Lost Jim and Robbi

 

The promise of live blues again drew me to the Unitarian Universalist church. Last night Lost Jim Ohlschmidt and his wife Robbi played and it was good.

The couple is from Minnesota and traveled to Eau Claire on a cold Tuesday night at the request of our Blues Society. The stage setting was simple: two chairs; two guitars and four microphones—two for vocals and two for the instruments. Jim brought two guitars. One was a sleek, smooth, big bodied, burnished red affair with fancy sound holes. The other was smaller, with a filigree design, battered and well worn. The varnish and paint was worn away beneath the strings. Lost Jim's fingers must have brushed it thousands—tens of thousands—of times when using his thumb-pick.  It was a pure, acoustic, unplugged show.

Lost Jim came out alone and played two original instrumentals from his new CD, “Old Box New Tunes,” warming the audience up, empty chair beside him. A couple of things were immediately obvious: this was not going to be a stand-up-and-dance kind of night; and this guy was good. I prepared to sit back and let the music soothe me. The first tune was "Maggie And Trouble." The second song titled "Avalon Postcard." Then his wife came onto the stage carrying her violin.

These two are everyday people. You see them shopping at the local grocery store, walking in the park, in the middle row of pews at church, sitting on the bleachers at the little league game. They're quiet and pleasant and polite. Lost Jim struggles with a slight stutter and Robbi's smile is crooked. They got up on stage, picked up their instruments and played them in the same quiet, matter-of-fact way she might bake a pie for dinner or he might jump-start a car during a cold Minnesota winter (or perhaps he bakes and she's the mechanic, but you know what I mean). There is nothing about them that screams “special” or “talented,” nothing particularly extraordinary about the way they look or how they present themselves. But their music is extraordinary. Quiet and unpretentious, they warmed the cold Tuesday night.

Lost Jim likes old blues. Country blues. He likes Mississippi John Hurt. He likes Blind Blake and Big Bill Broonzy. He sang "Payday," a “song older than dirt.” He sang "Salty Dog" a “cultural high-water mark” for the blues and admitted he still doesn't know what a salty dog is. He told a few jokes: What's the difference between a banjo player and a savings bond? The savings bond eventually matures and earns money. He gave us a bit of history explaining that Mississippi John was born in 1892 and his tune "Creole Belle" was adapted from a piano rag and talked about Casey Jones, the famous engineer before singing Hurt's "Casey Jones." He cracked dryly that Blind Lemon Jefferson “asks the question that every blues man wonders: "Will A Matchbox Hold My Clothes?” And that Poppa Charlie Jackson sings about “the essential, fundamental topic of country blues” before launching into "Shake That Thing."

During all this Robbi, his wife, sat on her chair, smiling slightly, tapping her bow against her fiddle, adding quiet percussion. She soloed on it too. She's got a madonna-like smile and pacific demeanor, but I suspect this woman knows how to let loose. This suspicion was partially confirmed when she sang her first song. It was a gorgeous rendition of Patsy Cline's "Never No More." Deep and rich, her voice rang out true and strong. In the second set she sang a Kitty Wells song, "Just One More Time" and again, nailed it. She also plays bluegrass in a Minnesota-based band called "Hey Lonesome," but tonight her violin melded beautifully with her husband's guitar giving these blues just the right feel. 

Lost Jim also sang some originals. "You're The One" is a beautiful love song: “Roll like the river/shine like the sun/go on tell everybody baby/you're the one...pretty as a daisy/wild as a dandelion/like flowers in the meadow baby/you're looking mighty fine.” My favorite original was titled  "Railroad Blues." He explained that he likes train songs, was thinking of how Mississippi John Hurt might sing one and had Bo Diddley's "Hand Jive" buzzing in his head for about a month.  Finally he picked up his guitar, slowed the tune down and wrote a song from the perspective of someone who got left behind at the train station: “Think about a month ago/your bags are packed your ready to go/leave me with a mule to ride/and an empty feeling down deep inside....I got no letter I got no news/all I got's these railroad blues.” And Robbi's violin made sad, quiet train sounds.

These two bring us back to a time when making music was a natural cultural extension of life, when family music-making was a way to communicate and bond and entertain. They bring us back to a time before the radio and TV dragged us from our front porch and into the living room. On Tuesday night, their music dragged me away from my computer and onto a church pew. And it was worth it.

You can buy some of Lost Jim Ohlschmidt's CDs on CDBaby. I've linked to his website and there's contact information there including his email address: lostjim.ohlschmidt@gmail.com.

If you share Jim's passion for old-time blues, you'll want his CDs.