New Englander Mark T. Small’s lightning fast guitar picking skills are on display on the all-acoustic Smokin’ Blues. Small, whose background includes a stint in the 1980s with the Indiana-based “newgrass” band called The Brown County Band and a dozen years as leader of Chicago-style electric blues band The Lonesome Strangers, has managed to fuse the extraordinary dexterity required for bluegrass picking with soulful acoustic blues.
Small’s first guitar influences were bluegrass and folk musicians, and he learned to play fiddle tunes on the guitar similar to Doc Watson and Norman Blake.  It wasn’t until the late 1980s that Small turned his focus to blues and not until about 2000 that he began to concentrate more earnestly on solo acoustic blues.
For his fourth solo recording effort, Smokin’ Blues, Small offers a range of excellent covers from the likes of Blind Boy Fuller, John Lee Hooker, Howlin’ Wolf, Reverend Gary Davis, Elmore James and Charlie Patton. The album includes Small’s stellar fingerpicking and flatpicking technique. Small said he was going for a recording that sounds and feels like he’s playing in a small room, and he succeeded.  He said the only effect he added was the lo-fi “radio tone” on Hooker’s “My Daddy Was a Jockey.” The album is entirely solo except for vocal accompanyment from 81-year-old bluesman Shor’ty Billups on “Walkin’ the Dog” and harmonica from Walter Woods on “Moanin’ at Midnight.”  Each of the songs on Smokin’ Blues is a stand-alone gem.  Small perfectly captures the spirit of blues classics such as Wolf’s “Moanin’ at Midnight,” Davis’  “Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning,” and Patton’s “Stone Pony Blues.”
Audio Stream: Mark T. Small, “Jockey Blues” [audio: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7770435/03%20Jockey%20Blues.mp3]
About the author: Bill Wilcox is a roots music enthusiast recently relocated from the Washington, DC area to Philadelphia, PA and back again.