Like so many of the other musician’s I’ve written about here, Chris Rea is a survivor. His wisdom and depth are hard-won, and there’s as much sorrow as joy in his music.

He’s a superstar in Europe, but never broke big in the U.S. After a lengthy life-threatening bout of pancreatitis, he decided to quit making pop music designed to maximize his income, and returned to his first love, the Blues. In 2005, he released ‘Blue Guitars’, a mammoth project combining his painting with 130 new songs on 11 CDs. I don’t have it, because it’s so damn expensive, but it’s supposed to be incredible, and I hope to end up with it eventually. He’s said that he’s retiring for health reasons, but I hope that’s premature.

In the meantime, you might try ‘Blue Jukebox’. And here’s the ‘Blue Cafe’ vid, from the album of the same name.

And let’s not neglect ‘Nothing to Fear’, with some mind-melting slide guitar work and an Arabic theme.

And ‘Cry for Home’, which is about the African slave trade and its connection to the heart of American music and culture. Deep, rocking blues.

His early masterpiece is the album ‘The Road to Hell’. Los Blues Guys performed it, and I may re-master the tape that survives of one of those performances. In the meantime, check out Chris’s version.

He’s one of the most soulful slide guitar players alive. And there’s a Texas connection, too. On ‘The Road to Hell’, we have his song, ‘Texas’. I like the conceit in the video that it’s possible to drive from England Germany to Texas, if you just want it bad enough:

It rocks much harder than ‘Road to Hell’, incidentally.

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