Asie Payton
Worried
[Fat Possum]
Rating: 8.6
Asie Payton spent the years preceding his 1997 death plowing the fields
of Holly Ridge, Mississippi and playing guitar Saturday
nights in the town's supermarket- cum- jukejoint. Although his gigs barely
supported a lifestyle well below the poverty line, Payton rarely left his
hometown long enough to tour and refused to see the logic of recording his
work for resale. Although Fat Possum Records managed to record barely an
album's worth of Payton live at Junior Kimbrough's place, all attempts to
release the material before Payton's death failed.
Quite obviously, Payton's posthumous debut, Worried, is garnered
from those live recordings. Although they were originally intended as
demos, they provide an egregiously short but extremely potent taste of
Payton's vanished genius. With the call of simplicity as beauty at its
core, Worried captures Payton energizing a set of traditional blues
numbers with his austere, economical guitar work.
Matched against these
basic blues riffs and his unadorned playing, Payton's vocals shine. Blessed
with a thin, powerful voice that immediately flattens others to cardboard,
Payton melds the uncanny timing of funk and the strength of soul to his own
blues backbone. When he sings, "It's three o' clock in the morning and I
can't close my eyes/ I can't find my baby and I can't be satisfied," it's
not that he sings with the authority of someone who has felt the emotion,
but rather that he sings the emotion itself. "Worried Life," a rollicking
blues lament further bolstered by Payton's jaw dropping vocals, has quickly
become the song most likely to disturb my neighbors. People-- and I'm
talkin' truth here-- this disc only leaves my stereo to travel with me on
my journey to spread the Gospel of Asie.
While remixes have historically proven a repeated stumbling block for Fat
Possum artists, this album fares better than most, going one for two. While
"Asie's Jam" rubs elbows amicably with rolling band numbers like "Nobody But
You" and "Skinny Legs and All" and serves as a dancable reminder that
Worried was recorded in the '90s as opposed to the '50s or '60s, the
forced and ungainly remix of "I Love You" sucks a little bit o' ass, issuing
the album's lone missed note.
Worried is perhaps 1999's most surprising album thus far and a gentle
reminder to those apt to fret over the relevance of popular music in our
society. Payton played in anonymity his entire life for little more than
the reward of making music. So long as talents continue carrying his
torch, whether in the hills of Mississippi or in the pub around the corner,
we can all rest easy. Billy Bragg was wrong-– capitalism can't kill music.
God bless you, Asie-– hope you scored a good gig up there.
-Neil Lieberman