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hile acoustic is still in his plans (his most recent tour was a solo affair: just him and a gorgeous 1937 Epiphone Deluxe), it seems like he’s ditched the banjo for good; he’s been known to go on the occasional but vicious anti-banjo


tirade. When I try to ask him about it, he suffices with “I have to be careful with what I say. People get angry about that sort of stuff.” Maybe he’s been advised by his lawyers. Maybe it’s just part of his own epic, enigmatic legend.


Storytelling is one of his most potent powers. That man knows how to spin a yarn. He started his musical life in high school, but asked if he was a blues artist even back then, he says, “I wouldn’t have said I was an artist of anything then, except for maybe a bull- shit artist!” It would seem that never really changed. He has the air of an old vaudeville master, a carnival caller or maybe a market huckster. By 2008, the UK was in the middle of a mini blues boom sparked by the success of Seasick Steve, and a good story was all- important. Each artist had to have their own romantic blues myth for cachet, and Stoneking had the tallest tales in his backstory, rejecting the down-home believability of the aforementioned Steve for way-out parody. His thing was that he had worked for a time as an assistant to a witch doctor in New Orleans, before get- ting drunk and finding himself on a ship bound for the Congo, only to get shipwrecked and land on a beach in Gabon… it was a saga that got more madcap and rambling with each retelling. I’m sure I recall hearing some sort of narrative detour to a dildo facto- ry at one point. These are stories to be taken with a bucket of salt.


Naturally, his songs are similarly irreverent and fantastical. His albums are full of tales of talking animals, hoodoo gone wrong and myriad characters in unfortunate situations in locations from jail to the jungle to heaven itself. It’s probably easy to tell that a common thread in Stoneking’s music is his humour. If we’re talking about the authenticity thing, it’s one thing that makes him stand out from the crowd. It’s surprising how often musicians today for- get how funny a lot of the old-time music really was, blues or oth- erwise. Almost all of his work is drenched in that humour, whether it be sly innuendo, ridiculous sitcom or his particular knack for extended conversations between fictional friends – the man holds a whole pantheon of personalities under his stylish fedora and slicked-back hair. Simply put, he’s just not so bloody earnest all the time, which is a breath of fresh air to be honest. It also makes the times when he is earnest particularly touching – an example is his straight-ahead Charlie Bostock’s Blues, a heartbreaking ode to one of Stoneking’s former bandmates and his tragic end.


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