2024: Use Me (Bill Withers Cover) - Celisse

Yes, I wanna spread the news

It’s the start of a new year, and one of the most exciting things to look forward to when the calendar resets is all the new music which we’re about to hear over the coming 12 months; all the new artists that we’ll discover, and all the gigs we’ll be lucky enough to be at.

While we wait for new songs to release as well as album and tour announcements, it got me thinking about one of the most exciting new artists I encountered anywhere last year.

When Celisse Henderson took to the stage at Willie Nelson’s 4th July picnic, I'd never heard of her before. I’d flown in especially to see the wonderful Mavis Staples, and of course, Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson, but the show that Celisse and her band put on turned out to be a real added bonus, and one of the highlights of the whole day.

When she first started singing, I was put in mind of the soulful Brittany Howard, who I had seen at a mesmerising gig back in 2016 with the Alabama Shakes (and who I would see again in just a few short days, in a solo performance in support of Hozier in London’s Finsbury Park).

But before even the first song was through, it quickly became clear that Celisse was a lot earthier, a lot grittier and greasier and a lot bluesier than the more sleek and polished - but still soulful - sounding Brittany Howard. Not that Celisse is unpolished, far from it; her voice is well honed, and her guitar playing is out of this world, but she has got a far funkier, far rootsier and more raucous, gutsy southern sound than just about anyone else working today.

Looking back at my notes from the time, the first thing I wrote about her set was that “we don't get music like this anywhere at home”, but good God how I wish we did.

The highlight of her set, and one of the high points of the whole day, was her extended almost twelve-minute jam on the Bill Withers’ classic Use Me. Like everyone does (or, should), I love Bill Withers. Like everyone does, I adore Ain’t No Sunshine, Who Is He (And What Is He To You?), Grandma’s Hands, Lean on Me, Can We Pretend, Just the Two of Us, Lovely Day an, of course, Use Me, but Celisse took this song out into a whole other realm that even Bill Withers probably never thought it could go.

Elsewhere in the show, she had paid tribute to the great Sister Rosetta Tharpe - who sits at the very foundation of all the great music that came after her - and was wielding a Sister Rosetta style Gibson SG special when she took this song on, but she played the instrument more like you’d imagine Jimi Hendrix or another more aggressive, full throated guitarist would have done.

The iconic clavinet riff that runs through the original is played by Ray Jackson on Withers’ 1972 hit, but in Camden, NJ, Celisse teased it out of her guitar in stop-time, toying with the phrasing and rolling it around across her hands, sometimes teasing it out and sometimes biting into it, but always finding new configurations with it on each and every turn.

After just a verse and a chorus, which she accentuated with vicious slashes and stabs at her guitar, she and her excellent accompaniment on bass and drums slowed things right down, took the song apart and had a look inside before exploding back into life with a scorching guitar solo. If there had been a roof on the Freedom Mortgage Pavilion where she was playing, she’d have blown it right off.

With lightning speed and awesome precision, she managed to strike the perfect balance between playing a lot of notes and never once threatening to overplay any of them. She took the song to the absolute limit, out into the stratosphere. She pushed it to breaking point but she never seemed to be anything less than cool, calm and in control while she did it.

Just when she’s used up every idea that she has and reached a frenetic climax, she dropped it right back down again and switched to a finger picking style, toying with a whole new pallette of tones and textures with her guitar. With her pick between her teeth, she grinned and bobbed and bounced her head, all the while she was sliding and gliding across the fretboard, hitting the occasional harmonic notes, and playing a more controlled blues style. Of course, she showed her mastery with this one, too.

After working up to another thrashing crescendo and cacophony of noise, she closed out the song with a final verse and extended chorus, and came crashing to a triumphant conclusion.

Even though she has played this song at practically all of her shows over the last few years, you still got the sense that she had new parts in it to discover, new places to take it and new patterns to play. I could have watched her exploring the limits of the song all day long.

At the end of her all too short performance, Celisse thanked those of us who hadn’t just turned up in time to see the headliners, but who had arrived early enough in the day to see her set, saying that it’s people arriving early enough to watch her which allows her to keep being booked to these kinds of shows in the first place, and to keep on doing what she loves. So, if you get the chance to go and see Celisse Henderson in concert in 2025, you should go ahead and use it up.