week, however, provides at least one mighty fine compromise. Handy Award nominee Freddy Roulette, whose insane lap-steel guitar work has invigorated the already vigorous music of Bo Diddley, deepened the already deep sound of John Lee Hooker, and enhanced the performances of any number of Chicago’s top bluesmen will be playing at Wild Bill’s on Thursday, May 24th. He’ll be at Automatic Slim’s on Friday and opening for Lucero at the Hi-Tone on Saturday, so there will be plenty of opportunities to see him. But if I were you I’d go to Wild Bill’s. Seeing an artist of Roulette’s caliber at that tiny juke joint on Vollintine is the kind of thing you’ll remember for the rest of your life — if you remember it at all, that is. — Chris Davis

Of the overwhelming number of events this week tangentially connected to the Handy Awards, a few demand extra attention: The official closing ceremony of Handy weekend will be an all-star benefit concert for BluesAid on Saturday night at the New Daisy Theatre. The concert will begin at 7:30 p.m., and scheduled performers at press time include Sam Carr, Levon Helm, Steve Cropper, John Kay (of Steppenwolf, natch), The Kentucky Headhunters, Bobby Rush, and Buddy Miles. BluesAid is a decade-old benefit concert organized by the Helena, Arkansas, Sonny Boy Blues Society to provide health care and financial assistance to blues musicians. Moving the concert to Memphis this year, Sonny Boy Blues Society will share proceeds from the concert with the Make a Wish Foundation and the Smithsonian Rock ‘N’ Soul Museum. The Sonny Boy Blues Society also recently reclaimed control of Helena’s annual King Biscuit Blues Festival, which has been managed by a Memphis-based company for the last few years.

On Friday afternoon, from 4 to 6 at B.B. King’s Blues Club, the Blues Music Association (BMA) will host a town hall meeting on the “State of the Blues.” The BMA is a blues trade association formed in 1998. The forum will be an open discussion on the state of the industry and will be audience-driven but facilitated by several industry professionals.

Also on Friday, the New Daisy will host a free festival of blues-related documentaries by director Robert Mugge. Running from 3 to 8 p.m., Mugge will be screening his films Hellhound On My Trail and Deep Blues and will be debuting his latest work, Rhythm and Bayous, a look at music in Louisiana. There will also be a question-and-answer session with the filmmaker.

Other odds and ends: The Memphis and Shelby County Music Commission is launching a lecture series — “The Experts: A Series of Lectures, Seminars, and Symposiums.” This series is an offshoot of the commission’s Musicians’ Advisory Council. The first lecture in the series will take place on Saturday, May 26th, at the Center for Southern Folklore and will feature prominent music agent John Branca in a roundtable discussion with commission president Jerry Schilling and other industry representatives. Recently, Branca has worked with artists such as Matchbox Twenty, Blink-182, and the Backstreet Boys The music commission has also partnered with the Memphis and Shelby County Film and Television Commission and Select-O-Hits to produce a promotional CD of local music for distribution within the film industry Local musician Brad Pounders has formed a new record label, Serious Therapy. The label, which Pounders envisions as an avenue for individual musicians in bands to put out solo records, has issued its first release with a four-song, joint single that features Pounders and Vending Machine (aka Big Ass Truck’s Robby Grant). Pounders’ side contains a cover of Vending Machine’s “Huge Window Display” and his own unreleased “Surprise.” Vending Machine’s side contains a cover of Pounders’ “Circulation” and Grant’s own unreleased “I’m Just Blushing” Power-poppers Crash Into June are set to go into Easley-McCain Recording to start work on their next album, which will be produced by Neilson Hubbard For those who missed it in the paper last week, downtown rock club Last Place on Earth will close, at least temporarily, at the end of May. June’s highly anticipated Bad Brains reunion show has been canceled.

You can e-mail Chris Herrington at herrington@memphisflyer.com.

If we can believe Handy Award voters, then these five Album of the Year nominees capture the heart of the blues today:

Reservation Blues — Eddy “The Chief” Clearwater (Bullseye): The 66-year-old Clearwater is a Mississippi-born veteran of the Chicago blues scene, and most of Reservation Blues is a standard if extremely accomplished example of electric Chicago blues. Clearwater’s command of the Chicago style is captured by the slow burn of the title cut and the over-seven-minutes-long “Running Along” and the deep-grooved stomp of “Find Yourself.” In addition to being a first-rate blues songwriter — most of Reservation Blues features Clearwater’s original compositions — Clearwater has long been known for mixing Chicago blues with Chuck Berry-style rockers. On Reservation Blues, Clearwater offers up an original, “I Wouldn’t Lay My Guitar Down,” that’s an obvious Berry homage and closes the record out with a spirited cover of Berry’s “Sweet Little Rock and Roller.” Clearwater further expands the scope of this fine effort with a cover of Dale Hawkins’ rock standard “Susie Q” and a couple of social commentary songs — the self-penned “Walls of Hate” and the Song of the Year nominee “Winds of Change” — that, taken together, are a bit too heavy-handed.

Lettin’ Go — Son Seals (Telarc): Another Chicago blues veteran with Delta roots, the 58-year-old, Osceola, Arkansas, native Seals made his Telarc debut with this 14-song, 70-minute opus after many years with Alligator Records. Driven by Seals’ gruff vocals and stinging guitar leads and by some prominent horn work, Lettin’ Go showcases a rawer Chicago blues sound than that on Clearwater’s record. Seals’ power is best captured by the straightforward five-song blast that opens the record. After that, Lettin’ Go is a bit more varied: “Osceola Rock,” essentially a rewrite of “Jailhouse Rock,” is very expendable on this marathon of a record, but “Rockin’ and Rollin’ Tonight,” which has a gentle country feel, is a much more successful departure from Seals’ trademark sound.

Roots Stew — Big Jack Johnson (MC Records): A son of the Delta and former member of the blues trio the Jelly Roll Kings, the 60-year-old Johnson was introduced to many by his appearance in Robert Mugge’s 1991 documentary Deep Blues. With Roots Stew, he delivers a great but entirely individual blast of Southern juke-joint blues. Conventional room-shakers “Jump for Joy” and “Hummingbird” set up more eclectic excursions, like the mandolin-driven country blues “Cherry Tree” and a lap-steel, instrumental take on Ivory Joe Hunter’s “Since I Met You Baby.” But the songs that make Roots Stew special are “Going Too Far” and “So Long, Frank Frost.” “Going Too Far” is an instrumental medley as patriotic tribute to American song. “Baby Please Don’t Go” segues into “She’ll Be Coming Around the Mountain,” and I swear I hear “Old Time Religion” and “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” in there somewhere. The Song of the Year nominee “So Long, Frank Frost” is a loving, even hushed, tribute to Johnson’s late Jelly Roll Kings comrade.

Wicked — Shemekia Copeland (Alligator): Pegged as an inheritor of Koko Taylor’s crown as Queen of the Blues, this daughter of blues great Johnny Copeland has become a major star on the blues scene despite the fact that she’s still in her early 20s. Copeland leads this year’s Handy field with five nominations, including one for Entertainer of the Year. Wicked, her second album, is hard-driving blues that puts Copeland’s powerful vocals front and center. Song of the Year nominee “It’s 2 a.m.” features Copeland belting over a riff-heavy, almost hard-rock track. The soul ballad “Love Scene,” the country blues “Beat-up Guitar,” and the good, gritty R&B workout “Miss Hy Ciditty” show her range. But the highlight of the record might be her duet with soul pioneer Ruth Brown on “If He Moves His Lips.”

Vu-Du Menz — Corey Harris and Henry Butler (Alligator): This acoustic tour de force joins two of the brightest young stars on the blues scene: New Orleans piano man Butler and Harris, an amazingly diverse and intelligent musician perhaps best heard on his, at times stunning, 1999 album Greens From the Garden. With their guitar/piano sound and mix of originals and traditional songs, Harris and Butler evoke the bawdy feel of ’30s blues while still sounding contemporary. Harris may be unrivaled for his ability to convert a scholarly interest in blues styles and history into soulful, vibrant, fully alive music, and this set with Butler is as much a testament to that as anything else he’s done.

And the winner is: I don’t have enough experience with the Handys to accurately pick what will win, but I can sure tell you what I think should. Clearwater’s and Seals’ records are expert documents of a style that rarely excites me, though I have a slight preference for Lettin’ Go. And Wicked definitely makes the case for Copeland’s formidable talent. But Roots Stew and Vu-Du Menz were two of my favorite records of 2000 — no blues qualifier needed. So I’ll be pretty happy to see either Big Jack or Harris/Butler take home the prize Thursday night. But I’ll be rooting for Vu-Du Menz. n

You can e-mail Chris Herrington at herrington@memphisflyer.com.

A Selective Schedule Of

Handy Weekend Events

Thursday, May 24th

The 22nd Annual W.C. Handy Awards

7:30-10:30 p.m.

The Orpheum

Scheduled performers include: Dr. John, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, Taj Mahal, Corey Harris and Henry Butler, Eddy “The Chief” Clearwater, and Big Jack Johnson.

Friday, May 25th

Blues on Film: The Films of Robert Mugge

3-8 p.m.

The New Daisy Theatre

Includes the debut of Mugge’s latest film, Rhythm and Bayous.

Blues Symposium: “Setting the Standards: W.C. Handy, Louis Armstrong, and Bessie Smith”

2:15-3:15 p.m.

Blues City Café

“The State of the Blues” — A Blues Music Association Town Hall Meeting

4-6 p.m.

B.B. King’s Blues Club

Handy Awards Festival

Starts at 8 p.m.

Beale Street

Blues performers at Beale clubs.

Saturday, May 26th

BluesAid Hall of Fame Ceremony

Noon-3 p.m.

The Memphis Rock ‘N’ Soul Museum

The Children’s Blues Festival

Noon-5:30 p.m.

Handy Park

BluesAid Benefit Concert

Starts at 7:30 p.m.

The New Daisy Theatre

All-star concert benefiting a blues musicians’ assistance fund.

Charlie Robison picked up a bit of publicity a couple of years ago when he married the Dixie Chicks’ Emily Erwin. Musically Robison and his wife’s band are quite different, but they share at least one thing: The Dixie Chicks are one of the best things going in mainstream country and Robison is one of the finest artists on the fringes of the scene. Robison isn’t an alt-country latecomer, just a solid Texas-based singer-songwriter whose rootsy sound contains both rock and honky-tonk influences.

Robison will hit the Hi-Tone Café on Tuesday, May 22nd, in support of his fine new album, Step Right Up, a record that includes an NRBQ cover (“I Want You Bad”), a duet with Dixie Chicks lead singer Natalie Mains (“The Wedding Song”), a Springsteenian narrative (“Desperate Times”), an Irish jig (“John O’Reilly”), and a quirky Tex-Mex stomp (“One In a Million”), and it still manages to sound of one piece.

— Chris Herrington

Primo picker Del McCourey brings his unique brand of blue(ish)grass to the Hi-Tone Café on Thursday, May 17th, so rest your liver and get ready to stumble home from that little cosmopolitan roadhouse with one eye closed. Folks who only know McCourey from his work with Steve Earle are in for a real treat. Nothing against Earle, he’s a mighty fine songwriter to be sure, but this kind of music goes down much smoother once all traces of self-righteousness have been removed.

And now for the rock. While I can’t exactly heap praise on The Internationals for either sterling musicianship or stunning originality, they get six thumbs up for attitude. And when you are in the right mood, that’s all that matters. The band’s meathead posturing — which strikes a balance between the sublime David Johansen and the ridiculous Vinnie Barbarino — is hilariously idiotic, and their over-the-top stage banter is ludicrously macho and egomaniacal. An I’Nats show is like a cock-strutting gutter-punk answer to This is Spinal Tap, but when they shut up and play they can really deliver the brain-damaged goods. And in case there is any confusion, I mean all of this as a compliment. Catch them at the Last Place on Earth on Saturday, May 19th, with two unfortunately named bands — Swollen Sky and Hellfish. — Chris Davis

Belated thoughts on the Beale Street Music Fest: Outside of some personal musical high points, the most memorable moments of the fest were the exciting performances given by locals-gone-national The North Mississippi Allstars, Saliva, and Three 6 Mafia — and the huge audiences who came to see them. The massive crowds who showed up at the Budweiser Stage on Friday and Saturday for Saliva and Three 6 Mafia, respectively, were the largest Memphis crowds to ever see those groups. And the possibly larger audience who took in the Allstars performance Friday at the AutoZone Stage may well have been bigger than the crowd they played to at the Coliseum last year.

All three bands were in fine form. Saliva put on a show — the kind of performance that might have occasionally elicited Spinal Tap giggles from a more jaded crowd, but the band’s fans ate it up. Lead singer Josey Scott stalked the stage in a flashy white suit while the band delivered energetic renditions of their hit “Your Disease” and hit-to-be “Click, Click, Boom.” Some of Scott’s stage patter (“Memphis, I want to thank you for making me a superstar!” introducing the song “Superstar”) was identical to what he said at the band’s New Daisy showcase earlier this year. The band may actually be a little too professional. But seeing the lackluster performances given at the festival by other lab-tested local hard-rock climbers — Dust For Life and Breaking Point (formerly Broken) — confirms just how good Saliva is at what they do. I only wish the atmosphere in the crowd had been more inviting. But if your idea of good company is frat boys attempting to slam-dance and encouraging women to show their tits, then it was utopia.

Three 6’s show was really great and pretty lame at the same time. The crowd was huge and hyped and the group (along with an entourage pushing triple digits) was a blur of energy. It was an exciting homecoming for Memphis’ most successful musical act, and most of the group’s hits sounded great on the big sound system. But as a live musical performance it was still mostly an amped-up listening party. The group seemed pretty clearly to be rapping over the actual records — vocals and all. This is not unusual in live hip hop and I should say that I don’t think the practice in any way takes away from the medium’s artistic vitality. But as live performance, it’s still pretty chintzy. The point was driven home rather hilariously when the group did several Project Pat songs despite the fact that Pat wasn’t even on stage.

Personal weekend highlights included: hearing the North Mississippi Allstars’ version of “Casey Jones” fade away and Keith Sykes‘ version of “Broke Down Engine” come in while walking between the two performances; seeing Ike Turner do “Rocket 88”; hearing how good bar-bands Lucero and The Pawtuckets sounded on the big stage; Ben Harper‘s ferocious set-opening cover of Jimi Hendrix’s “Manic Depression”; Alvin Youngblood Hart bringing Jackie Johnson and Susan Marshall on stage for a cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Sway”; Bob Dylan playing two of the greatest songs ever written — “Desolation Row” and “Tangled Up In Blue”; closing out the festival with the inspirational second half of Sonic Youth‘s set, including a blistering version of “Kool Thing” that was the single most exciting moment all weekend.

A couple of final notes: As everyone knows at this point, the festival sold out all three days. A record 165,000 attendees. People who really like outdoor festivals (and I’m not sure I fall into that category) probably had a blast, but I talked to a lot of serious music-lovers who thought it was too crowded this year to enjoy the music. I know that the crowding at the Cingular Stage for the Ben Harper and Willie Nelson sets was particularly unbearable. Perhaps Memphis In May should reconsider what constitutes a sellout.

You can e-mail Chris Herrington at herrington@memphisflyer.com.

“I felt sort of like Dirk Diggler,” Cory Branan jokes about accepting the Phillips Award for Best Newcomer at this year’s Premier Player Awards.

Branan’s emergence on the local music front may not have been as swift and scene-changing as that Boogie Nights protagonist’s rise through the film’s ’70s porn milieu, but it has been a very real occurrence nonetheless. Not that Branan himself thought the award was that big of a deal.

“My mom loved it,” Branan says about the award. “It was cool, but I know what it is. Not that many people know me, but not that many people vote, and I happen to know enough people in NARAS. I got to play The Pyramid, but I still got the feeling that maybe 10 people in the crowd knew who I was. But I have other things that’ll make me happy. My CD in a jukebox. That’ll make me happy.”

Well, if the city’s jukebox operators have much of a clue, Branan may be on the verge of fulfilling at least that dream. This week Branan will celebrate the local release of his startlingly assured debut album, The Hell You Say — the best record yet from the local label MADJACK.

Cory Branan is a 26-year-old singer-songwriter from Southaven who started playing on his own four or five years ago — singing covers at the Daily Planet — and didn’t start writing original songs until a couple of years ago, around the time that he began to discover the songwriters that now serve as his prime influences.

“Not long after I first started putting my own songs together, someone gave me a John Prine record,” Branan says. “It wasn’t pretentious. It was pretty good ol’ boy but still poetry — and conversational. And then Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen. I pretty much discovered them all in a few-months stretch.”

Like those songwriters and others Branan speaks warmly of — Randy Newman, Freedy Johnston — Branan’s songs are literary but colloquial, suffused with compassion, humor, and an intentional edge that rejects those elements that can give the term singer-songwriter a bad reputation — the confessional solipsism, the sentimental poesy, the folkie puritanism.

The Hell You Say is a glorious showcase for Branan’s inspired wordplay, with the troublesome girls who populate the album lavished with the most vivid imagery. The Hell You Say introduces us to women who “come around at midnight like a Sunday afternoon/with a purpose and a manner like a needle and a spoon.” Who are “a stained-glass window on a back-door screen.” Women with “eyes as black as a police boot with a $3.50 shine” who inspire memories that stick like shivs.

The verbal facility displayed on The Hell You Say is no surprise — anyone who’s seen Branan perform live lately knows his way with words — but the musicality of the album is a bit of a shock. Produced by Branan and Pawtuckets guitarist Kevin Cubbins, The Hell You Say is remarkably as much a musical triumph as a verbal one, with Branan’s own sharp guitar work leading the way.

The album was recorded half at Posey Hedges’ Memphis Soundworks (the full-band tracks) and half at Jeff Powell’s Humongous Studios (the mostly acoustic cuts) and has the semi-intentional side-effect of showcasing not only Branan but much of the city’s roots-rock scene. The album features bountiful assistance from members of Lucero, the River Bluff Clan, and, most crucially, the Pawtuckets. Pawtuckets bassist Mark Stuart is a mainstay. The River Bluff Clan’s Richard Ford punctuates “Pale Moon On Paper Town” with perfect steel guitar. Other guests make essential contributions: Eric Lewis gives “Troublesome Girl” a Western feel with lovely, whimsical Spanish guitar. Kim Richardson adds harmony vocals to “Crackerjack Heart,” “Love Song 8,” and “Closer.”

The group-effort feel of the record is most prominent on the sinner’s prayer “Wayward and Down,” a sort of local roots-rock “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” where Branan swaps verses with the River Bluff Clan’s Jimmy Davis, Lucero’s Ben Nichols, and the Pawtuckets’ Andy Grooms and enlists a group chorus that includes local singers Nancy Apple, Scott Sudbury, and Wayne LeeLoy.

But the real musical triumph of The Hell You Say is in the diverse, imaginative scenarios Cubbins and Branan concoct to put across Branan’s songs.

The album opens with its sure shot — the rousing, word-drunk “Miss Ferguson.” A catchy blast of heartland rock with sneaky-smart lyrics (“The angle of her cheek is the math of persuasion”), “Miss Ferguson” is like a great John Mellencamp single as rewritten by John Prine. Organ and percussion come blaring out of the opening verse while Branan’s own deft guitar carries the melody and the song piles up sly come-ons (“Ain’t got no Purple Heart/no blue ribbons/blow out them candles and I’ll show you where I’ve been”), dumb-fun sha-la-la-las, and antsy, overactive vocals.

“Crush” follows as an unintentional — though perhaps subconscious — update of Big Star’s “Thirteen,” a song Branan has covered live. “Crush” occurs three years later, after the hormones have really kicked in, resulting in a love letter from a “16-year-old Hitler with a troubled, lovesick mind.” The song erupts in the middle with a wild, unexpected, and deeply funny “surprise party” of mandolin, banjo, kazoo, stray voices, and barking dogs.

The spare “Spoke Too Soon” is driven not so much by words as by a drum beat so unwavering it sounds looped and a guitar line inspired by indie bands like Yo la Tengo and Ida. The high point of the song is a drum break recorded in such a way that it sounds like it exists outside the world of the song, thus carrying a different emotional resonance. It sounds like an echo of the past — a blast of wistfulness and regret that works brilliantly with the song’s evocative and mysterious lyrics.

On “Green Street Lullaby (Dark Sad Song),” the false reassurance of “There’s still time/you’re still young/and there’s always tomorrow” is greeted with a feedback-laden rebuke. The song is an album centerpiece, an ode to a Memphis where “Mosquitos hum like window units/but you gotta move if you want a breeze.”

“In ‘Dark Sad Song,’ I was trying to be really specific about what it is about Memphis that’s different,” Branan says. “The thing about Memphis is that I could see myself relaxing and becoming a drunk and settling in. It’s a real laid-back comfortable town. The laid-backness is one of the town’s charms, but if you’re not self-starting it’s real easy to fall into a rut.”

That song rhymes with “Pale Moon On Paper Town,” which invokes the same dark, sad song by asking, “Am I the only one who hears that sound?” and contains the observation “It’s never a good sign/when the whole state line is outlined in chalk.”

But the heart of this honestly extraordinary debut is its delicate, prickly love songs: “Tame,” which juxtaposes “40 days and 40 nights of hard-candy snow” with “The center of the girl I love is the 23rd Psalm”; the hushed “Crackerjack Heart,” a signature tune at once elegant and playful; the harsh but beautiful “Love Song 8.”

Branan will unleash this album on Sunday, May 20th, with an afternoon performance at Shangri-La Records and an official release party at the Hi-Tone Café. It’s good enough to make him a star, at least on the semipopular level where this kind of music now operates. But Branan has no illusions about that.

“Take my hero, John Prine,” Branan says. “If you ask 10 people who John Prine is, maybe two or three will know. And yet, if I could have just a tiny fraction of the career he’s had I’d be very happy.”

You can e-mail Chris Herrington at herrington@memphisflyer.com.

Cory Branan

record release party

The Hi-Tone Café

Sunday, May 20th