T-Model Ford could easily be one of the last remnants of the genuine blues masters. He may have started playing guitar late in life, but he's from the same tiny corner of Mississippi which spawned legends like Howlin' Wolf, R. L. Burnside and Mississippi Fred McDowell. Eighty-four with a bad hip, this former chain gang member is living the life at the end of his life. He says he plays the blues but doesn't get the blues. Regardless, he's got the right resume.

Born James Lewis Carter Ford, he has been shot, stabbed, beat unconscious and pinned under a fallen tree. He started life out right with some good old-fashioned child abuse. When Ford was 8, his father whupped him in the nuts with a piece of firewood, injuring one of his testicles so badly doctors removed it.  Later, he was sent to the chain gang as punishment for murder, and he has the ankle scars to prove it.  His first of many wives ran off with his dad, one died from self-poisoning, and another poisoned him.  A particularly mean one cut his throat. 

When he was 58, yet another in his long list of head-strong high-tempered women bought him a guitar and an amp and left it for him in the living room before leaving him for good. He had no idea how to play it, but he quickly learned.  He’s now a master of the venerable drone-y Mississippi hill country blues style that makes that white-boy Stevie Ray Vaughan-style yuppie redneck blues-rock have absolutely no excuses to exist.

A chord progression is a weapon of last resort, and a tuned-open dirty electric guitar riff is the engine that drives the automobile.  You can forget about power windows.  The One-Four-Five blues progression was invented to sell sheet music, not describe the real American art form as people actually heard it. You can't write this kind of thing down; knowing how to read and write in the first place doesn't really help much either.  

When he plays, he's been known to have a sign placed at the foot of his chair reading: "Management requests that you do not buy alcohol for T-Model Ford. Thank you for your co-operation."  T-Model can't read it anyway.

It took two weeks of hanging out in his house and yard, eating bar-b-q and getting drunk, for two guys from the Fat Possum record label to earn his trust. Now, T-Model Ford finds himself on their very diverse roster of recording artists including fellow hill country bluesmen like Burnside, Asie Payton, Cedell Davis, Charles Caldwell, Junior Kimbrough, Paul Wine Jones and even Mississippi Fred himself, together with more modern indie acts like the Fiery Furnaces, Andrew Bird, The Black Keys, Super Chikan, Dax Riggs, Country Teasers, Heartless Bastards, Colour Revolt, Dinosaur Jr. (the list goes on and on).

Also known as the Taildragger, T-Model has also found time to write (or dictate?) an advice column for Arthur Magazine.  He has strong views on gender relations that might offend your PC sensibilities, but you know he knows he's right (for himself at least).  He is getting up there in age and he's been known lately to do more rambling and less playing than he used to, but you will be sure to learn a thing or two either way, at least how not to let the worst life can throw at you stop you from having the best time you possibly can.