Thurs. Feb. 25

Johnny Cash once sang "I shot a man in Reno/Just to see him die," but to the best of our knowledge Johnny Cash - tough man though he sometimes was - never did that. Singer-guitarist T-Model Ford did kill a man with a switch blade in Tennessee. "I had to kill the man because he was gonna kill me," Ford has said. "He cut me first and I didn't back down." A lawyer helped reduce the ten-year sentence, and Ford spent the next two years on a chain gang.

That was before he was a musician. He first picked up the guitar at age 58 and is now 90. You know how a band comes to town and you think, "I like 'em, but I'm busy, maybe I'll catch 'em next time." Probably shouldn't do that with T-Model Ford, who's making a rare Massachusetts appearance Thurs. Feb. 25 at P.A.'s Lounge. And the
Old North Mississippi Hill country blues Legend is about to kick  off his 2010 United States tour. He's with drummer Marty Reinsel of the Seattle-based band Gravel Road. The show was put together with Jim Chilson of the opening band, Ten Foot Polecats, who opens the show.

It won't shock you to know T-Model Ford wasn't born with that quintessential - if wry - blues name. He was once James Lewis Carter Ford, and he grew up in a violent household in Mississippi. He began working in the fields at an early age."He has been shot, stabbed, and poisoned," wrote the late Jim Dickinson in the liner notes to T-Model's "Bad Man" album. "His ankles wear the ragged scars of chain gang shackles."

How'd he come to music? His wife bought him a guitar and amplifier as a present. The guitar remained in the box that it arrived in until a week later, when Ford's wife left him. "It wasn't tuned and I didn't know how so I tuned it my way...," Ford recalled to Ed Mabe for Delta Boogie online. "So I learned myself how to play."
 
You just know, T-Model is going to end up in the warm embrace of Fat Possum Records the anarcho-blues label that gave R.L. Burnside his home in his later years. In the mid-1990s, Ford was approached by Fat Possum's Matt Johnson and Bruce Watson. "They come to my house for two weeks trying to catch me," Ford has said. "Around that time I didn't know I was that good to get out and play. I could play 'em but I didn't know how good."
In 1997, at the age of 77, Ford released his debut on Fat Possum Records.  Since then T-Model Ford has recorded some fabulously lowdown and dirty albums on Fat Possum Records, Mudpuppy

Records, and currently with Alive Records.  He has also been featured in such documentaries as "You Can See Me Laughin'" & "M For Mississippi".
 
Ford's often turbulent life has nonetheless left a singular mark on the blues he plays, leading Rick Bragg of the New York Times to joke: "He did not sell his soul, as legend says Robert Johnson did.

The Devil, people say, would run from Mr. Ford."

As to the opener, Ten Foot Polecats are a three piece punk-blues band with their deep roots drawn from the North Mississippi Hill Country.  Even though they are basically in their sophomore season, they have made quite an impression on the Boston/Worcester music scenes as they are currently one of the few blues based bands booked across the state (and beyond) in the rock club circuit and on various punk and psychobilly bills. Ten Foot Polecats are creating their own sound and blurring the barriers between musical genres that have been created by some and adhered to by way too many.
 
Advance Tickets are $10, day of the show $12. The Polecats take the stage at 8:45 and T-Model Ford's on at 10.

345 Somerville Ave., Somerville, 617-776-1557 www.paslounge.com
www.bostonblues.com