Reviewed by Ian Phillips.
By Eli De Mon, Area Pirata Records 2021.
Eli De Mon is a wonderful 20-year-old blues artist from Pisa Italy.
Although she is still very young, she is a masterful blues guitarist and for the best part of the last decade she’s been thrilling audiences across Europe with her unique blues interpretations.
During that time she’s toured extensively and supported international acts such as The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Reverend Beatman and Cedric Burnside.
She has released six albums since 2014, and if you do the maths you realise that she was 14 years old when she released her first album.
Her instrument of choice is the resonator guitar but she plays all instruments on this fantastic album, electric and acoustic guitars; lap steel; organ; sitar; dilruba; drums; and vocals.
Eli loves the early blues of pioneers such as Bessie Smith, Billie Halliday, Son House and Fred McDowell and she brings a vibrant, punkish, energy to her performances on Countin’ The Blues.
The recording is in fact one half of a package that Eli put together during the many COVID lockdowns Italy has undergone, which also happened to coincide with her pregnancy.
The full package includes a book Countin’ The Blues: Indomitable Women that she has written about the female blues artists of the 1920s.
This album, Countin’ The Blues: Queens of The 1920s is the second half of the package.
The book preceded the album and while she was writing it she made the decision to record a song from each of the featured artists in the book.
It’s a tribute to these great women whose art has largely been forgotten, or undervalued, by many people.
Amongst the selections are well known tracks such as Bessie Smith’s Blue Spirit Blues and Elizabeth Cotten’s Freight Train but the album also includes some tracks that had become lost treasures until unearthed by Eli and brought back into the light of day.
Eli De Mon has achieved a lot in the early years of what should be a memorable career.
At 20 she’s an established recording artist, published author and mother.
I wonder what the next 20 years will bring.
