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THE BEST OF THE TEXAS CENTURY...TEXAS MONTHLY, December, 1999. photo, Michael O'Brien 
Jerry Lightfoot And the Essentials In the late seventies Jerry Lightfoot pumped a second wind
into the careers of Houston blues originals like sax man Grady Gaines and guitarist
Joe "Guitar" Hughes by putting them in front of new audiences. On this, his first
album in four years, he rarely strays far from the blues spirit, but surprisingly
few songs follow blues structure. Better Days is about successfully crawling
from the wreckage of a life lived perhaps too hard and then getting slapped down
anyhow—but again Lightfoot avoids the obvious. There's not a blues-rock
cliché here, though some lyrics ("Cryin' Lord have mercy/And please make
it quick") ring like classic bluespeak. Jerry Lacroix, the former vocalist for
Edgar Winter's White Trash and Gulf Coast bar band the Boogie Kings, sings lead
on five tracks; he can seemingly hit any note from any direction and make it
sound like personal testimony. Lightfoot's biting guitar lines run from hard
blues to Chuck Berry to some of the faintly Eastern flavorings of sixties
blues-based jam bands, though he's much more succinct than they ever were.
Ultimately, Better Days stomps and soars, and hurts and hopes, in
equal doses. BY ROGER WOOD 
Photo © Colleen Lightfoot/Irish Eyes Photography
In music, as in life, there's a big difference between being a character and possessing character. It's a distinction that bandleader Jerry Lightfoot appreciates. As the earnestly focused guitarist fronting The Essentials and a longtime behind-the-scenes force in the unification of local blues culture, Lightfoot has earned a reputation among musicians and fans for an uncommon depth of personal integrity.
It's that "dues-paid" intangible that separates his live performances from those of the mere characters that come and go on the blues-rock scene. And it's the defining quality inherent in Lightfoot's recently released second CD, Better Days (Age Out Records), a beautiful ten-track testament to the power of catharsis and healing via the musical process.
"All blues is about developing character. It's a scary concept, because the blues is about honestly singing what's in your soul and what's in your heart," Lightfoot says. "And not just everybody's comfortable with that. It all starts with finding out who you really are."
An almost weekly presence in Houston clubs through most of the '80s and '90s, Lightfoot has developed a large following here. But since he relocated to Austin two years ago his hometown fans have had far fewer opportunities to see him play, all the while anticipating the release of the new CD.
The completion of Better Days was long-delayed. First there was the painstaking attention to the details of songcraft and production, then a succession of personal tragedies. Last year Lightfoot suffered the deaths of both his father and son within a four-month span. But the 47-year-old musician has transcended frustration and grief to fashion his most powerful artistic statement yet.
Says pianist David Vest: "As a guitar player, a songwriter and a performing artist, Jerry Lightfoot may be the most ambitious musician now working in Texas. I don't mean ambitious like River Oaks. Ambitious like Rimbaud. Like Dylan. Like Hazel Dickens or Bill Monroe." Vest recognizes in Lightfoot that rare sense of mission, a purity of vision that seems to inform each song.
"You hear Jerry play live, and you know he's going for it every night. Nobody aims higher, reaches deeper or asks more from the people who play with him," Vest says. "He has this conception of the blues as a spiritual path. He believes in the nobility of the calling, and if you play this music, he expects you to have it, too."
That unwavering devotion has inspired not only Lightfoot's music but also his personal relationships with a number of older African-American players, products of Houston's indigenous blues culture. Over the past two decades probably no other musician has collaborated so often and so effectively to bridge the double gap (racial and generational) between the old-school Houston bluesmen and the rock-weaned white audience.
"People know I'd jump off a bridge for Jerry," says Big Walter, a former Peacock Records star now in his eighties. "He's been like a son to me."
Other Houston blues artists making guest appearances on that first Lightfoot CD included Joe "Guitar" Hughes, saxophonist Grady Gaines, and singers Trudy Lynn and Eugene Moody. "Lightfoot's been a big help to a lot of blacks," Hughes says. "He really loves the music."
And that support goes far beyond simply offering guest slots on records. As Hughes goes on to say: "Back when I had got discouraged and wanted to throw my guitar against the wall and quit, it was 'Foot that straightened me out. I had stopped bandleading, gotten disgusted with it. And he talked to me. It was at that point that I got revived, you know, in making my music. Because of him."
Another example of Hughes's deep respect for his friend can be found on the elder's 1996 release, Texas Guitar Slinger (Bullseye Blues). Of the 12 tracks that compose that CD, Hughes includes only one that he didn't write, a Lightfoot ballad called "Don't Turn Your Back on Me." Fittingly, that song re surfaces, in a potently re made version, as the lead-off number on Better Days.
In its new form, "Don't Turn Your Back on Me" highlights vocalist Jerry LaCroix, a long-haired veteran of collaborations with the likes of Edgar Winter, the Boogie Kings and other hippie-blues bands of yore. LaCroix is granted "special guest" billing on the CD cover, and his soulful exhortations are featured on a total of six tracks. Lightfoot, whose brilliant guitar work and songwriting generally outshine his own capable singing, enjoyed the results.
"It's just such a blessing, man, to be able to make music," he says. "To be able to create a song, write the lyrics and play a solo from your heart on it is just a wonderful thing. But when you have somebody like Jerry LaCroix sing your lyrics in a way that you know they were meant to be sung, really singing it from the place they came from, the bottom of the soul, it's just something else."
Indeed, LaCroix's bluesy pipes contribute a crowning touch to the album. On the darkly pulsating title track, he huskily breathes the verses, voice slowly swelling, until each stanza climaxes with the shouted declaration, "Here's to better days." And on the funky shuffle "Bye Bye" (one of only three songs not written or co-written by Lightfoot), LaCroix transforms the simplistic chorus ("Bye-bye, baby, bye-bye") into a sonic poem of its own. His earthy vibrato and rage-tinged bellows communicate pure emotion, beyond words, as he plays off a dirty bass line from Eugene "Spare Time" Murray and soul-stirring solos from Pee Wee Stephens on piano, Steve Krase on harmonica and Lightfoot on guitar.
But while LaCroix's singing energizes much of the disc, there are many other fine performances. Lightfoot delivers his own gritty testimony on the original, "Never Get Caught Again (Doug's Blues)," which evolves into a duet with Houston's Carolyn Wonderland. On the chorus they sing, "Cryin' Lord have mercy / And please make it stick / If you get me out of this one / I'll never get caught again," evoking an Exile on Main Street style of righteous frenzy. And the slide guitar- and mandolin-accented treatment of Blind Willie McTell's "God Don't Like It," featuring singer MaryAnn Price (formerly one of the Hot Licks backing folk-hipster Dan Hicks), convincingly evokes old-timey gospel blues.
But the bright, shining moment on this album is the song "Always Sometimes." Fundamentally different, in tone and style, from anything Lightfoot has previously recorded, this song ultimately shows he's more than just a blues-rocker.
Over loping syncopated percussion riffs in the opening bars, Lightfoot's voice gently emerges, stripped of any affectation, vulnerable, honest. It's backed softly by pedal steel, violin, organ, piano and acoustic guitar (plus dead-on harmony vocals from Tommie Lee Bradley-Jackson).
Against a dreamscape of sound, the lyrics are clearheaded and reflective. Lightfoot sings, "There is rust on my guitar strings / Dust on my radio / My heart feels as thin as my skin / My head reels, ready to explode." In an attempt to make sense of the dismal present, he turns to the past: "Sometimes I forget / That my deepest regrets / Come from a time / When the whole world was mine." Then he concludes with the realization (which recurs to end each stanza), "It's never always / But it's always sometimes." As observed by Vest, who plays piano on the track, "You hear a song like that, and you know the man wrote it to save his life."
"Singing about who you are, that's your offering to the world," says Lightfoot. "Blues is an aspect of that, probably the home of that. But you get out there and try to learn who you are, and it takes you to different places." As if to reaffirm his core musical orientation, Lightfoot includes a rollicking version of Powell St. John's "(I Will) Forever Sing the Blues" near the end of the disc. But Better Days, like Lightfoot's move to Austin, suggests that this native son is still committed to growth, a process that necessitates some change.
"This album is about closing some doors and opening some doors," he says. "There were some things, extremely hard times, and I had to place my faith in better days, you knowŠ.But I've stepped from that into enjoying some of those better days now."
From houstonpress.com BY ROGER WOOD Occasionally there's something more for the earnest music fan, something beyond the pleasures inherent in a well-written, effectively performed album. It's the sense of deep satisfaction triggered by recognizing a favorite player's positive evolution from one project to the next. It's the thrill that comes from watching talent and passion blossom into an even more substantial, insightful and diverse artistry. And for those of us who've followed the development of native son Jerry Lightfoot, his latest CD delivers precisely that buzz. Through most of the '80s and '90s, Lightfoot was a stalwart of the local blues-rock scene. As guitarist, singer and front man for the Essentials, he first documented his musical identity on the 1995 album Burning Desire, a collection mainly showcasing a blues foundation. After his migration to Austin, Lightfoot's 1999 release, Better Days, touched base with the blues but also included some expertly crafted ballads and other departures. Now with his third CD, Texistentialism, the expatriated bandleader (who now resides in Florida) continues to expand his range. While the Lightfoot sound has always included talented keyboard players, the roles of the piano and organ are swelled on this new disc to great stylistic effect -- thanks in part to the bandleader's affiliation with Vince Welnick, who played with such rock heavyweights as the Grateful Dead, Todd Rundgren and the Tubes. The inventive way in which Welnick incorporates keyboards into these songs is simply wonderful. Moreover, Lightfoot wisely utilizes the considerable vocal skills of Houston's Carolyn Wonderland as lead singer on six of the ten tracks. It's a decision that gives this new chapter of Lightfoot's work a potent and entirely new sound. It also enables him to use his own lead vocalizing (on three tracks) for contrastive emphasis. Lightfoot wrote or co-wrote seven of the tracks here, which range from the familiar "Handshake with the Blues" to introspective ballads such as "Generous to a Fault" and "Around and Between" (about the untimely death of Lightfoot's son Noah). Lightfoot pays tribute to his mentor Big Walter "The Thunderbird" by covering "Junior Jumped In," which originally surfaced back in the early 1950s. It's a bouncing, piano-based song that soars with a pair of wickedly effective guitar solos and a soul-stirring harmonica romp from former Essentials bandmate Steve Krase. It's pure Texas blues boogie, made for dancing and strutting. There's also the eerie poetry of "Monkey Got a Gun," penned by Austin's Jim Franklin and featuring a muffled, raspy Lightfoot vocal that evokes Texas-fried Tom Waits. It's a bone-chilling, surrealistic rap recited over an atmospheric bass groove and sophisticated jazz chording on piano, all spiced by imaginative fills on both keyboards and guitar. It's unlike anything Lightfoot has ever recorded -- and indicative of some of the new twists and turns on the artistic path he's following. Big-time fame and fortune may never meet this now middle-aged musician, who's been banging guitars and howling the blues since he was a teen- ager in Pasadena. But as Texistentialism proves, music business reality hasn't deterred Lightfoot's artistic growth and vision. |