November 12, 2001; Review of the Kinks tribute CD, “Give The People What We Want- Songs Of The Kinks”
Gramps performs “Sunny Afternoon”
“He’s entertained everywhere from the streets and medicine shows to Bob Dylan’s dressing room. In this day and age, seeing the Seattle based singer-songwriter-guitarist who calls himself Baby Gramps is the closest you’ll ever get to experiencing Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music in person. He sings in a voice that is somewhere between Cliff “Ukulele Ike” Edwards’ and Blind Willie Johnson’s, and his style evokes long dead pickers such as Charlie Patton and Riley Puckett. He plays with metal finger-picks on a battered National Steel that at last count had four useable frets left on it and an old clamp wrench holding one of the tuning pegs on. With a long, flowing beard and mannerisms that recall early Popeye, Baby Gramps is something of a national treasure, the final repository of an entire era of pop culture. Gramps draws from thousands of Paleozoic