Culture
Blues guitarist Albert Cummings talks songwriting, what you learn from teaching yourself
By: Emily Votaw
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MARIETTA, Ohio (WOUB) – Blues musician Albert Cummings has built a reputation for blending hard-earned technical skill on the guitar with the emotional intensity that defines the genre. Over the past 25 years, he has released ten albums, the most recent of which, Strong (2024), notably topped the Billboard Blues charts.
He closes out the first night of the Mid-Ohio Valley Blues, Jazz, and Folk Music Society’s 32nd River City Blues Festival on Friday, March 14, at the Hotel Lafayette (101 Front Street).
Ahead of that performance, Cummings spoke with WOUB Culture’s Emily Votaw. Find a transcript of their conversation, edited for length and clarity, below.
Emily Votaw: The first instrument you learned to play was the banjo. How do you think that impacted you? And you taught yourself, is that correct? Can you tell me about that?
Cummings: The only reason I didn’t start on guitar is because I couldn’t fit my hand around the neck. My father always had a guitar hanging around, but I could never get my hand around. It was just too big. So the banjo had a smaller neck and it was a place for me to start. Kids in today’s world have smaller guitars, so they don’t have to play the banjo to start out to try to play the guitar.
I think everything that we do in life, whether it’s a career, a skill or anything, whether it’s playing music or anything, first thing you got to have is the desire. And if you’ve got the desire, you’ll figure out a way to make it happen. And if you don’t have the desire, then try something else. It’s a monumental feat to grab something and say, I’m going to learn this thing. Even when you’re teaching yourself, you’re always listening or trying to learn from somebody. I’m showing my age because now you can go on YouTube and basically learn anything you want to, and that’s all wonderful and everything.
But, again, I think you have to go back to the concept of “desire,” because you’ve got to have it – and it was even more important to have back then when it was harder to try to figure things out yourself. Because the thing is, if you have the desire, it doesn’t matter how hard it is, you’ll just keep going at it.
What was it like writing for Strong?
Cummings: Well, I usually go to the studio with maybe 25 songs and I usually do somewhere around 12 songs on an album. And I just try to bring in the best stuff I’ve written. But I’m always writing. Somehow little ideas come to me and I hopefully write ’em down and start working on ’em. Because some songs will come out in five minutes, and some songs take me months.
The older I get, the better songs I want to write. So I tend to think more about them. And sometimes I don’t even like that. I wish I could just blurt it out, but then I overthink and then I start writing, but think ‘well, I wouldn’t want to say that,’ or ‘I wouldn’t want say this,’ and ‘I got to be careful what I say here,’ and ‘I want to make sure I’m getting this point across.’ So a little three minute song can take hours, days, and months – if you let it.
I’m calling because you’re going to play the 32nd River City Blues Festival. From your perspective as a professional blues musician, what’s the cultural value of these kind of events and the organizations that put them together?
Cummings: Well, to me, it’s the greatest honor in the world to be even invited, no matter what position I am on a roster. That tells me that I’ve done something that communicated with the people that host that event, that think that their listeners, their ticket buyers, will come to that show because they want to see something that they appreciate. And that’s what it comes down to. Events are successful when you have people that book music that people will enjoy. Not everybody’s going to enjoy every band, but I find that events that have people that are up on their acts, the ticket buyers eventually gain a trust in those people, so that no matter what they bring in, those ticket buyers know it’s probably going to be pretty good and pretty entertaining.