Here's why I'm happy that Dion has the blues

One of my hopes and goals for Catholic World Report is to have some regular reviews of not just books and movies, but also of good music. (Or, on occasion, of really bad music crying out to be exposed from empty note to empty note.) This post isn't a review, per se, but a short note about Dion DiMucci and his new album, A Tank Full of Blues.

Although I'm something of a music buff (50,000+ songs in my iTunes library—don't tell my wife!), I've never been much of a blues fan. And I confess, with some shame, that I only started to really listen to Dion's music a couple of years ago. But I do enjoy Dion's blues, which feature his impressively strong and clear vocals, economic and expressive guitar playing, a palpable sense of joy and gratitude, and a wry, knowing sense of humor. Some cuts, such as "Ride's Blues (for Robert Johnson)", have a more raw and gritty sound, while others, including "My Michelle", harken back a bit to Dion's blues-tinged rock music produced for Columbia in the early 1960s. In fact, the roots of Dion's interest in the blues goes back to those fifty-year-old cuts, as evidenced by the songs "Troubled Mind" and "Sweet Papa Di", as well as by the title of a collection of those cuts: Bronx Blues: The Columbia Recordings (1962-1965).

The final cut of Dion's new album is "Bronx Poem", a spoken word piece that is uniquely Dion: poignant, humorous ("Man, I've got a wife who drives me sane!"), thoughtful, and—again—joyful. It captures a man of faith who is also a musician full of life, love, and laughter. All Music Guide gives the album 4.5 stars out of five, stating:

Accompanied by his own haunting guitars and Robert Guertin's quietly shuffling drums, Dion celebrates humanity in the light of his spiritual convictions. In doing so, he comes full circle to meet himself as a street corner poet in the 1950s, and reveals his wisdom as the result of his experiences in the past and the present. He has no need to romanticize or apologize; he remains the keen-eyed, tender-hearted observer he has always been. Tank Full of Blues may be the late entry in a catalog of great work by Dion, but it stands with his best recordings. In fact, it is the album he's been waiting an entire career to make.

I recently e-mailed with author Mike Aquilina, who helped Dion write his 2011 book, The Wanderer Talks Truth and also co-wrote several cuts on A Tank Full of Blues:

Continue reading on the CWR blog.