The Beat: Carlos Johnson

Amol Sinha, 2L

Associate Copy Editor

If you’re ever in Chicago visiting a former love interest and instead of rekindling any remaining sentiment, you spend much of your five days there meeting her many handsome, male Ivy League grad student friends, the best treatment for your condition (there is no cure) is a live blues show. Seeing Carlos Johnson and the Serious Blues Band will transform your endless sea of inferiority into a satisfying wading pool of delicious melancholy.

For Carlos Johnson, the lack of metaphor is the metaphor. With a song proclaiming and entitled “You Better Not Leave Me ’Cause If You Do, I’m Gonna Chuck a Brick At You,” Johnson turns those all too often negatively connoted emotions of lust, possessiveness, obsession, and jealousy into a ball of imperfect, unrelenting passion. Sincere and raw, Johnson’s performance proves that this is the fuel from which art, creativity, and meaningful expression are born.

“Salut,” Johnson said between songs at the less than swank, but gentrified Chicago B.L.U.E.S. on Halstead Street. “I can drink in eight different languages.” He took a swig of his bourbon, adjusted his guitar strap, and peered out at the mainly white, yuppie audience who, under the influence of local brew, untucked their shirts, shouted, and danced, unleashing simultaneous airs of guilt, appreciation, and condescension. Johnson’s yolkish eyes welled up after a tight wince, the result of an orgasmic hard stroke of his weapon. Donning a sleeveless T-shirt and earrings, he played left-handed a guitar strung for a righty, treble strings on top, bass strings on bottom, a sign of ungroomed talent.

To sing the blues is to sing honesty. Johnson’s verses are products of years of internal reflection on every emotion felt, and a wallowing on the issues that plague every man’s mind and heart (“Sometimes I wonder why a woman’s got to wear her dress so tight/It’s that same thing that makes a man wanna stand up all night”).

Johnson, 61, was raised on the South Side of Chicago, spending most of his musical career as a side guitarist. Johnson’s first chance at the spotlight came during Otis Rush’s 2004 tour of Japan, during which Rush was unable to play due to medical reasons. Johnson impressed Japanese audiences and brought his sound back home. While he does play outside Chicago once in a while, Johnson can most reliably be found playing monthly at B.L.U.E.S. Surprise guest acts in Johnson’s show included a mystery harmonica player and Johnson’s sister, who sang blues renditions of nursery rhymes, which for some reason sounded sexual. While Johnson does have two albums out (In and Out and Live at B.L.U.E.S. on Halstead), nothing can compare to the aural and visual gratification experienced by seeing a live show.

With long-felt, jaded sentiment, meaty truth, and a grain of salt, Johnson reminds us that sometimes it takes familiar chords and a bit of self-pity to best help you move on.

Biographical information taken from Illinoisblues.com.