|
|
|
 |
||||
| LACKAWANNA
BLUES Please click on Concert Series for performance schedule. |
|
|||
| The Greenwich Time January 9, 2003 By Patrick Verel Staff Writer Singing the 'Lackawanna Blues': Abandoned by mother, writer pays tribute to the woman who raised him. It wasn't until he turned 11 that Ruben Santiago-Hudson began to fully appreciate Rachel Crosby, who he knew at the time as Nanny.  Now, decades later, he's on a mission to make sure the world knows her the way he did. So he's singing the "Lackawanna Blues." With only blues composer and guitarist Bill Sims at his side, Santiago-Hudson performs a tribute to the woman who raised him when he was abandoned by his mother in the upstate New York town just south of Buffalo. The play, the first penned by Santiago-Hudson, made its debut at New York's Joseph Papp Public Theater in April 2001. Now, a cross-country run of performances settles in for a monthlong stay at the Long Wharf Theater in New Haven. "The reason I started was selfish, I wanted to make a tribute to the wonderful woman who saved my life," Santiago-Hudson says. "After 9/11, it widened as other people wanted to hear the affirmation that everything was going to be all right. Nanny's righteousness and love just makes everyone open up." In the 1950s, Lackawanna was a magnet for blacks migrating from the South. Good jobs could be had in steel plants, grain mills, railroads or on the shores of Lake Erie. It is in this environment that Rachel Crosby came to acquire two rooming houses, a taxi stand and a restaurant. The men, women and children who passed through the doors of those boarding houses provide the color for "Lackawanna Blues." There are roughly 20, and Santiago-Hudson assumes the vocals and mannerisms of each one himself. But he says he could easily expound on many more of the down and out souls he grew up with. "I would enjoy doing it as a weekly series because I could introduce the people that came through the revolving door, all needing the same thing -- love," he says. There is, for instance, Ol' Po' Carl, an elderly man who used to play baseball in the Negro League; Freddie Cobb, who served in the Army in World War II but wasn't allowed to carry a gun; and Lemuel Taylor, who comes to Nanny's house after he's released from the Gowanda Psychiatric Hospital. "I tell my wife things and she says, 'You never told me that!' There are so many stories," Santiago-Hudson says. What comes though more than anything from the story is the value of spiritual, if not religious, fulfillment in the face of extreme poverty. "What Nanny set me down and told me was my life was filled with love," he says. "You can have all of the exterior basics and none of the interior. You gotta go and tap on their hearts and find out what's inside." From an actor's perspective, the parts he plays are more than just a cavalcade of testimonials. After all, his recollections were seen through the eyes of a young boy. "It's a man's interpretation of a child's perspective. We stick with the kid's view in his reality and my interpretation of that reality," he says. "That's getting really heavy, I know. I've reached a plateau in my craft, though. I wanted to be different and be able to break it down to another level." The presence of Sims, probably best known from the PBS documentary "A Love Story," is an aspect of the show that sets it apart from other one-man plays. "More than just music, he's an incredible support," says Santiago-Hudson. "He's not only everyone in the rooming house, he's my brother, father and son, and through his music he's everyone else. If the play had gone nowhere after the public theater, I've still got another brother." Sims, who lives in Flushing, Queens, says playing with Santiago-Hudson is more structured than when he plays with a band, but the similarities between the two are stronger than the differences. "I have to be at a certain place for Ruben. I have to be at the same place at the beginning and the end, but (both times) we want to take the audience on a musical journey," he says. "I don't like to record either one, because that thing we have with the audience is special, and to record it is almost sacrilege. That particular performance is only with that audience and they'll take that away with them." Sims grew up in Ohio, and says he remembers listening to jazz on a radio station based in Rochester, N.Y. That geographic closeness (Lackawanna is about an hour west of Rochester) made it easy for the two men to connect when it came time to compose music for the play. "I'd been writing this music all my life because I knew those characters," Sims says. "I told him I wanted to keep the music very true to the area; it's a little of the Delta blues but not too much because that's not what was happening there. I hate it when music doesn't fit the period piece." That period -- in which Nanny went so far as to take care of a homeless raccoon -- retains great relevance for modern times, says Santiago-Hudson. "People to this day still like to reflect about that community," he says. "There were these little towns like Akron, Ohio, and Bethlehem, Ala., where everyone took care of each other and everyone knew each other. If you were homeless back then it was because you couldn't be strong-armed into a home. It's a reminder to get back to that sort of community." What amazes him most now are the stories people relate to him after shows about Nanny, or an aunt, mother or grandmother who sounds similar to her. At a show in Kalamazoo, Mich., a woman told him how when her uncle died, Nanny drove her to Port Huron, Ohio, for the funeral. In Seattle, another woman told him she met her husband at one of the boarding houses in Lackawanna. "I'm still trying to analyze her," says Santiago-Hudson. "Sometimes, when she'd say, 'Everything's gonna be all right in the end' it was her getting herself ready for the afterlife. Some days I look at it that way but sometimes I remember her just saying, 'This is what I do.' I think she'd do it anyway even if there weren't any by and by waiting for her." "What Ruben does is part of the black tradition, the vocal tradition, back when storytellers were as popular as musicians," says Sims. "He paints those characters just as they were." Copyright (c) 2003, Southern Connecticut Newspapers, Inc. |
||||
 The New York Times This childhood reminiscence, written and performed by Ruben Santiago-Hudson, is unlike a lot of inaugural literary ventures in that it was composed more out of reflection than angst. There is no soul-searching, no brooding; the playwright isn't even the main character. Instead, the play focuses on the woman who reared him, Rachel Crosby, who owned a rooming house in Lackawanna, NY. Through the eyes of 20 or so characters, the author presents Miss Rachel as tough, energetic, prinicpled and saintly. It's an idealized portrayl but performed with marvelous subtlety and rare humility. It is an unashamed work of thanks, admirable and winning because of how unself-conscious it is. |
||||
|
The Buffalo News Blues guitarist and songwriter Sims has a lot to do with the smooth flow of events. From his solitary stool Sims, hunched over his guitar, strums out chords to announce some dramatic moment, or beautifully pushes along a monologue with a light, propulsive sequence that is airy and metallic at once. Only one time does he sing, and then it is to movingly punctuate the story of Freddie, a man demeaned by his government when he had to stack the bodies of his African-American brothers during World War II and bury them "with some kind of dignity." "I wonder when, I wonder when I'll be called a man," the lines go. It is one of five impressive songs Sims wrote for the play. |
||||
|
|
||||
|
||||
|
The New York Times Accompanied by Bill SIms, Jr., who provided original blues riffs on acoustic guitar as a delicate punctuation to the narrative.....
The New York Amsterdam
News Santiago-Hudson entertains the audience by playing the harmonica at times and accompanying a blues guitarist, Bill Sims, Jr., who sits on the left side of the stage and plays catchy tunes as a backdrop to some of the stories. |
||||
|
Time Out New York Santiago-Hudson brings 1950's Lackawanna to life on a bare stage he shares only with guitarist Bill Sims, Jr., whose rolling, laconic blues licks give the show a rhythmic underpinning. |
|
|||
|
Back Stage Santiago-Hudson is also a superb blues musician whose harmonica and vocals are augmented throughout by the gifted guitarist Bill Sims, Jr.
New York Post Bill Sims, Jr., accompanies the memories on a quietly emotional acoustic guitar and Santiago-Hudson occasionally joins in on harmonica.
Back Stage Throughout, "Lackawanna Blues" is punctuated by the evocative music of Bill Sims, Jr., who sits on stage playing bluesy tunes on his acoustic guitar.
THEATRE.COM Ruben on Bill, "But for now I just want to tell her story, with Bill Sims who's a master at blues. He wrote five new songs for this show, and he never ceases to amaze me. I knew he had it in him, which is why I grabbed him when I did. He amazes me with all the colors that he brings. I want to hear him play the whole rainbow." |
||||
|
home| concert series | press | bio. | hear the music | photo gallery | videos | links | contact info Bill Sims Jr. & Mark LaVoie | American Roots Orchestra | Lackawanna Blues photos © 2001 Michal Daniel |
||||
