Elise

In the years 2010-2012 I spent a lot of time trying to learn to play Robert Johnson songs. I remember borrowing a friend’s CD of his complete works in the late 1990s when I was in high school, trying to understand why he was considered king of the blues. I listened but I could not get past the old scratchy production of the recordings, and so I was not yet ready to really comprehend the genius of his playing and singing. I returned the CD to my friend after a few days without much comment or excitement.

Decades later, technology evolved to help clean up the recordings (which were undoubtedly coming from pressed records and not the original masters). The deep depression I was experiencing for most of 2011 led me to fall into a period where I listened to almost nothing but blues, and with the newer, cleaner sounding versions of Robert Johnson’s output available to stream, I listened and obsessively learned.

Elise was written in the style of a Robert Johnson blues like “Kind Hearted Woman”, and the name came from a woman named Shawn Elise that I had met. I haven’t played this one live much, but here’s an audio recording of me playing it with Martín Celis on drums in 2013: Elise w/Martín Celis.

Here’s a video of me playing in the house where we recorded all of Your Crooked Part and Undress My Mind in Jefferson, Ga: Elise at the Pound Pad. Video shot by the mastermind engineer and metalsmith himself, Will Manning.