Now that I live on the river, I find myself drawn to river metaphors. Last Friday I went -- upriver -- to Portland's annual Waterfront Blues Festival. It's a four-day festival, but I specifically went Friday to hear Eric Burdon -- whom I'd seen 50 years ago on the Ed Sullivan Show when I was 15. I knew he'd continued to be a fine and evolving bluesman and I wanted to experience that.
I was especially taken by a song he sang, "River is Rising," which I assumed was an old Negro spiritual. The lyrics go, "The river is rising/Carry me away to another world" and I took that to be metaphorical in a lot of ways, one of which might have led to freedom on the other side, or drowning in a rising river and being carried to heaven, or some other thought.
I liked the songs he sang and I went and bought his new CD, also riverine, called "'Til Your River Runs Dry." Imagine my surprise to discover that "Rising" is a new song written by him, Tony Braunagel/Jon Cleary. There's another song on the disc that he wrote called "Water."
In an interview Eric gave to Oregonian writer Curt Schulz he said, "I am still a Geordie kid whose grandfather worked the coal mines. The experience of the youth revolution is always within me, as well. All of these experiences add layers to who we are, but they don't strip away what we've been through or where we came from.... Blues people I've known seem to be born with an old soul. It makes sense that those of us who feel the blues, live the blues and breathe the blues tend to grow old gracefully."
On Sunday Mavis Staples sang a powerful rendition of one of my favorite spirituals (especially as danced by the Alvin Ailey troupe), "Wade in the Water." Amen.
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