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Written in fRoots issue 189, 1999
 

KNUT REIERSRUD
Soul Of A Man
Kirkelig Kulturverksted FXCD 194 (1998)

Knut Reiersrud’s work as a session musician runs right through the classiest present-day Norwegian music of most genres, and his solo albums combine his perfectly judged slide, huge soaring acoustic and electric tone and loping slow Chicago-style grooves with deeply perceptive eclecticism.
      His first headlining recording was made in Chicago with Sunnyland Slim and others, then back home he collaborated with hip church organist Iver Kleive in Blå Koral. For his first real solo album, 1993’s hugely satisfying Tramp, he brought in such as the Five Blind Boys of Alabama, Iver Kleive, kora player Alagi M’Bye and Ifang Bondi’s riti-player Juldeh Camara linking Africa, the blues and hardingfele tunes with the sound of footstamp on wooden floor in a luminous, airy production. Klapp, splashier and more dense-sounding, continued the process in 1995.
      For Soul of a Man the emphasis is largely on his blues roots, and the rolling rhythms have the thickness of Klapp but even more emphatically defined and spacious, in songs co-written with Jeff Wassermann and items by Curtis Mayfield, Dr.John and Cole Porter. Reiersrud here plays a range of guitars including electric, steel, resophonic, Hawaiian and baritone, over bass and drums from regulars Audun Erlien and Paolo Vinaccia, with Bugge Wesseltoft’s organ and more including sampled snatches of Howlin’ Wolf and Albert King, both key references in Reiersrud’s style. His vocals do the job, though it’s probably fair to say he’s more of a guitarist than a singer.
      He’s equally impressive live, too, as would be attested by the audience at his magnificent Stockholm Womex gig, in which he was accompanied by a considerably non-standard blues line-up of an Iranian santur player, Hans Fredrik Jacobsen on flutes and percussionist Terje Isungset.


© 1999 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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