Review: Jake Blount Invokes Trickster Gods and Resurrects Forgotten Musical Heroes on 'Spider Tales'

For most people, the banjo conjures up one of two images. For some, it's Roy Clark, pickin' and a grinnin' on Hee Haw. For others, it's a caricature of Appalachian musicians, usually old, often on a porch, and always white. But a little over a decade ago, The Carolina Chocolate Drops arrived to remind roots music fans that the banjo was originally an African instrument, brought to America by slaves. Since that time, there have been other artists who have followed in their footsteps, mining the deep and often forgotten history of black folk music. But few have followed in the Chocolate Drops' footsteps as successfully as Jake Blount. Whether with his duo Tui, who released one of our favorite albums of 2019 or as a solo artist, as with his forthcoming Spider Tales, releasing May 29 on indie label Free Dirt Records.

What sets Blount apart from many of his peers isn't the virtuosity of his playing (although you'll find it in spades) or his soulful voice that combines blues with traditional old-time “high and lonesome” (again, quite successfully), but in his sheer dedication to the scholarship of his work. Spider Tales represents as deep a dive into the history of black folk music as you'll find anywhere. Not only does it draw from well-known black artists like Leadbelly, but also from white artists like Tommy Jarrell, with notations in the album's extensive liner notes on the connections to black string music.

Even the album's title, Spider Tales, tells a story. It references the Akan trickster god Anansi, who takes the form of a spider to outwit larger and more powerful creatures. Blount takes inspiration from Anansi, and especially the oral tradition of slaves who brought the trickster to America, in the selection of his songs. While many of the tunes are wrapped in the upbeat fiddle and banjo instrumentals of Appalachia, lyrically the run from dark to downright apocalyptic.

Take the rolling “Mad Mama's Blues”, which begins “Wanna set the world on fire, that is my mad desire. Why I'm a devil in disguise. I've got murder in my eyes.” Or the end times spiritual, so old not even Blount's extensive research could find an original source, “The Angels Done Bowed Down.” Even the smallest of creatures, a bit like a spider, get their revenge on “Boll Weevil”, the Tommy Jarrell song, originally learned from an old black woman at a festival but later completely credited to Jarrell, with the woman's name lost to time.

For an album so focused on the past, Spider Tales finds sometimes surprising connections to the present. One of the small, but rapidly growing, community of queer traditional folk musicians, Blount has done extensive work with LGBT youth and found their stories creeping into the old narratives. This is most evident in Blount's heartbreaking rendition of Leadbelly's “Where Did You Sleep Last Night.” It's a song that's been performed, either by that title or “In the Pines” by everyone from Bill Monroe to Nirvana, with the narrative flowing from a cheating wife fleeing a murder to a raped woman fleeing her captors. But in Blount's version, “where did you sleep last night?” reminded him of the young people he worked with who would suddenly drop off the map, rendered homeless by families who couldn't accept them. In that light, the lyrics “in the pines, in the pines, where the sun don't ever shine. I'd shiver the whole night through” take on an even darker tone.

Whether you're interested in learning more about the history of black string band music or just want an album of old, and sometimes long forgotten, songs performed expertly (and helped greatly by the amazing fiddle work of album guest Tatiana Hargreaves), Spider Tales is an album that should be on your radar. Blount is talented enough to be taken at face value and deep enough to deliver new knowledge with each subsequent listen.