Medford bluesman Ryan Lee Crosby captures the moody sounds of Bentonia, Mississippi on new album

Ryan Lee Crosby felt struck by lightning thrice in his life.

At age 13, when he first picked up a harmonica to play the blues. (“It was a struck-by-lightning second, the place I knew, ‘Oh, I’m going to be a musician.’”)

Once more, round 2012, when he first heard an outdated recording from Bentonia, Mississippi blues musician Skip James.

“He sang in a falsetto voice, performed in a minor tuning, had a really haunted sound. I wasn’t conscious of the Bentonia custom, and once I heard it, it was like rising from fog,” says Crosby. Bentonia blues, a regional model of Mississippi blues, is characterised by an open minor guitar tuning; a moody, high-and-lonesome sound.

“The third lightning bolt second I had, round 2012, was once I started to surprise what it would sound prefer to play raga on the guitar, and what the overlap was with the Mississippi blues,” says Crosby. Raga is Indian classical music.

The Medford bluesman’s new album, “Winter Hill Blues” (out June 3) — named after Winter Hill in Somerville, the place he was dwelling on the time — channels the moody blues of Bentonia, Mississippi, the North Mississippi blues, and sees a little bit of Hindustani slide guitar.

As a fan of Delta blues, I normally take heed to tracks that crackle and pop with age— Son Home, Charley Patton, Robert Johnson. There aren’t many Gen Y New Englanders enjoying old-style Mississippi blues.

So what first intrigued me about Crosby is how uncommon he’s on paper: a 42-year-old former English main and post-punk rocker from Medford, who can channel Thirties Mississippi.

Whereas he’s clearly moved by that haunted minor key that defines Bentonia blues — and counts Grammy-nominated 74-year-old Bentonia legend Jimmy “Duck” Holmes as his mentor — “Winter Hill Blues” exhibits he’s well-versed in different blues types.

A foot-tapping, head-nodding opening monitor, “I’m Leaving,” and some different tracks smack of Junior Kimbrough. A couple of are North Mississippi, whereas the brooding title monitor (and others) epitomize that Bentonia sound.

As Crosby describes it, Bentonia blues carries a “brooding, ethereal, moody sound. Numerous the standard lyrics cope with the satan, or a supernatural high quality. There’s one thing very haunted about it.”

His monitor “Going to Bentonia” — “Going to Bentonia, I’m gonna put my ft within the grime/ I’m going to seek out the foundation of all my harm” — seems like one thing of an album thesis. Crosby visits Bentonia a couple of instances a yr, what he calls therapeutic journeys, typically to go to his mentor, Holmes.

Probably the most private track right here could also be “Was it the Satan” about his mom, who died in 2016.

“My mother I don’t speak about too publicly, however she had an extended historical past of psychological sickness. She’s a central determine for me in my musical life,” Crosby tells me in our current cellphone interview.

He sings on the monitor: “Was it the satan who made her suppose that approach/ Was it the satan who made her act that approach/ It was the satan who modified my Mama’s thoughts… For she beloved us all, however nonetheless she stated goodbye.”

“She’s kind of proper on the heart of that” track, Crosby says. “I really feel like my relationship with the South, going to the South, has loads to do with my mother, as a result of she lived within the South on and off for the final 15, 20 years of her life.” Going to Mississippi “helps me as an individual,” he says. “Going to Bentonia to be taught from Jimmy ‘Duck’ Holmes is a part of my means of therapeutic.”

“There was numerous rigidity in my family rising up, and music opened the door to emotions of freedom, energy and wonder.”

Ryan Lee Crosby

Born in Maryland in 1980, Crosby grew up in Fairfax, Virginia. His household moved to Avon, Connecticut in 1991. Crosby moved to Boston in 1998, at age 18, to attend Northeastern College. He deliberate to main in music enterprise.

“I switched out fairly quietly. I don’t suppose I’m very business-oriented,” he says with a chuckle. So he studied English, and began the Boston-based post-punk rock group Most cancers to the Stars in 2000. They performed space golf equipment — T.T. the Bear’s Place, The Center East, Lizard Lounge — till breaking apart in 2004.

“Themes of sickness and therapeutic actually began to emerge for me in my relationship to music round that point. That was an enormous a part of what that band was about,” Crosby says.

His father died of bone most cancers in 2007; his mom died 9 years later.

Music, he says, has been his lifelong “outlet… a refuge from struggling.” Rising up, “I used to be simply going by means of issues numerous younger individuals are — feeling remoted, lonely, not sure learn how to relate. There was numerous rigidity in my family rising up, and music opened the door to emotions of freedom, energy and wonder.”

Neither of his mother and father labored as musicians, however “there’s music within the bacgrouknd of my household. Apparently, my father performed the clarinet and saxophone, however I by no means noticed or heard him do it. My mother may sing very well. My grandmother was a singer. My great-grandparents had been entertainers. My great-grandfather, within the golden age of Hollywood — if you happen to see these films the place there’s 10 guys dancing within the background — he was a type of dancers. My great-grandmother was a burlesque dancer.”

With each his mother and father dying comparatively younger, “their tales are an enormous a part of how I relate to music.”

Shortly earlier than his mother died, Crosby started journeying to Mississippi. After her loss of life, he discovered the treks helped him heal “from the lack of my mother and father, from simply the struggling of being a human being. There’s one thing about happening there that’s…a part of an understanding of what my very own life means to me.”

“My mother was, on account of a southern Baptist church neighborhood, preoccupied with angels and devils,” that are additionally themes of basic Bentonia model music, he stated.

“I really feel I can interact with that materials from the angle of conversations that I might have with my mother. [In] ‘Was it the Satan,’ I sang about my mother throughout the language of the Bentonia repertoire.”

As for what strikes him about Bentonia blues particularly, that’s “one thing that goes into my coronary heart, that’s onerous to articulate. The Bentonia model thins the veil between the worlds. [It’s] a mysterious music that helps me to really feel the current spirit. There’s one thing about spending time with Jimmy that feels good for me on a soul stage. I feel there’s simply one thing in how the music is performed that enables me to really feel like myself.”

Whether or not he’s enjoying raga music or Mississippi blues, Crosby doesn’t “suppose by way of style, however by way of the fundamental qualities of music,” Crosby says. “The types I like, they don’t have numerous chord modifications. There’s a hypnotic droning, generally meditative high quality to the music that results in a meditative state, a transcendent expertise.”

Offered by ONCE, Ryan Lee Crosby can have a “Winter Hill Blues” CD launch present at The Rockwell in Somerville on Could 22.