Cover photo © 2024 Nate Kieser

An obsession with the sounds of delta blues guitar gripped Catfish Keith for as early as he can remember. The prolific bluesman, who has released 22 solo albums, started playing guitar at 11 years old.

Catfish said that when he first heard fingerstyle guitar, he thought there were two or three guitars playing at the same time. Realizing he could play bass parts with his thumb and melody with his other fingers was a revelation.

“I was creating a magic thing because it made the guitar like a whole band, a whole orchestra,” Catfish said. “I just played all the time. This was an obsession through my teenage years, and by the time I was 16 I started doing gigs.”

In college, Catfish dived further into the blues by checking out records from the public library. Among the influential artists were Blind Blake, Memphis Minnie, Furry Louis, Fred McDowell, and Mance Lipscomb. Catfish said he was attracted to the individual sounds of country blues much more than the 12 bar electric blues.

While steeped in the Delta tradition, Catfish’s own sound stands out as singularly unique. Among the devices he employs, Catfish often tunes his guitar lower to allow powerful string bends, uses various harmonic guitar techniques rarely used within the blues, and plays with the snapping of strings for rhythmic effect. He also incorporates Caribbean influences into some of his work, a remnant of the time he spent living on a sailboat in the Virgin Islands.

Catfish, only having just graduated high school, and never having seen the ocean, took a “wild leap of faith” to join a friend from Cedar Rapids that had a boat in the Virgin Islands. As he worked as a crew member on the sailboat, in the early 1980s, Catfish said the experiences opened him up to the different ways of the world, including different styles of music.

It was also during this time that his vision of being a musician solidified.

“I was living on the ocean, and just bopping around on my own and I was playing little gigs in these outdoor cafes and really just concentrating on learning music,” Catfish said. “Those sounds of Island music there, they just added another deep and improvisational, very syncopated, jazzy sound to my playing.”

Top among influences at the time was Joseph Spence, from the Bahamas, who completely rebooted the way he approached playing guitar.

Catfish described his songwriting process as very natural, where songs simply pop up in his mind. For instance, the first track on his latest album Wild Ox Moan, “Don’t Know Right From Wrong”, emerged after a period in which he was listening to a lot of Frank Stokes. As Frank Stokes couldn’t get out of his head, Catfish wrote the song one morning.

“It’s never really premeditated, but it’s always spurred on by listening to a lot of my heroes. It’s usually something that I just can’t get out of my head. So I just go ahead and write that song,” Catfish said. “The songs come fully formed. They’ll have the words and the music, and then I’ll write down the lyrics. And usually I’ll just put it aside and come back to it later. And then, craft the song into something that sounds like the music that I had in my head originally. So it’s kind of a gift from the sky.”

Even given this gift, Catfish said that he does not consider himself a songwriter, but more a “channel-er of music.”

“When I write my songs, they all seem to have a timeless quality. So it could have been something, you know, that Johnny Shines, or Frank Stokes might have written themselves,” Catfish said. “So it really comes out of that whole tradition of (Delta) songs.”

Discussing the blues tradition lyrically, Catfish said that at their essence, blues songs are love songs.

In recent years Catfish’s music has garnered public acclaim and recognition. Catfish won the Blues Blast Music Award for Best Acoustic Blues album in 2019, 2021, and 2022. And, for Best Acoustic Blues Guitarist in 2022. He has been considered for Grammy nominations 17 times. In 2008, he was inducted into the Iowa Blues Hall of Fame.

Catfish said he appreciated the Blues Blast awards because they are a reflection of the voice of the people.

“It meant that the fans were listening, and enjoy the music. And I think that’s all any of us really want, is to know that we’re being heard, and that the songs are getting out to the universe,” Catfish said. “So it’s a jaw dropping surprise if I actually win them. It just makes you feel like maybe you’re on the right track with your music.”

In terms of his dreams as a young cat, Catfish wanted to pursue his own sound deeply inspired and resonant with the sounds of the Delta.

“My dream was always to achieve my own sound inspired by great people like Fred McDowell and Mississippi John Hurt, Skip James. A lot of my inspiration comes from those blues singers that were first recorded in the 1920s and ‘30s. It all started with Blind Lemon Jefferson. Jefferson was the first big blues star, back in the 1920s. And his music sort of opened the door to the musicians at the time to make their own style. So this is going way back one hundred years.”

The foundation of Catfish’s music remained in the individual country blues sound, which he said was his dream. In some ways, Catfish said, playing as a blues musician fulfills the American dream.

“To be able to, you know, tour the world and put out albums and have people enjoy the music. That’s realizing the dream right there,” Catfish said.

Noting several waves of blues revivals including in the 1960s and ‘70s, and again in the 1990s, and more recently, Catfish extolled the resilience of the genre.

The blues derives part of its power from the historic time and place it comes from, according to Catfish. The guitarist said, however, it is difficult to predict if it will still be popular a hundred years down the line.

“It’s powerful music and evokes memories and feelings. Just the life-force having grown up here in the USA. I’m excited that we can keep going. A hundred more years, it’s hard to know,” Catfish said. “There’s a lot, a lot to distract people. But it’s the essence of being a human being to sing and play. And that music (blues) is the most honest and elemental of our American culture. And I really hope that can continue.”

With a recording career starting in 1984, Catfish witnessed multiple technological changes within the music industry. When he, along with his wife Penny Cahill, launched Fish Tail Records, an independent label, in 1990, they released his second album “Pepper in My Shoe!” as a cassette and CD.

Streaming eventually took hold, but Catfish professed a love for tangible music like CDs and particularly records.Wild Ox Moan is the 8th album the label will release also in vinyl format.

“I do love the big, colorful vinyl record, you really have something to hold on to. And I’m glad people have revived that. Who knows what they’ll come up with next but I’m glad people are hanging on to the physical product because it gives it more of a permanence and makes it the perfect souvenir of your time with the artist.”

According to Catfish, the couple formed Fish Tail to have total control of every aspect of the records they put out. After Cahill got burned out of a job as a psychiatric social worker doing schizophrenia research at the University of Iowa, she decided to pursue the label full time with Catfish. Cahill, who tours with Catfish around the world, acts as his manager, sound engineer, and the president of Fish Tail Records.

A guitarist herself, Penny occasionally joins Catfish onstage for duets with a repertoire that leans more into old-time country and folk music traditions.

Catfish’s unique style is over 50 years in the making. Early on, he gravitated towards ways of playing harmonics, a technique used in several other genres, most notably in jazz.

“Lenny Breau was a jazz guitar player. And he would play ballads, do whole choruses of these cascading harmonics that were amazing to hear. And so those uses of harmonics go through a lot of different genres, founders and styles of guitar, but hadn’t really been heard that much in solo acoustic blues style guitar playing. So I added that flavor.”

Catfish employs harp harmonics, his unique way of hitting the string, a harmonic, and then bending it, which gives the notes a vocal quality and expands the voice of the guitar.

Through listening to his heroes, Catfish said he learned he liked lower tunings, which made the strings physically looser on the guitar. A few developments followed this realization. He searched for lower voices on guitars, including 12 strings.

“One was tuning my acoustic guitar a whole step low. And so when I want to do those great big bends, it’s actually possible to do that. And then on the open-tuned National guitars, I ended up getting into baritone instruments. So it’s a longer scale guitar. But it’s lower, so I tuned that baritone to B flat, which is a lot lower than regular guitar standard tuning. Usually, when people play on a National, in open D or open G tuning, taking those same tuning configurations down to B flat and E flat, it gave a real satisfying lower tone that I was always searching for on the guitar.”

Catfish also became attracted to baritone guitars like the old Stella 12 strings that Blind Willie McTell and Barbecue Bob played in the 1920s.

In terms of his own playing, when he was younger he played faster and sang slightly higher. Catfish said his songs have reached a certain maturity and he feels he is a better singer and that there is more subtlety in his playing.

Throughout his career Catfish dedicated himself to covering obscure artists and lesser known tracks, in a search for “hidden gems.”

Old scratchy records remain a source of inspiration, and particularly blues artists from around Memphis, who Catfish said he enjoys listening to.Sitting on Top of the World by Johnny Shines and Feelin’ Goodby Jessie Mae Hemphill (both friends and mentors of Catfish) stood out as a couple of his favorite records on vinyl.

Catfish said the Mississippi Hill Country blues sound, pushed forward by Hemphill, RL Burnside, Junior Kimbrough, and others, is a favorite style of blues.

Mentorship and relationships with other blues musicians is an essential part of development, Catfish said. Honeyboy Edwards took Catfish under his wing and the pair performed at shows together in the U.S. and Europe. Edwards knew some of the early greats that inspire Catfish like Robert Johnson, Peetie Wheatstraw and Big Joe Williams.

“You could ask him about anybody in the early blues and he would have great, vivid stories about them. And he was such a sweet guy too. He really did earn his name Honeyboy.”

Playing and performing music for Catfish is an uplifting, spiritual experience that he wants to share with his followers.

“I hope the audience is sent, just as much as I am. Because when I’m in that groove, it’s soul lifting. It’s hypnotic,” Catfish said. “If people can come along with me in that sort of hypno journey, then I feel like I’m doing my job.”

Catfish, at 62, has toured for most of his life and he doesn’t plan to quit. Since many of his blues heroes lived to almost 100, still delivering electric performances, Catfish said he is optimistic for his continued musical career.

Honeyboy Edwards lived to 96. Catfish also looks up to several blues musicians that lived long, who he calls his “musical grandparents.” The list includes Henry Townsend and Jessie Mae Hemphill.

With near constant touring around the world, including over 50 UK tours, Catfish could be excused for some burnout or fatigue. Yet, the slide guitarist remains as eager and energetic as he was when he was 15, he said.

“The guitar itself still has a magnetic pull on me,” Catfish said. “I just continue to have so much joy with the music. And I have endless curiosity about building more songs.”

Several such new songs were featured on Catfish’s latest album,Wild Ox Moan (2023), the 21st to be released on Fish Tail Records.

The album is unique, Catfish said, in its selection of songs he has loved for a long time. “Wild Ox Moan” is a Vera Hall song seldom covered. He picked a Nancy Wilson song, “How Glad I Am” from the jazz tradition. Catfish also selected “Cool Water” by the Sons of the Pioneers. The 15 songs on the album, almost constituting a double album, represented a bit more variety than on his typical blues album.

“Vera Hall just sings; it’s an acapella kind of moan and all of her songs were that way. You know, it was a field recording from way back. The song itself is really the essence of what being a human being is all about. And what was unique with my interpretation was that I added slide guitar to the lone voice, so it made it like a little duet with the slide voice.”

In a typical album, Catfish highlights several originals as well as covers from the blues canon. Even on the covers, however, Catfish instills his trademark style, and he said the consistent sound that emerges is the country blues.

Blues at Midnight, a 2021 album, features a collection of all original pieces from several albums over the years. Catfish’s 2011 album A True Friend is Hard to Find displays gospel songs from his canon. Reefer Hound, a 2019 Blues Blast award winner, is exactly what it sounds like; an album full of songs dedicated to cannabis.

Catfish described another bottleneck slide guitar player, Blind Willie Johnson, as his biggest slide guitar hero. Catfish discovered that, like Johnson, he could play harmony with himself on slide.

“It’s a beautiful voice and a gorgeous way to play guitar. It makes you really listen… you have to hear the intonation. It’s more like playing the violin, in that. I love that sound.”

Lyrics and instrumentation are equally important to Catfish’s music, he said. As part of his high school in Davenport, Iowa, Catfish participated in choir singing that taught him how disparate parts like bass, lead, harmony and counterpoint all fit together in a song.

“Sometimes my voice will sing the harmony part and the guitar will do the melody part. I have a whole choir in mind when I make certain songs.”

The incredible, almost universal access to music enabled by streaming services and the internet should bode well for the future of the Delta blues, according to Catfish. He said that it felt like when he started playing nobody in the world was interested in the music.

Already, Catfish sees the genre as vital today.

“I see it as flourishing. There are a lot of guitar players picking it up. What form it will take, I don’t know.”

Along with a new album to be recorded in July, Catfish has several upcoming tour dates.

Visit Catfish Keith’s website at https://www.catfishkeith.com/ to catch a live show near you.