Rusty Stone – The Blues In Me
RevStone Music
www.rusty-stone.de
8 tracks
Munich, Germany, is home to Rusty Stone where he’s been a fixture on the blues scene since the 1980’s. Like most musicians, Stone found the pandemic to be full of angst and pressure, but it also became an opportunity to write songs and focus on playing other instruments. Here he sings and plays guitars, mandolin, banjo, harp, stompbox, and ukulele. Joining him are Tom Peschel on upright bass and Ludwig Seuss on accordion. The album is rootsy, all acoustic, completely original and well-crafted overall.
The title track opens the album. Stone plays some thoughtful resonator and sings in similar fashion– restrained, pensive and with feeling. Nice finger picking and equally good vocals set the tone for a fine acoustic blues CD. The pace picks up as Rusty strums and plays harp on “Enjoy Your Life,” a song about enjoying life now because you can’t take anything with you. “When I Was Young” is a slow blues with lots of feeling. Stone reflects back on days past and the fact that getting old is not always fun. He’s a great storyteller in his songs, lyrics and presentation. The accordion softly playing in the background helps set the mood here. In “A Song For You,” Stone returns to the up tempo guitar and harp and he does another great job with it.
“Another Story” is a Dylan-esque styled piece; his vocals here and harp hearken back to Dylan’s early days. Next is “Shelter You” where Stone gets more upbeat and sings about providing shelter and protection for his woman. He does some nice finger picking on this cut. “Old Enough” is another cut where getting old is in the topic of conversation; being able to sing the blues is certainly “enhanced” by aging and it is his passion. Rusty offers up a sweet solo on the resonator on this track. He concludes with a pretty instrumental entitled “Hummingbird.” Stone plays solo and fingerpicks his ukulele with feeling and emotion.
I’d not heard Stone’s music before; he does a superb job with his guitar work, songwriting and vocals. I look forward to searching out and hearing more of his stuff– he is well worth a listen!
