Mick Kidd - These Old Shoes

Self-released

www.myspace.com/mickkidd/

10 tracks

Other than Dave Hole, a blues CD from “down under” does not seem to appear very often, at least in my CD player. Mick Kidd has been a fixture in the blues circuit in South Adelaide for 25 years. He is a solo performer, with guitars and a stomp box as his tools of the trade. All of the songs here are written by Mick Kidd, and he also plays all of the instruments on the CD. Since there are only ten tracks, let’s touch on each of them here.

Kidd starts off with a thumping and acoustic “Big City Blues”, a somewhat angry cut with lyrics little patience for big city life. Kidd sings and plays with defiance and angst. Kidd slows the tempo down with “(These) Murray Waters Keep on Flowin’”. I was confused about ‘Murray Waters’ initially, which displayed my ignorance with Australian geography. The great Murray River and its tributary the Goulburn are a focal point and flow about 60 km north of Melbourne in central Victoria. Blues along and from the river are a theme both here in the States and half way around the world; problems with politics and natural disasters are also apparently universal and subject of blues songs, so Kidd makes a bit of a statement here. “N.Y. Blue (Sun Refused to Shine)” offers more slow blues and lyrics about his love in N.Y.C., a mere 10,630 miles from Adelaide.

Kidd switches from acoustic guitar over to a bigger electric sound with “Front Bar Guitar”. An instrumental, we get to hear Kidd deliver a bigger sound and it’s pretty well done. “Miss Behavin’” is a standard tome about the evil ways of women, and Kidd gives us an earnest acoustic effort. In “Hells Kitchen” he stays acoustic and delivers a song about living in hells kitchen, a simile for his existence with his woman. He bounces and rolls through this uptempo track into “Every Hour, Every Day” where he sings about how he’s fool for a woman and they are “born every minute, every hour, every day.”

“These Old Shoes” gives us his take on taking a walk in someone else’s shoes, namely his. “The Forgiven” is another nice acoustic track where his guitar work shines and he tells the story of broken bottles, hearts and promises. He closes with “My Time”, a slower and reflective cut.

While I can’t say there is anything earth-shattering here, there is also nothing bad at all. Kidd is a solid acoustic guitar player and songwriter with feeling and charm. I enjoyed the discourse and stories he weaved, both lyrically and musically. If you want to try out some acoustic blues from down under with a hint of an edge to them, this one man band might suit your needs just fine.

Reviewer Steve Jones is secretary of the Crossroads Blues Society in Rockford. IL.

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