Forgotten Greats of the ‘00s # 1:
Jawbone

Jawbone was (and presumably is) one man from Detroit named Bob Zabor. Jawbone first came to my attention when John Peel played his song ‘What’s Goin’ On’ like three times in a single programme or something. I think if I had a radio programme, I’d probably want to play it three times in a single programme too. It’s wonderful and insane; an outburst of pure, maniac joy that takes every hoary, overcooked one-man-band-bluesman cliché you can think of and blows the whole lot outta your ass. Listen to Zabor’s feet beat out a bone-crunching double-speed bass drum / hi-hat pound, and to his hands layering total idiot, mono-chord guitar downstrokes over the top, whilst his gob puts in a double-shift, alternating between a brutal, honking harmonica riff and yelping out a bunch of petulant nursery rhyme blather, ending each stanza with the frankly inspired battlecry “DADDY GOT A HAIRCUT, MOMMA GONNA MOW THE LAWN!” How does all that make you feel - Startled? Exhilarated? Amused? Unhappy? Hungry? SOMETHING, that’s for sure. It is, in a profound sense, a tune.

And man, Peel absolutely went ape for this Jawbone stuff – I remember one night he had Jack White on his programme for some kind of special interview thing, and he set about trying to persuade him live on air that he should give Jawbone a slot as tour support for The White Stripes; “c’mon Jack, he’s a local boy and everything, what do you say?” Jack sounded pretty non-committal, but then that’s Jack White for you.

According to what I remember from the sleevenotes accompanying Jawbone’s debut album ‘Dang Blues’, Bob Zabor began his musical career when he was working as a furniture mover or a truck driver or something, and would make up stupid blues hollers to entertain himself when there was nothing good on the radio, pounding on the dashboard to keep time. He got more into this, and as time went on he bought himself a harmonica with which to express himself more fully. Eventually he started getting on stage between bands at shows and doing his hollers, but realised that nobody would take him seriously unless he had a guitar, so he got one of those too, and learned the basics. I guess the guitar probably meant he needed something louder than the floor to do his stomping on, so he got the drums, and Jawbone was born.

And indeed, most of the songs on the record sound like they started life as meaningless, a-capella yelling songs, like the kind of thing a really disturbed child might sing whilst sitting alone in a coal cellar after all the other kids have beaten him up, set to the most simplistic of musical accompaniment. I don’t usually have much tolerance for all that quirky “hey look, I’m a one man band, crazy huh?” bollocks, but Jawbone is really something else. And he’s pretty funny too, showing a total lack of respect for dreary blues tradition, making up stupid, surreal shit on the spot and hammering the same punk-ass chord for about three straight minutes, laughing in the face of the expected 12-bar turnarounds.

Naturally I pictured Bob Zabor as some kind of larger than life backwoods wildman - a Hasil Adkins style outsider lunatic, or a hairy, ostentatious king freak of some peculiar kind. And I enjoyed the album, and Peel continued to point me toward to new and exciting obsessions three nights week, and that was that.

That is, until a few years later, when I was surprised to see that Jawbone was doing a one-off gig in Leicester, where I was living at the time, courtesy of self-explanatory local promoters Not The Same Old Blues Crap (who have now also relocated to London).

Cut to darkened, crappy upstairs venue, about 9pm, and in typical Leicester tradition there’s nobody fucking there – just the promoter and a couple of his mates, and me standing quietly in the corner…. and Jawbone. Jawbone, it transpires, is a skinny, nerdy-looking white guy with an army haircut and a flannel shirt. He looks a bit like Steve Albini, or an electrician. Just a quiet, everyday sort of guy who probably went to college and studied something useful. He gives me a free badge.

Then he sits down on a barstool, and stretches around until he’s got all his various implements in the right position, and then his foot and strumming arm go BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG, and the sweat flies, and he commences his hollering, the fiery red eyes and apocalyptic bad kid drool of the coal cellar, interspersed with stunned silence and a minimal midlands clap. Whoa there. So let us consider old Jawbone the next time some insufferable blues bore makes a point of harping on about his authentic hillbilly credentials. Daddy gotta haircut, momma gonna mow the lawn!

Mp3s>
What’s Goin’ On
My Daddy

Jawbone’s website: http://www.dangblues.com/

Labels: blues, Forgotten greats of the 00s, Jawbone