Johnny Augland - REFLEKSJONER (2021)

Bluesnorge knows that multi-instrumentalist Johnny Augland was a success factor in two significant Norwegian blues bands in the nineties. First with a few years in Good Time Charlie which led to the album Coming Down With the Blues (1995) and then the adventure with Vidar Busk & His True Believers towards the twentieth century. In 2005 came his first own album, My Kind of Blues, a superb show in musicality and blues feeling, with most instruments played by himself. Drums, bass, piano, organ and guitar. On the new record he also plays tenor saxophone on one of the tracks, if I have understood the liner notes correctly. At the time of writing, the music has only been available as mp3 files and the song order has not yet been determined.
Augland has a lot on his mind now. The audience will have heard some of the songs on Bluesasylet, and one of the album's strongest songs is the protest blues "Little Refugee" which was launched on World Refugee Day two years ago. The income from it goes to the organization Drops in the Sea, which runs work for the refugees on Lesvos. It is not the only track on the record where Augland performs lyrics of deep seriousness. Environmental crisis, climate crisis, refugee crisis. All this, which the corona crisis has actually made even clearer and which is rooted in a crisis of solidarity when we now see the inequality society spread both globally and in each individual country. Such times provide fertile ground for the blues, but also room for songs about hope. Campfire songs and workers' songs touch on gospel, but Augland has also been encouraged to both satire and reindeer spike good time music.
"Little Refugee" punishes us all for the indifference of Europe's refugees, musically it is a demonstration of power that opens with a biting Gatemouth Brown / Jimmie Vaughan guitar projection that settles on a locomotive comp of "Boogie Chillun '" / "You Don't Love Me ». A slide guitar creeps in gradually and towards the end Johnny sings: «13 years old, lost everything / lost father and mother / inside behind barbed wire / very scared. Little refugee. » and fadeout with John Lee Hooker riffs.
"Vacancy" is also in a boogie groove with a corrosive delivery of working life's new speech. Could have been on a record by Hoola Bandoola, and Augland's melodic flair and musical arrangement are just to bend in the dust for. Great chorus by Augland and Endre Kirkesola, and when the guitar solo takes a turn with Louis Jordan's "Choo Choo Choo Boogie", it is as if to remind that the humor in Jordan's jump blues had a socially critical sting:
«We are a sporty company, you should cycle to work / You have broad competence, but are no snob / Work easily under stress, with an agile strategy / And you must be proactive and forward-leaning / Flexible. Results-oriented. Dynamic, hungry, structured. "
"Hydrogen peroxide" is a story about a remedy used to fight salmon lice, but as Augland sings: "The wild salmon lost, but big money won." Here, the musical arrangement is absolutely outstanding. Trygve Rypestøl's tenor sax begins with soft soul jazz before the Ray Charles-educated Augland comes in with a hard-hitting piano transition against rocking blues swells that strand against concluding drum vortices, but the song disappears a bit in the text. A related song is "Black Sea", loosely based on the melody in Charles Brown's "Black Night" and with a certain similarity in mood. But where Brown's lyrics are about the personal loneliness of the blues, which is compared to a boat drifting on the sea, it is the endangered life in the sea that this song is about, and is actually approaching gospel in the hope that the next generation will save the earth. The message comes out better in this than in "Hydrogen Peroxide", but some of the verse lines could have benefited from a little more refinement, as long as the musical maintains such a high level. On «Svart hav», guest guitarist Øyvind Nypan must be emphasized, and Pål Svendsberget, Kjell Åge Staveland and Lars Lunde on various strings set absolutely beautiful tones in the arrangement by Einar Wallen Mjåland. The English-language blues «Friends», where Augland sings a duet with Lene Tønnesen, sounds like Lowell Fulson / B.B. King anno 1963. Choir after choir with sparkling distinct blue tones from Mr. Augland. A pure pleasure.
Then I saved the humor in the end. "Fastsjaman" has lap steel guitar and novelty lyrics and could have been a hit with Asleep at the Wheel. "Eggs and Bacon" reminds me of Hank Thompson's honky tonk song "Hangover Tavern", but musically it is closer to Lee Dorsey's tune "Holy Cow".