Nearly thirty years after first crossing paths at the Chicago Blues Festival, Corey Harris, Alvin Youngblood Hart, and Guy Davis are back together. ‘Fight On! True Blues Vol. 2’ arrives April 17 on Yellow Dog Records, a nine-track collection that moves between traditional material and original compositions without ever treating the past as a museum exhibit. Recorded separately in Virginia, Mississippi, and New York, the performances are raw, direct, and grounded in deep personal investment. Harris reimagines a Jimmy Strother banjo song in Piedmont-style guitar. Hart pulls out the first Charley Patton piece he ever learned, played on a 1950s Sears Silvertone-branded Kay flat-top. Davis reworks Elizabeth Cotten’s “Shake Sugaree” through the lens of Blind Willie McTell. The results are striking.
The stakes behind the music are clear. Harris frames it plainly: “The thematic tie of the record lies in the fact that we are three African-American bluesmen who are fighting to maintain our cultural legacy and heritage. Each of these nine tracks represents a contemporary image of traditional Black lifeways.” Davis adds: “The fight we are waging is to keep this precious music form alive.” Hart connects it all back to that original 1996 photograph: “It was destiny that we’d end up doing something like True Blues.” ‘Fight On! True Blues Vol. 2’ is available for pre-order now.
‘Fight On! True Blues Vol. 2’ Tracklisting:
- We Are Almost Down to the Shore (Fight On)
- Screamin’ and Hollerin’ the Blues
- See Me When You Can
- What’s That I Smell
- If The Blues Was Money
- Deep Sea Diver
- I Belong To the Band
- Highway 61
- Everything I Got is Done In Pawn