root salad f28 Dave Arcari
Trash country and punked-up blues. From Scotland. Cara Gibney is intrigued.
had a side view of Dave Arcari on stage. He was standing on one leg, head back, eyes closed, tongue sticking out and arced toward the ceiling; his national steel held away from his body as he continued to play. He would waltz on occasion with the guitar, and would run off stage and play in close proximity to the heads of seated audience members. I remember the grow- ing sense that this space was too small for such a big character. He ran back on stage and played at gale force. He would run backwards, then calm down. He would holler and bawl.
M
There was a repertoire of punked-up Delta blues, the occasional murder ballad, visits to Mississippi hill country; tributes to Blind Willie Johnson and CeDell Davis. “I was asked to do a Johnny Cash cover for a tribute night,” I remember him saying in a gravelly and surprisingly Scottish accent. All those blues and not an American bone in his body. “I like Johnny Cash, but I sing fuck all like him,” he had laughed as he
ay 2014, Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival. I was beside the bar, tucked into the corner of Belfast’s McHughs basement. I
launched into Blue Train with a lean men- ace that Johnny would have been proud of. Then, as the night closed, things shift- ed. The brash, manic Scot with the potty mouth made a point of speaking kindly about the sound tech and the festival vol- unteers. His demeanour became that of an interested, polite person as he signed CDs at the merch table. He was calm. The dif- ference was marked.
“Scottish guitarist & songwriter Dave
Arcari’s
alt.blues sounds owe as much to trash country, punk and rockabilly as they do pre-war Delta blues,” it says on his web- site. “I don't want to be patronising to people who are into blues and roots music,” he told me recently over the phone, “but I think the public, especially those who aren’t particularly into any niche of music, their perception tends to be that blues is 12-bar shuffle played by people watching their fingers, playing wid- dly widdly solos, and really just sounding the same… when I go to see someone, I go to be entertained… it’s a social thing, but I want to be entertained and I want to actu- ally experience the performance and feel it as an audience member.”
That desire to experience a perfor- mance applies to his own music as well. “I've got to have fun when I'm playing, If I'm not having fun, if I have to think about something or I have to worry about remem- bering something, suddenly that becomes like work to me.”
But when it comes to the livewire stage character vs the off-stage easy-going musi- cian, it runs deeper than Arcari simply want- ing to enjoy his job, and a lot of it harks back to old demons and insecurities that we all have in one way or another. “All through school I was told, ‘You're tone deaf, you can't sing,’ so that was my conditioning and to a certain extent I still have it.”
Later as a student, the music-mad Arcari spent his grant on a PA and ended up with no choice but to hit the streets busking to try and make a few quid. “The busking thing is probably an experience that forces you to develop. If you want to make some money you've got to try and force some confidence.” This experience, honing his skills as a musician in front of an audience, was particularly important for him.
think socially I’m much happier in a small group of like four or so people, like when we went out in Belfast,” he explained. “If there had been twenty of us I wouldn’t have really enjoyed it… I think that if I behaved off stage and socially the way I do on stage, or the way people perceive me to be on stage, I wouldn't be very popular… I’m pretty shy as well inside. I think a lot of performers probably are and the perfor- mance is a way of trying to overcome that shyness. Music is a great ice breaker, whether it’s performing or whether it’s just as a conversation topic… it’s almost a side- effect of shyness, either taking on a persona or just behaving in a different way.”
“I His latest release, Live At Memorial
Hall, is testament to the link between Arcari the musician and Arcari the performer. Of all his releases, it’s this live album he feels most comfortable with, that he reckons sounds most like him. “I don't think the stu- dio ever really captured ‘it’. It's an interac- tion, and it goes back to the performance and the persona on stage. That doesn't come out so easily in the studio.”
Dave Arcari tours the States October to early November. Tenby Blues Festival is November, followed by various Scottish dates. December sees him in Estonia and Latvia. More dates and details on his website. F
davearcari.com
Photo: Valentina Abrazey
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