"Suitcase in my Hand" by Stone Bear
Review
I don't know if you follow the "Hot Music Live Presents" Spotify playlists, but I try and include new releases by artists we feature on the compilations on there: starting a new one every three months.
The most recent (still just current) one is for Summer 2024 and one of the first additions was "To the Light" by Stone Bear. As I reach the last week of it, one of the last will be their "Suitcase in My Hand".
I say "their" but I've been skirting round the pronoun issue for the band for some time now: not because there has been any gender transition involved but because recordings have tended more towards being solo ones by David John. Now I think we can move from the plural to the singular as his musical partner Jeff Dennis has returned with his family to Australia & clearly isn't on recordings any more. I'm sure we'll all wish him well: not only did he play with Stone Bear but also Roddy Byers' Skabilly Rebels and also had influences you'd not expect: for example his use of a suitcase instead of a (bass) drum was picked up by Izzie Derry prior to forming a band with a drummer.
Returning to the single, after really quite a long period of reporting David's evolution to pastoral, acoustic music, not necessarily blues in style, "Suitcase in My Hand" takes up where Robert Johnson's "Love in Vain" ends: a song which came to him pretty spontaneously. Recorded live into a single microphone to offer the authenticity he has always gone for, it's good to hear him back in the territory in which I first encountered him. As I have said so many times over the years in reviewing Stone Bear, no-one else round here really nails that inter-wars/Depression era lo-fi blues sound with as much accuracy, love & respect.
You know the story… the singer is moving on from somewhere he's more than happy to leave behind. There is no indication that where he's going will be much better, but could it be any worse? In any event it's what he does. One can only hope that David is singing in character & not sharing the story of his protagonist let alone Robert Johnson.
