Jerome
Jerome Godboo plays every Wednesday at Chicago's, and will also be appearing at Grossman's Saturday, August 18th, Touchdown's in Mississauga on Friday, August 17th with Deep Down and the Silver Dollar on Saturday, August 4th with Suzie McNeil.
Jerome Godboo used to have trouble understanding the lyrics of old blues songs but with life experience the local harp meister, vocalist, prolific songwriter and effervescent performer has discovered that he can sing original lyrics by reaching into himself.
"For the first time in my life, I understand a lot of the lyrics of old blues songs. Before I'd always change the lyrics because it just wasn't me and it didn't feel right to sing `heartbroken, lost my wife and kid' kind of lyrics," says the 39-year-old Godboo. "Now I can sing about all this stuff from experience."
One of the covers he includes in his current shows is Sonny Boy Williamson's "Help Me," whose lyrics include the lines "I might have to cook/I might have to sew/I might have to get down on my knees and wash the floor/You better help me."
"Having a baby you do everything, at least I did. I was just, for two years, swamped," Godboo says. "That song's about standing up for yourself. Now when I sing it, it's like I'm standing up for myself for the first time. It's coming out kind of explosive because I haven't been standing up for myself enough."
Jerome was a runner-up in this year's Toronto Blues Society Talent Search, and says that as he gets older he's leaning toward the blues and leaving some of the rock influences that can be heard on his first four recordings - two made in the early 1990s with The Phantoms and 1996 and 1998 CDs made, respectively, with the bands Deep Down and One Monkey - behind.
His latest recording of original material, Deja vu, to be released this fall, is far bluesier than anything he's done in the past, he says. Blues and R&B based, Deja vu includes some psychedelic influences, such as brief chromatic builds in the middle of a blues tune with a return to the groove, and Godboo's sometimes expressive harp solos. "I'll allow myself as a harp player to play whatever I'm feeling, and even though the song is bluesy, my solo is far from the traditional blues sound. I guess it's blues with me just allowing me to be myself."
Godboo, who took up the harp seriously because he found he enjoys using his lungs to play an instrument - "the physicality of it just feels great, huffing and puffing," he says - has been playing with the hard-working Ronnie Hawkins Band for almost two years.
Godboo says the rockabilly legend, whose band, over the years, has been an incubator for many musicians, is an exacting taskmaster who knows what he wants from his band. "He's like `this is where blues meets rockabilly, meets rock `n' roll, this is not jazz, this is not funk, this isn't psychedelia, so don't play like that.' In his band, I have respect for what his ears want to hear, and I know how to make those sounds and I'm happy to make them because it's such an obvious context we're in. And all the guys in the band understand that context."
He adds that "unlike an original project, where it takes years to find out what you are, with Ronnie, it's clear on the first day."
- Ruth Schweitzer
Jerome Meets Suzie
Jerome Godboo has been performing around town recently with Suzie McNeil, a scintillating blues, R&B and rock singer with a powerful voice. Both high-energy performers, Godboo and the 24-year-old McNeil are so electrifying on stage you can almost see sparks flying during their shows, which feature Godboo's strong original material and classic 1960s R&B.
Godboo and McNeil met as neighbours two years ago; a mutual friend told Godboo about McNeil's great voice, but he was skeptical. When he finally did hear her sing, he was knocked out. "She sings how she feels, and it's great," he says. "It has got this really awesome fluidity, but she's not basing her shit on that, she's basing it on just raw emotion and puttin' it out there."
Godboo says he and McNeil are wonderfully in sync, and "everything" put them together as performers, including keyboardist Rod Phillips. The night Godboo first heard McNeil sing, Phillips surprised the two of them when he told them that they ought to sing together as their energy and attitudes are similar and their voices would blend. "So we just look at each other and go `wow,'" Godboo recalls.
Phillips was right about Godboo and McNeil's compatibility; then a week later, before the two of them had made the decision to join forces, Godboo was amazed to get an unexpected call from a club offering them their first joint gig. "The world put us together, some kind of will that wasn't my brain," he says.
And so, with a little help from destiny, the dynamic Godboo/McNeil show took off, and has since raised the temperature in the clubs.
- RS