© Bluestronomical Publishing Inc. 2007

Tom Doughty
Running Free
Corker Music CD002

Though he has been in a wheelchair for many years due to a motorcycle accident, British guitarist Tom Doughty's love for music was just too much for him to call it a day. With determination to play again, he re-invented his playing style to lap steel guitar. Doughty's body movements are limited. The playing is transcendent enough to take listeners on the musical journeys they want. Transcendence and introversion make Doughty's CD Running Free a tasteful piece of work. Blues seeps its way into Tom's playing. But, so do other worldly sources. Enough to create a haunting effect.

The lap steel guitar playing is mournful and yet a portrait of tranquility in all 13 cuts. Only Tom can get away with turning "Eleanor Rigby" into a personal requiem at a graveside service. A collector of resonator guitars and designer of his own slides, Doughty has the goods to deliver a treasuretrove of music basking in roots traditions. Vocalizing his resonator guitars on his own "Your Picture Has Faded" and Muddy Water's "Catfish Blues," Doughty has what it takes to walk in the shadows of Roy Book Binder and Paul Geremia. His vocals are deep and convey sadness in "Your Picture Has Faded."

Doughty didn't have to grow up a poor sharecropper's son to derive musical inspiration from the blues. Just the vocals and lap steel playing are the only strengths needed. If you need a moment of self-reflection, you can attain that through the mournful "Darlin Cora". Old bluesman Furey Lewis has been a forgotten entity and no modern day players seem to bother with his catalog. Doughty's work on Furey's "Brownsville Blues" can get him tips if he plays on Beale Street. Doughty uses Charlie Patten's "Some These Days" as a palette for painting a rural America that no longer exists.

The CD contains liner notes of Doughty's thoughts of the tracks put down. They are a naked depiction of a musician who can strike the chord in all of us. Doughty's slide and finger picking are smooth, clean and gush with notes that swirl outward but always gently fall back to earth.

- Gary Weeks -


Southwest Blues CD Review - August 2007

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