When R L Burnside released the album ‘Bothered Mind’ in 2004, he showed the world that the blues were not just meant to mutate into ankle-twisting rock n roll. The sound of the twelve-bar blues emerged in Africa, as did the beats that would give rise to hip hop and when Burnside combined the two, hundreds of years from their point of origin, it would be a marriage of fate, a beautiful partnership that simply made sense.
In Australia, at precisely the same moment, a gent of much younger persuasion surrounded naturally by the hip hop of his generation but as deeply embedded in the blues as those far beyond his years, made the very same discovery. What he proved with that parallel step all those years ago, was possession of a foresight generally gifted only to those many decades further along.
Ash Grunwald put together his first album, ‘Introducing Ash Grunwald’, leaning heavily on traditional blues but it was his second album ‘I Don’t Believe,’ released in April of 2004, that would change his state of play. It was his first album – of many to come – to graft technology onto the deeply rooted foliage of the Delta swamp.
10 years since the release of that first blues record and hundreds of thousands of arses shaken since, Ash welcomes you as always to strive toward life’s greatest mission amongst the sadness and the challenges – the presence of good times and the possession of a happy heart.