Hot didgeridoo! Sammons is coming back to Maxine's

Several years ago singer-songwriter Paul Sammons had a more or less weekly gig at Maxine's, a downtown bar on Bathhouse Row in Hot Springs. But Sammons flew the coop, so to speak, in search of greener pastures. Now, for at least one night, Sammons will return to his old Arkansas haunt.

"I moved to Colorado for a while," Sammons says. "Played a lot in the ski country while I was there."

Although he plays with a band sometimes, he says he will be doing a solo show this weekend: "I'll play guitar and didgeridoo and harmonica and keyboard and sort of have a 'virtual band.'"

The didgeridoo, that long wooden wind instrument associated with Aborigines in Australia, is one of the things about Sammons that led to Hot Springs music fans flocking to his then weekly shows. He finds the instrument adds to his enjoyment of his solo approach.

"I really get into it," he says. "In a one-man band sort of show, it fills a space, and it's something else I can play while sitting down and playing the guitar. You don't need to use your hands while playing it. Plus I've been looping it lately to add to its effects.

"I first heard it when I was in Oregon and a friend who was into it showed me a CD of music that featured it."

In 2010, while still a frequent visitor to Hot Springs, Sammons recorded an album, Woke Up This Mornin' in the Arkansas Delta. He plays the didgeridoo on four of the 14 songs he wrote or co-wrote, most notably the album's opening cut, "Born Blue," plus "Woke Up This Mornin'," "Holy," "Heavy Heart" and also a version of the traditional "Twinkle Twinkle."

"We did the album as a soundtrack for a documentary that was being done by Ben Meade," Sammons says. Meade's website, cosmiccowboystudio.com, says the film, four years in the making, will be released Jan. 1, and that the film "is an interrogation of a state that in many sections operates like a Third World country." Meade worked for a time with the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival.

Sammons has made additional recordings since his 2010 CD, he says, pointing his Arkansas fans to Bandcamp (paulsammons.bandcamp.com), and adding that he has two Facebook pages, one personal and one for his music (facebook.com/sammonsmusic).

He released a five-song EP, A Lifetime Ago, as Paul Sammons & The Levelers' Apprentice.

"I've gone in a new direction since I left Arkansas," he says. "While I was in Colorado I was doing stuff such as samples and learning about production and technology."

Sammons first began his affection for music when he heard Nirvana, then added the other Seattle "grunge" bands, along with Bob Marley and Jimi Hendrix to his collection.

"I went on to [University of Arkansas at Little Rock] and studied guitar and jazz performance and got into a wide variety of styles, including Stevie Ray Vaughan and Sublime," he says.

Headline attraction Trophy Boyfriends is a Little Rock rock group.

The other Friday night act is Nick Brumley, a folk/rock singer-songwriter from Farmersville, Texas, 40 miles northeast of Dallas. He has released an album, Darker Days & Brighter Nights: Live at Charlie's Backyard Bar.

Weekend on 12/18/2014