Okay, this writer gravitates toward any recording where Steve Dawson is at the helm producing and/or playing. And one of those such projects was his work with Canadian Dr. Kat Danser (Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology) on 2018’s Goin’ Gone. One Eye Open is the follow-up. If you are unfamiliar with Danser, she is a three-time nominee for a Western Canadian Music Award and a national Maple Blues Award – Best New Artist of the Year, winner of the Ambassador of the Blues Award (Blues Underground Network) and the IBC Best Independent Blues Album, as well as voted to having made one of the Top 5 Roots & Blues Albums of 2014 (CBC Radio & Blues Underground Network). Yes, that’s one long sentence but it lets you know that she’s been on the scene for some time. She can play a variety of guitars and performs both solo and with bands, yet Dawson, no slouch in musicology either, is the perfect partner to team up in her quest for exploring old string band music, Delta blues, and even Afro-Cuban stylings.
One Eye Open not only covers a wide geography, it took a wide geography of session players recording in home studios during the pandemic to make the project a reality. The core band, Dawson’s mainstays are Dawson (guitars), and Vancouver’s Gary Craig (drums), and Jeremy Holmes (bass). They were not able to record in the same room together, live off the floor as is their customary approach. Yet, even with Kat recording her vocals in Edmonton, and other musicians located around the continent while Dawson directed traffic from his studio in Nashville, the results are as organic, collaborative, and spontaneous as anything these veterans have ever recorded.
It appears that Danser must have traveled extensively and immersed herself in Cuban culture in pursuit of her doctorate. The full horn section featured on six of the album’s ten tracks reflects her passion for Afro Cuban jazz and the place where it intersects with traditional New Orleans music.The section, comprised of Dominic Conway, Jeremy Cook and Malcolm Aiken was produced in real-time from Nashville while the players stood 15 feet apart from each other in Vancouver as Kat watched the whole session on Zoom from her home in Edmonton. In addition, the album features the rollicking keyboards of one of the best, Kevin McKendree (Delbert McClinton, Tinsley Ellis, John Hiatt) who is heard from the outset along with the horns on the sassy, defiant “The Way I Like It Done.”
Danser is positively sultry on the deep, slow blues of “Lonely and The Dragon,” again with horns and this time with McKendree’s swirling B3 as Dawson cuts piercing notes on his axe. We next get one of two carefully chosen covers, the jug band favorite “Bring It With You When You Come,” from the 1920s by Gus Cannon. McKendree gets the credit for the percolating upbeat arrangement. The Cuban New Orleans influence comes to the fore on the syncopated “Frenchman Street Shake” before she turns to the other cover, perfectly suited to her style, Jessie May Hemphill’s “Get Right Church,” imbued by Dawson’s slicing slide work.
This remarkably well-paced album then delivers punk blues in the brash, frenetic “One Eye Closed.”Drummer Craig who pushed that one leads into the roadhouse “Train Wreck’ evoking strains of the classic “Mystery Train” as Dawson takes one of his signature guitar excursions. We then get a calming break as Danser croons on the Patsy Cline inspired “Please Don’t Cry.” The acoustic rendered “End of Days” captures what was on many of our minds (and may still be) when the pandemic began to spread. Dawson’s accompaniment along with light organ from McKendree color Danser’s expressions of the fear, panic, and polarizing judgments that have ensued since. The album closes with the Cuban “mi Corazon.”
By turns raucous, reverent, cautious, introspective, and upbeat, the Danser-Dawson partnership delivers another winner.