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ALBERT CUMMINGS
BAR-BAND BLUES
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I walked in during the Hendrix medley. And it was a good one. A delicate "Little Wing" segued into "Voodoo Chile," which was tweaked by an unexpected and angular chromatic ascending run topped off by snatches of "Purple Haze" and "Foxy Lady." But it was a Hendrix medley — an inherent cliché in the realm of blues rock that Williamstown guitarist Albert Cummings had plunged into. Nonetheless, the full house at Worcester’s Union Station blues and jazz club last Saturday ate it up, as they did his Albert King covers and his funky version of the Rolling Stones’ "You Can’t Always Get What You Want" and — good God — even that moldy, overcooked chestnut "Got My Mojo Working." With this repertoire and a snarling, sustain-soaked Stratocaster tone and a mastery of pentatonic scales plucked from the textbook of his primary sonic influence, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Cummings proved he knows how to turn a bar audience on. What he didn’t prove is that he’s capable of originality or artistry. And his new national debut, True to Yourself (Blind Pig), which follows two self-released discs, doesn’t take him much closer to that point. It’s soaked with Vaughan-isms, and the lyrics don’t stretch much beyond June/moon rhyming and shopworn themes about love and how good the blues makes him feel. Cummings’s ballad "Together As One" was the creative apex of the Union Station show, according his warm voice a strong melody and lyrics that explored the dynamics of a long-term relationship. Whatever his shortcomings, they don’t seem to be impeding his career. He’s caught the ears of one of the country’s most respected blues labels and some of its most respected players including B.B. King, who had him open a string of concerts, and Tommy Shannon, the Texas bassist who was half of Vaughan’s rhythm section, Double Trouble. Shannon brings his strong playing to True to Yourself, and he produced Cummings’s previous album, From the Heart, which features Double Trouble. Nonetheless, if Cummings, who seems an amiable fellow with a passing resemblance to Woody Harrelson, wants to be more than a bar-band performer with a better-than-average aptitude for copying flashy guitar licks, he’s going to have to learn to speak and play from his own heart — the way his hero Vaughan did. (Albert Cummings opens for Johnny Winter next Friday, November 19, at the Paradise, 967 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston; call 617-228-6000.)
BY TED DROZDOWSKI
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