First -- I know I said I'd be covering the blues festival this weekend, but unseen forces kept me from last night's festivities. I'll be happy to print any observations, thoughts or comments from anyone who was there. I'll be there today and tomorrow.

I got to talk to Peter Karp this week, too late to include a story in our print preview of the festival. But it is appearing in today's paper.

Here's that story, plus some thoughts I've added here and there, plus a perfromance photo of Karp thanks to Debra at Blind Pig Records, plus some audio clips of my interview, and plus a brief clip from one of my favorite songs on his new album, "Shadows and Cracks."

Peter Karp will play tomorrow on the final day of the Pittsburgh Blues Festival at Hartwood Acres.
Click photo for larger image.Listen InPeter Karp
Getting started in blues clubs.
Recording in Turkey.
Boxing and Amelia Earhart.
A clip from "I Understand" on his "Shadows and Cracks" album.

I know, I know, he's not exactly a blues singer, but I like what he's done with his bluesy roots and generally cool attitude. Besides, he was fun to talk to, and willing to humor BlueNotes for an entertaining half-hour.

Here's the interview story, expanded exclusively for the BlueNotes fanbase (is it time to start a BlueNotes MySpace page?):

Peter Karp, vagabond minstrel for a neurotic nation, has dedicated his new CD, "Shadows and Cracks," to "Buddy" (7/3/95-12/29/06). But who was Buddy?

"Buddy was my old faithful dog -- the best dog I ever had," Karp said Tuesday between shows, picking and singing his way across the country to the blues festival for his set tomorrow.

"Buddy was like a Robert DeNiro character --- 'you lookin' at me?' -- a 135-pound lab with a chip on his shoulder. I really liked that. Buddy bit probably seven or eight people in his life, and he was right every time. He never made a mistake."

I call Karp a vagabond because he seems to spend most of his time roaming the country in his RV, writing songs and playing them for increasingly appreciative audiences.

It's that kind of lifestyle that's helped make Karp a singer of original songs that offer a slice of half-baked wry visions of his world, a slightly skewed universe running almost parallel to our own. It's the kind of thinking that has writers comparing him to Bob Dylan, John Prine, James Taylor and Phil Ochs.

Karp himself seems rather nonplussed by all that high-fallutin' praise.

"I met Willie Dixon some years back -- spent the weekend with him and talked about songwriting. You just write about things that you think about and that connect with other people -- open yourself up to everybody. But you have to have something to say. Nobody wants to hear a bore or a whiner."

Karp lists a variety of life influences on his MySpace page -- from Saul Bellow to Freddie King to Hunter Thompson to -- Amelia Earhart. I had to ask him about that one.

"Amelia Earhart was just so cool. I read a book when I was about 10 ... here's this woman, who was a pilot when nobody was a pilot and then she takes off in the sky and disappears. I found that to be so inspirational," he said, laughing, apparently, at the idea of such youthful inspiration in the face of tragedy. "She was a free spirit and like all the great free spirits -- they disappear." (Click the link under the photo for the Amelia Earhart story as Karp tells it.)

Here's the full list of those influences:

Bob Dylan, Freddie King, Otis Redding, John Prine, Ted Hawkins, Randy Newman, Robert Johnson, Phil Ochs, Elmore James, Willie Dixon, Van Morrison, Jerry Lee Lewis, John Irving, Hunter S. Thompson, Saul Bellow, Chuck Berry, Bruce Springsteen, Jonathan Richman, Amelia Earhart, Muhammad Ali, David Allen Coe, KRS1.

I had the temerity to suggest that he might have missed somone who could make a worthy contribution: Kinky Friedman. He's not a bluesman either (well, he did have a band once called The Texas Jewboys, but I don't think they were a blues band). Kinky gave up music for writing detective stories, then ran for governor of Texas last year. He's one of my favorite people, so I didn't see any reason why he shouldn't be one of Karp's.

Generously enough, Karp seemed to like the idea. "I love Kinky Friedman. I'd love to meet him. Kinky's a man of the people," he said. "He's what George Bush would be if George Bush were ... real."

But enough politics. What about the blues? After all, Karp is bringing his literate songwriting and slightly off-kilter observations to a blues festival. How does he fit in?

"I grew up learning and playing blues in the North and the South. I always thought that the blues was all about songwriting. Robert Johnson was like the Ira Gershwin of the blues -- the themes and images that he conjured up are still relevant today. If Amy Winehouse covered "Stones in My Passway" (one of the Johnson classics), she'd have a hit." (In another audio link above, he talks about his early blues days.)

But, he adds, "Blues to me is evolved. I hear more blues in rap and hip hop now than I hear in blues. Blues songs have the notes, the voices, the performances, but the sentiments are derivative of what people were talking about in the golden age of blues -- fat-legged women, big boss men....

"Good rap has the real sentiment of the struggles that people go through in life. That's what's missing from a lot of blues today."

So then this singer/songwriter gig is one that's here to stay until he disappears like Amelia Earhart?

"The only thing I can trust is songwriting and performing. In the end, sitting down and writing and performing a song and playing it for people, having that exchange, is truly the only thing I can count on in my life. Everything else seems to come and go, and that's why I'm here. I'm not getting all (bad word here) religious and (different bad word), but I realized some years back that this is it."

"This," in that case, is making good music, and if we listen closely, we'll be better off for it.

An update on Guitar Zack

Here's a note from Paul Baughman of the ElDorado Kings about West Mifflin's Zack Wiesinger, who's touring with guitarist Steve Vai. He sends a link to a story about Zack in Modern Guitars Magazine, sent to him by Zack's mother.

First Published: July 20, 2007, 7:45 p.m.