Roll up! Roll up! Pull up a stool, folks, and put your funny bones to the test at the C.W. Stoneking Comedy Revue!
Let me break it down for you, see. This here’s an Australian Joe who sounds like a native of N’Orleans and sings hotsy-totsy songs set in the deepest jungles of Africa. And how!
Horsefeathers! I seem to have gotten carried away with prohibition speak. An hour of sea shanties and traveling songs will do that to a girl.
Let’s start again, shall we? The C.W. Stoneking sound is probably best described as a mixture of doo-wop, hillbilly and rag time, all under the umbrella of old world blues. His stellar four-piece Primitive Horn Orchestra offer up everything from hip-shakin’ calypso vibes to weeping horns. However, it’s the Aussie lad’s growl that brings on the big time quivers.
Stoneking’s basement croon is doused in emotion — his phrasing is impeccable and the texture is unwaveringly gravelly. While his style is more akin to Delta Blues cats like Robert Johnson and Willie Brown, I can hear Billie Holiday in the delivery.
C.W. loves to tease us along with tall tales, and the yarns he spins are a million miles (and about 100 years) away from your average frontman’s spew of hyperactive banter. Meandering stories about fortune tellers and dodo sellers take five or ten minutes to recount, but this particularly unruly crowd stays silent through all the crucial moments.
In short, Stoneking’s devotion to his craft puts every other revivalist and throwbacker to shame. His pants are perfectly pressed while his shirt is perfectly crinkled. He speaks with a fine vintage drawl and sways with all the poise of a bandstand leader. Later, as he signs CDs, vinyl and bottles of his own patented hoodoo love potion at the merch stand, he’s got an appropriately bashful demeanor.
Most of the material we’re hearing tonight is self-penned and fits perfectly with 90-year-old forgotten beauts like Wilmoth Houdini’s ‘Brave Son Of America’, but there are also songs that nobody else would dare write. Take yodeling jungle ditty ‘Talkin’ Lion Blues’ for example, which includes wacky lines like “They hauled me up the courthouse stairs... The judge was a monkey in an old wicker chair.”
Old C.W. New C.W. No matter. For any fan of live music, this show was a certifiable thrill. For a lover of all things pre-war, it was damn near spiritual.