BSPH: Luther Allison - Meet Me In My Own Hometown

"Meet Me In My Own Hometown" is a song by American Blues guitar player Luther Allison. It was released in 1992 on an album titled "Hand Me Down My Moonshine". The song is an old school throwback acoustic folk blues with a strong minimalist vibe. It is an example of Luther Allison's exceptional talent of making something special out of whole bunch of nothing.

What is fascinating about this song is how little of the song there is and yet how big it feels. It makes an impression of The Song. (at least for me).

The arrangement is folk blues classic done to perfection. Luther Allison was the student of the game and he played with the greats like Howlin' Wolf. He knew how to make the song tick and not even break a sweat. He was the right stuff.

"Meet Me In My Own Hometown" is just a basic chord loop and a very simplistic even barebones set of repetitive lyrics laid on top of it always going back to the core refrain. The song starts with some cool blues guitar licks slowly setting in the tone and the mood of the proceedings - playful and somewhat tongue-in-cheek with that infinite overheated swamp dusty chill. This song does not really care about anything except for itself - it is here to have some good time and be excessively full of itself. This song just likes to be played. And it is really unusual to listen to a song with such an attitude.

The guitars swirl around the chords with fills zigzagging all over it like those flies. The groove it sets in is indelible and eerily irresistible. It is basic blues stomp, but it is done so well and with such mighty swagger you don't really need it to be anything else. The beat goes on so steady it seems like it was there forever and it can go on a couple of infinities and never get old.

"Meet Me In My Own Hometown" just circles around the core refrain going over and over again barely noticeably moving forward. In a way, it is a kind of sonic starfish. If you look at it - it seems like nothing is really happening, but if you shift your attention onto something else and then come back - it turns out a lot of stuff had changed in-between.

The song ebbs and flows back and forth starting mild and getting harder near the end of the verse with the strumming getting more intense and emotions wrapping up the vocals. Over the course of the song the tension showly grows. The whole thing culminates with breaking into mountain climbing dueling solos that go broadway in their swashbuckling fencing. It is like a pack of fireworks going off to fight the thunder and lightning Godzilla style.

The lyrics are also very interesting beast. It is structured as a sort of dreamy rambling conversation with a friend (probably an imaginary one). The protagonist asks whether his friend would meet him in his own hometown in the future so that they could have a big-big-big party there and the blues would be played all day and all night to the end of time and everything would be just fine just like this song. After a while a question morphs into a taunt but everything else stays the same.

Each sentence is capped with the phrase "...in my home home town". It is repeated to the point it looses even a semblance of meaning and turns into some kind of a wraths - a distant and obviously impossible dream. After a while, there is distinct feel of despair seems lurking deep in the background. It is very grim and bleak song wrapped into a feel-good hangout stomp like a mummy.

"Meet me in my home town" is a textbook example of classic blues "less is more" approach. There is just a little bit of the stuff and it kinda erupts upon the listener in the sweeping surge of cool.