For acolytes of fingerpicking it simply doesn’t get much better than Bert Jansch. Starting in the mid-‘60s the late guitar master issued a series of killer platters that extensively impacted Great Britain’s subsequent musical direction; by extension he altered events Stateside and around the globe, though Jansch was less well-known in the USA. Like numerous vets he struggled through some hard times, but 1995 was a productive year marked by a studio album and a series of gigs, one of which was captured on Live at the 12 Bar. On August 7 it’s available on vinyl for the first time via Earth Recordings.
Akin to many humans wielding acoustic guitars while traversing the highways and byways of the 1960s, the Scottish-born Bert Jansch’s listening habits included Woodrow Guthrie, Big Bill Broonzy, Leadbelly, Brownie McGhee, and a mess of traditional material, but all it took was a listen to his string of LPs for the Transatlantic label to grasp him as far from a garden variety folkie.
Commencing with a self-titled effort and It Don’t Bother Me in ’65, his nimble fingers, utterly fresh compositions and tough warmth of voice resulted in influence spreading to Donovan, Paul Simon, Nick Drake, Neil Young, and Jimmy Page, who in recognizing the greatness in Jansch’s arrangement of “Blackwaterside” from ‘66’s Jack Orion, promptly stole it as “Black Mountain Side” on Led Zep’s first album.
Jansch also recorded Bert and John in ’66 with his fellow picker John Renbourn, the pair additionally collaborating in the highly regarded folk-jazz-baroque-rock outfit The Pentangle. A five-piece of no small popularity, they cut six slabs between ’68 and ’72 and reportedly embarked on five world tours as Jansch’s own discography grew to eight LPs; he eventually took a sensible break and tended a farm for a couple years.
Inevitably returning to music, Jansch navigated a rough patch during the ‘80s, with Live at the 12 Bar fitting into his ‘90s comeback, a return to solid artistic ground that occurred sans much hubbub as it basically coincided with the Brit-pop explosion and preceded the rekindled interest in Brit-folk. The trajectory was an assured one however, and Jansch wasn’t playing dives; at this juncture the 12 Bar Club had only been open for around a year, but the operators wasted no time in establishing it as a true class-act venue (it continues to host shows in a different location).
A significant amount of the set-list for Live at the 12 Bar derives from the ’95 full-length When the Circus Comes to Town; after an introduction and applause he leaps right into that disc’s “Summer Heat,” and given the solo acoustic performance template it’s unsurprising to hear Jansch in strong form both as a singer and instrumentalist.
When the Circus Comes to Town featured guest musicians, as did the studio recording of trad Irish number “Curragh of Kildare” that figured on ‘77’s A Rare Conundrum, but the version here makes up for aural breadth with a vibrant vocal and beautiful picking. And to Jansch’s credit no drop in quality is discernible between trad/standards, earlier catalog ringers and new selections like “Walk Quietly By,” a then new piece sounding as if it could date from a quarter century prior.
Jansch initially waxed Mississippi bluesman Walter Davis’ “Come Back Baby” for his ’67 release Nicola, and the reading here, familiar yet distinct, shows him still decidedly invested in the tune. The same can be said for “Blackwaterside,” which is doubly impressive since by ’95 he’d probably played it hundreds of times; it arrives at just the right moment to satisfy the old heads populating the 12 Bar on this evening.
“Fresh as a Sweet Sunday Morning” is found on L.A. Turnaround, Jansch’s ’73 debut for the Charisma imprint, and while Red Rhodes’ steel guitar is missing from the original it’s not really missed, the emotional verve leading nicely into Circus’s “Morning Brings Peace of Mind” and the subtly growing intensity of the oft-covered trad American tune “Lily of the West.”
I will admit to a preference for Martin Jenkins’ soaring violin and Danny Thompson’s huge upright bass tugs on the studio take of “Kingfisher” from ‘78’s Avocet, but one can’t have everything, and the version here possesses fleet sophistication while never succumbing to slickness or flash. Plus, the way it leads into the coffeehouse erudition of chestnut “Trouble in Mind” works like a charm.
It becomes exceedingly apparent Jansch hadn’t misplaced the ability to craft a live set. This is an off-the-cuff audience recording taped straight to DAT (the full title for Jansch Records’ tour CDs incorporated the phrase “Authorized Bootleg”) rather than a painstakingly crafted performance document, a reality making the whole all the more remarkable. And Circus’s “Just a Dream” provides the assembled with a taste of something potentially unfamiliar before serving up a terrific run-through of “Blues Run the Game.”
Serious fans would likely be acquainted with it from ‘75’s Santa Barbara Honeymoon, but if they didn’t know it as a song by Jackson C. Frank then Jansch’s gracious citation corrected the lack of knowledge. He also informs the assembled that “Let Me Sing,” originally appearing on ‘80s Thirteen Down (by The Bert Jansch Conundrum), is about Victor Jara, the tortured and slain Chilean artist “murdered in a coup in his country just for singing and playing his guitar.”
It’s excellent, and Jansch matches it with “Strolling Down the Highway,” the opening track from his debut LP. Bursting with energy, an encore was of course unavoidable, and the first of two is “A Woman Like You” from ‘69’s Birthday Blues. Closing the album is an instrumental soon to be titled “Bett’s Dance” on the ’98 release Toy Balloon.
This mixture of the vintage and the fresh highlights Jansch as disinclined to exploit any sort of nostalgia angle. Instead, Live at the 12 Bar reinforces him as an indispensable figure in the folk spectrum. Newbies need the early Transatlantic stuff more than kneecaps, but those already tuned in should find this record a fine acquisition.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
