Bob Log III is a relentless one-man Blues machine. Born in Chicago but raised in the Arizona desert, he is a curio in a jumpsuit, a slide guitar maestro with enough showmanship kitsch to give Jon Spencer a run for his money. Inspired by equal parts AC/DC and Delta Blues advocate Mississippi Fred McDowell, the 40-something Log tours the world about half of each year, armed with nothing but his guitar, a makeshift microphone wired to a helmet that covers his entire head and foot peddles that allow him to add rhythm.
“I describe my music as a Guitar Party! with the exclamation point,” Log once said in an interview with the blog Blues.gr. “I make something fun to play on guitar, then add drums to it until it’s even more fun to play. I am usually trying to sound like two guitar players and at least two drummers, sometimes three. People dance and smile so much their faces hurt in the morning.”
Log’s songs ride on his versatile guitar antics — finger picking one minute, riffing righteously the next. His voice is but another instrument in the mix — grunts and groans and callouts are as important as the often-rudimentary lyrics that emanate from his muffled mouth. He’s released eight or so full-length solo albums over the last 20 years — the most recent being 2016’s Guitar Party Power — but its Log’s singular, stripped-down one-man-band live show that remains his calling card and, as he is fond of saying, his saving grace.
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This article appears in Oct 4-11, 2017.
