Riffs, Rants & Rumors: John Popper Travels Beyond The Blues
posted in: Music News • Rock
Blues Traveler frontman John Popper has just released his first proper solo album in a dozen years, John Popper & The Duskray Troubadours, and there’s a whole subculture of people who already know far more about that particular topic than they could learn here. This article isn’t for them. It’s for those who blithely turn up their nose at all things Blues Traveler-related because they deem them tainted by the “jam band” tag. First of all, there’s about as much jamming happening on these tracks as there is on any random Ramones album, but before we even get that far along, let’s get a couple of other things straight.
For one, those with doubts about the relative cred of the scene that grew up in late-’80s New York City, centered on the likes of Blues Traveler, Spin Doctors, God Street Wine, Milo Z and Jono Manson, should get their historical perspective corrected. In between the punk and new wave of a decade earlier and the garagey post-post-punk that emerged at the turn of the millennium, Popper and his pals represented New York’s only real homegrown rock movement to make it to the mainstream. And it happened organically, groundswell-style. Your intrepid Riffer, Ranter and Rumor-
monger, in fact, was a young aspirant banging around the city’s clubs at the time, and he can recall, for instance, the crowd of whirling, twirling young neo-hippie girls who would fill MacDougal Street’s usually sedate Speakeasy whenever the Spin Doctors took the stage. He also distinctly remembers the way the tiny back room of a Chinese restaurant-by-day/rock-club-by-night in the then-dicey Port Authority area suddenly, almost magically became rush-hour-subway packed when four big, biker-looking dudes fronted by a chromatic-harp-blower unceremoniously took the stage.
These were the days before those bands had even begun releasing albums of course, much less climbing to the top of the pop charts, as they would do in the ’90s. Between then and now, a new generation of riff-happy types like the North Mississippi All-Stars have taken prominence, and the guys who kicked around the Northeast, playing anywhere and everywhere and building their audience the old-fashioned way, have gone in different directions. The frontmen for both the Spin Doctors and Blues Traveler, Chris Barron and John Popper, respectively, have emerged as solo singer-songwriters. Popper’s very first venture outside the Blues Traveler fold came in 1999 with the album Zygote, and while he’s dabbled with various side projects in the interim, John Popper & The Duskray Troubadours marks his first real solo statement since then.
To be frank, fans who found themselves enthralled by Blues Traveler’s extended instrumental excursions and hard-riffing, blues-rocking tunes may not have a very firm footing upon entering the world of The Duskray Troubadours. Ultimately, it’s an Americana-tinged outing full of folk touches, precisely placed guitar twang and understated, thoughtfully-crafted tunes that are more about capturing a moment than letting the band get its rocks off. Bringing things full circle, Popper enlisted his old New York pal Jono Manson to handle guitar and production duties. Manson started out in the early ’80s as a co-founder of the seminal roots-rocking band Joey Miserable & The Worms, who never broke through to the big time but had a profound effect on the New York music scene for years to come. These days, Manson is a globe-trotting artist who takes his singing, songwriting and production talents all over the world, but when he got the call to helm his old pal Popper’s most intimate outing ever, how could he refuse?
“On this album, melody is what drove everything,” says Popper, confirming that his motivations for the Duskray Troubadours project are not necessarily the same as the passions that drove him with his longtime band. If you think you’ve got Popper pegged, you’d better double-check yourself by looking in on his latest sonic statement, lest you miss out on something you weren’t expecting.