{"id":5150,"date":"2014-01-21T05:30:07","date_gmt":"2014-01-21T10:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=5150"},"modified":"2014-01-21T05:30:07","modified_gmt":"2014-01-21T10:30:07","slug":"leo-bud-welch-a-long-journey-part-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2014\/01\/21\/leo-bud-welch-a-long-journey-part-two\/","title":{"rendered":"Leo “Bud” Welch: A Long Journey, Part Two"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One<\/a>…<\/em><\/p>\n

And it is about that good music that I speak \u2013 briefly \u2013 with Mr. Leo \u201cBud\u201d Welch<\/strong>. He has made the two-plus hour trip north to his manager’s office on Memphis’ north side specifically so that he can take my call. \u201cI’m not Mr. Welch; I’m about thirty-one years his junior,\u201d says Welch, using a line I strongly suspect he’s employed countless times in his 81 years. \u201cCall me Leo, Bud…whatever.\u201d<\/p>\n

I ask him about the musicians accompanying him on Sabougla Voices<\/em>. \u201cThat’s Jimbo Mathus<\/strong><\/a> backin’ me up\u201d on some tracks, he says, though Welch plays guitar throughout the album. Mostly he’s on electric, but occasionally \u2013 as on \u201cMother Loves Her Children\u201d and \u201cA Long Journey\u201d \u2013 it’s just Leo and drummer Andrew Bryant<\/strong>. Perhaps foolishly, I ask him what kind of guitar he plays on the album. \u201cMostly electric. But on the solo songs, I got a country guitar. You know: with a hole in the middle, and the sound comes out of that hole.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/center>Surprisingly \u2013 and perhaps counterintuitively for an album of this style \u2013 Sabougla Voices<\/em> is not one of those old-fashioned, \u201ceverybody lays down their parts together at once\u201d kinds of records. \u201cI did my part of it first,\u201d Welch explains, \u201cAnd then they [producer Bruce Watson<\/strong> et. al.<\/em>] put it together.\u201d But the organic results delightfully belie that modern approach. And asked to explain his mixing of gospel and traditional blues, he says only, \u201cThat’s how I do it. That’s how I do my music. I don’t know what you<\/em> call it; I call it praising His name.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leo Welch’s approach bears some similarities to the pioneering work of Sister Rosetta Tharpe<\/strong>; her synthesis of blues and gospel \u2013 not to mention her electric guitar work \u2013 was pioneering and forward-looking. Welch admits a fondness for Tharpe’s work, and the song he cites \u2013 a late 1940s cover of Mahalia Jackson<\/strong>‘s \u201cMove On Up a Little Higher\u201d \u2013 displays that hybrid gospel\/blues sound.<\/p>\n

Since Welch waited eighty-plus years to become an overnight sensation (He was the subject of a profile on NPR<\/a> earlier this month), I ask if the songs on Sabougla Voices<\/em> are tunes he’s carried with him for ages. Yes and no, he explains. \u201cSome of them have been mine for two, three years. One of ’em \u2013 ‘Praying Time’ \u2013 has been mine since Nineteen and Ninety-nine.\u201d He sums up his overall approach by citing the track \u201cHis Holy Name.\u201d \u201cI keep on singing His holy name,\u201d Bud Welch says, \u201cso my singing won’t be in vain.\u201d<\/p>\n

Welch says he’s been performing since 1945, and he tells me he has \u201celeven gigs\u201d lined up in Minnesota, followed by a tour of Europe and the UK. This week (January 23) he’ll perform in Memphis, and he has dates scheduled in Mississippi and in Nashville into February. Many more concert dates are in the planning stages.<\/p>\n

Follow \u201cthe_musoscribe\u201d on \"\" Twitter<\/a> and get notified
\nwhen new features, reviews and essays are published.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One… And it is about that good music that I speak \u2013 briefly \u2013 with Mr. Leo \u201cBud\u201d Welch. He has made the two-plus hour trip north […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,35,41,49],"tags":[306,1151,1307],"class_list":["post-5150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blues","category-gospel","category-interview","category-new-release","tag-big-legal-mess","tag-jimbo-mathus","tag-leo-bud-welch","cat-9-id","cat-35-id","cat-41-id","cat-49-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5150\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}