Catfish Keith - Blues At Midnight (2020)

Back in the day, a Blues man might pick up his guitar or harp and set off down the road, looking to play for some folks in a bar or juke-joint for a few drinks, a square meal or a crib for the night. Nobody embodies that spirit today more than Catfish Keith, touring the less well-known by-ways of the world, pulling songs from his big bag of Blues numbers, and captivating his audiences with a kind of music that has deep roots in the Delta.

Keith Daniel Kozachik was born in East Chicago IN in 1962 and growing up in a steel town, he heard a lot of Blues on the radio. He started playing guitar as a teenager, trying to sound like Leo Kottke, but he was enthralled when he heard the playing of Son House, with that angry, slashing slide-work on a National Steel guitar. After school, Keith hit the road with his guitar, like the ‘wandering songsters’ of old. His travels took him to the Caribbean working as crew on a boat, where he picked up some of the style of the Joseph Spence, the Bahamian folk legend. While diving for lobsters in the Virgin Islands, Keith’s friend gently mocked his swimming style, so he picked up that ‘Catfish Keith’ tag too, which at least stopped people mispronouncing his Slovak surname. At the age of 22, Keith made his recording debut for the Kicking Mule label with ‘Catfish Blues’. The exposure gave Keith the chance to play gigs with experienced Blues performers like Jessie Mae Hemphill, Henry Townsend, Johnny Shines and ‘Honeyboy’ Edwards, adding to his musical education in every case.