Accomplished Rhode Island-based guitarist Ryan Lee Crosby fell in love with the Bentonia Blues style when he first heard its most famous proponent, Skip James. The last living Bentonia bluesman is the Grammy-nominated 77-year-old Jimmy “Duck” Holmes, who owns and runs the Blue Front Cafe in Bentonia, as his mother did before him. The 2019 collaboration between Holmes and Dan Auerbach, entitled Cypress Grove, earned that nomination. Crosby and Holmes first met in 2019, when a friend of Crosby’s introduced him to the living legend. Eventually, Crosby booked a flight to better acquaint himself with Holmes and the Bentonia style of the blues. In 2024, Crosby secured his 1980s reel-to-reel tape machine into the back seat of a borrowed Toyota and made the journey to Mississippi, intent on recording at the Blue Front Cafe, resulting in this album, At the Blue Front. The Bentonia style can quickly be described as a minor key open guitar tuning called crossnote, accompanied by falsetto singing. Like its cousin, Hill Country Blues, often you’ll hear unison guitar and vocal lines.
Yet Crosby didn’t play the usual acoustic guitar heard in Bentonian blues. He did it his way, playing an electric 12-string guitar, adding influences from Africa and India to the sound by having Grant Smith play calabash and percussion alongside harmonicist Jay Scheffler. That trio renders the four composed tracks on Side A. Side B becomes more spontaneous as Holmes joins Crosby, at times making up lyrics on the spot as they pass the vocal mic back and forth. In some respects, the electric 12-string has a cleaner sound, less raw than what we’re used to from listening to Holmes or any other players of the style. Yet, the hypnotic quality of the music remains.
Crosby’s scintillating guitar is prominent in the mix, with his vocals, Sheffler’s harp, and Smith’s percussion rounding a sound that’s every bit as clear as a studio recording. That he’s worked with kindred spirits Chris Smither and Charlie Parr should come as no surprise. Here, his guitar, at least to these ears, evokes the late John Fahey somewhat. The impression is indeed almost as strong.
Although the calabash and blues harp remain, the tone of the album changes with Holmes” presence on “Hard Times,” “Catfish,” “Slow Down,” and “Tell Me.” You’ll recognize classic blues phrases in all of them, especially the Mississippi standard “Catfish,” which was released as a single. Notice the tempo change between the former and “Slow Down,” where one can envision Crosby taking his cues from Holmes, Crosby’s guitar growing more animated as the song evolves. On the closing, “Tell Me,” Holmes’ unmistakable vocal kicks off the tune.
In some respects, consider this mentor and pupil, yet both were so satisfied with the results that they recorded Holmes’ Bentonia Blues/Right Now, released this past June, in a similar session with Crosby and Smith, using that same vintage reel-to-reel. Unequivocally, the electric twelve-string and the percussion give that vintage Bentonia sound a new sheen in 2025.
