July 5–12, 2001

music picks|blues

Super Chikan

James "Super Chikan" Johnson is an all-around Outsider Artist. He makes art objects and musical instruments from found materials that he adorns with elaborate paint jobs, often involving his totem animal and map scenes — and he’s a trucker, too! What he lacks in formal arts training he more than makes up for in zesty originality. As far as the blues go, having Big Jack Johnson as uncle and mentor doesn’t hurt. Mix that upbringing with a childhood spent communing with the chickens in his yard and you have a very rare performer. Mostly Chikan sticks to his Chikantar — made from a gas can painted as a road map — on Shoot That Thang (Rooster Blues), though he switches from his homemade ax off to boogie piano on the humorously lovestruck "Marry Me." His blues blend song with spoken musings, with a slightly free verse edge. Super Chikan says he feels like he is a "lost history book," one that will be discovered sometime down the road as preserving a slice of working life on today’s Delta.

—Mary Armstrong

Fri., July 6, 8 p.m., $16, Café Classics, 817 N. Easton Rd, Doylestown, 215-489-3535.