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Bruce
Piephoff: Bright Leaf Blues
If having 24 songs on his 13th release didnt carry enough weight, Bruce Piephoff maintains that Bright Leaf Blues is the album where the words and music are doing the heavy lifting. Indeed, these two dozen soon-to-be classics are loaded with solid singer-songwriting taken straight from the heyday of American folk. As Piephoff admits in the tongue-in-cheek Wind from Newport News: I woke up with a Woody Guthrie song in my head. Piephoff readily admits that Guthrie along with Bob Dylan and the finger-picking style of Elizabeth Cotton are the folk heavies he refers to when writing and playing his blues-infused tunes night in and night out in his hometown of Greensboro, N.C. Nineteen of the songs on Blues are recorded exactly as performed: a solo Piephoff strumming his 1944 Gibson J-45 and taking drags off his harmonica. Guitar and harmonica is an old-car combination when it comes to American folk but Piephoffs image-laced lyrics make his melodies gleam. A graduate of UNC-Greensboros Masters program in creative writing, Piephoff spends his few off-hours writing poetry, and even released a book of original pieces in 1995. This pastime rubs off on his full-time job of year-round teaching, writing and performing. On Bright Leaf Blues, his carefully woven, tongue-pleasing verses follow the lead of artists like Bruce Springsteen in highlighting Americas low places: I got welfare dollars, dont you worry bout me, he croons on Stop Gap, the ballad of Johnny, a trailer-bound and acne-plagued lad who suckles Mountain Dews while cruising in his black Trans Am. American history lessons are given in tracks like Big Foot in the Door, the tale of the first black baseball player on the St. Louis Cardinals, and Riding the Stream, a look at migrant workers on the East Coast. The outstanding riffs on Old Crow make for a stand-out song of old friends at old places, drinking and recounting memories the epitomic folk tale. Piephoff fits into this scene with ease. His songs are the old friends of American folk, retelling the old stories in new ways but sticking to the same formula: good songs, good subjects and a really good time.
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