Winter Blues - Adam Gussow

On the road with a Harlem duo

FEBRUARY - NEAR ALLENTOWN, PA.

"Stay out of this, Mister Adam!" Miss Macie hisses, her lavender Yoko Ono glasses glinting as I look up in the rearview mirror. "Mister Satan oughta go get himself a white whore!"

"I'm out of it," I murmur, struggling to keep the car centered as we fly home toward New York along I-78 past Maxatawney and Kurtztown. Tonight's Happy Hour gig in Harrisburg is already a memory, eighty miles behind. Snowbanks gleam in the cockeyed glare of my misaligned left low beam. The right went out last week and really should be replaced.
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You can read the rest of Adam Gussow's essay about his blues group, "Satan and Adam", in a new collection due out in June 2007 entitled

JOURNEYMAN'S ROAD: MODERN BLUES LIVES FROM FAULKNER'S MISSISSIPPI TO POST-9/11 NEW YORK

Adam has a web site Modern Blues Harmonica which features instantly uploadable lessons (hosted by tradebit.com), and links for every sort of Satan and Adam related stuff. He also has a harmonica teaching thing going on YouTube.

* 04/1995. Harper's Magazine. Copyright of "Winter Blues" is the property of Harper's Magazine. Its content may not be copied without the copyright holder's express written permission except for the print or download intended solely for the use of the individual user.

** Adam Gussow is a musician and graduate student in English at Princeton University.

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