"Chris Whitley: Abiding by 'the Law' again"
	



The fans are fanatics, spinning tall tales and hanging on every note and
in-between silence until the next record; seems nothing inspires romantic
devotion more than a bluesman who offers his own "Narcotic Prayer" before he
lays thee down and goes to sleep. A handful of critics even insist that Chris
Whitley's the kind of guy who, like Robert Johnson before him, sold his soul to
the devil at the crossroads; but instead of ability, he just came up holding
nothing more than a worthless piece of paper from Sony Music - his is just a
modern variation on the well-worn clich. Maybe there is a certain romanticism
inherent to his tale - the boy was born in Texas, raised in Mexico and
Vermont, taught himself how to play the guitar, and performed on the streets of
Manhattan and Brussels before releasing his 1991 debut on a major label - but
no musician can live up to such hype unless he kills himself or dies a tragic,
before-his-time death. Hell, had Jeff Buckley not gone for that late-night swim
and got tangled up in the undercurrent, he might well have become another
footnote instead of a martyr.


Whitley's fanatics, who point to him as something of a cross between Kurt
Cobain and Howlin' Wolf, like to think he, too, suffers for his art; they
point to his 1995 album Din of Ecstasy and its 1997 follow-up Terra
Incognita and insist his avant-blues are carved out of diamond-hard passion, 
a sadness so potent and tangible, it's all but impenetrable. They point to the 
gaunt, pale figure on the cover of the recently released Dirt Floor and assert
that his is a body slowly being worn down by the music he plays, this
melancholy brand of acoustic blues that drips with crucifixion imagery and
dead-dog-on-the-side-of-the-road fatalism. They listen to his voice -
neither from the heart nor from the gut, neither sweet nor sullen, neither 
white nor black - and drown in its somber hues. More to the point, they obsess
over his 1991 debut Living with the Law - the music made when a
Hendrix-Winter zealot strips away the electricity, crawls inside a beat-to-
shit-beautiful National guitar, then howls until he's hoarse - and crave more 
of the same.


Dirt Floor, released on a tiny label run by a 24-year-old kid out of his New
York apartment, is the answer to their prayers; it's the sound made when a man
is dropped from his label and then goes chasing ghosts around his daddy's
abandoned farmhouse in Vermont. Recorded in one hour, or so the legend goes,
the record is full of scrap-yard lullabies and songs about loco girls in
the wild country, and it wears its attitude like a beer-stained tank top as
it travels from one island to another (pick out the song titles in that
sentence, and win yourself five cents). It's a good record, a creepy
record, a vaguely uplifting record in a wretched sort of way, and a good
record for a man to tour behind, as he doesn't need anyone to play it but
himself. And it doesn't sound like the blues, but you know it is anyway.