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MICHAEL MESSER
 Michael
Messer was born in Middlesex in 1956. Throughout his childhood and teens
he played rock music with his two brothers and in various local bands.
In his early twenties, Messer spent time in Nashville where he had the
chance to meet and hear some of the ‘greats’ of country music performing
in their home environment. These included Roy Acuff, Hank Snow and
Johnny Cash. Back home in England in the late seventies, Messer was
mastering the art of Mississippi delta blues slide guitar, buying his
first National steel guitar in 1979. He began playing blues gigs, both
as a solo artist and in various local bands in the early eighties.
In 1983 he met Ed
Genis and they began playing music together, a partnership that has
lasted for the past two decades. During that year, Messer started
gigging regularly with British blues singer, Mike Cooper, and through
him he got known on the folk and blues circuit. In 1984, Cooper asked
him to play slide guitar on The Continuous Preaching Blues, an album he
was recording with Ian Anderson (now editor of fROOTS).
The Michael Messer
Band was formed in 1985 and they cut their first album, Diving Duck, in
1987 which received some fantastic reviews. “Beautifully played. Diving
Duck is the kind of album Ry Cooder should be making”. Q magazine
In 1989 Messer
produced and played on an album with the legendary Venice Beach busker,
Ted Hawkins, called I Love You Too, which was later re-released as
Nowhere to Run. In that same year he became friends with the late S.E.
Rogie and produced some tracks for his New Sounds of S.E .Rogie album.
Messer’s second
album Slidedance was released in 1990, and one year later, he was voted
Acoustic Blues Artist of the Year at the B.B.C Awards. “To say that
Messer is a slide guitarist is like describing Mother Theresa as a nun!
Slidedance is possibly the finest blues / world music album of the year.
One of the best slide guitarists Britain has ever produced”. Time Out
Rhythm Oil, a trio
album with songwriter Terry Clarke and Texas guitar ace, Jesse ‘Guitar’
Taylor, was released in 1993. The CD boasts sleeve notes written by the
late Johnny Cash, a rare honour shared with Bob Dylan and Kris
Kristofferson. “What I hear here is the real thing - Bare-bones blues
gut-bucket rural rock. This record carried me away to a long time ago,
down a delta dirt road to a land of my musical good-old-daysing.
PS…Don't squeeze the trigger, if you can't stand the recoil.” Johnny
Cash
1995 saw the release
of Moonbeat, which featured a mixture of world music and blues, as well
as DJ Louie Genis (son of rhythm guitarist Ed) scratching old blues
vinyl. A practise that became popular a few years later with the likes
of Little Axe, Moby and R.L. Burnside. "MOONbeat is an extraordinary,
innovative album that deserves to be heard".
In 1999, Messer went
to Alberta to record with Canadian guitarist/songwriter Doug Cox. One of
Cox’s songs from the sessions, Cold When I’m Dead, which features Messer
playing electric slide guitar, can be heard in the latest Terry Gilliam
movie Tideland.
In 2001 Messer
released King Guitar, a compilation album comprising of sixteen tracks
from back catalogue. The album received critical acclaim on both sides
of the Atlantic, reached number one in the US Living Blues chart and in
May 2001 was the most played album on US college radio. One prominent
American reviewer described him as “an unavoidable force in modern
blues” and commented that “King Guitar has met a new century with style,
grace and a new colourful direction for the music”.
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