for a list of artists that, like our Mojo Magazine writin' pal
Joe Cushley's Balling The Jack: The Birth of The Neu Blues and Beyond Mississippi: Blues That Left Town cds, fall out side of Trad Blues but are blues TO ME as well as new found or younger artists that aren't doin' the white boy fake texmexihat bottomlip bitin' eyes to the sky gitar behind the head bullsht show-off blues. and YES Mr. n' Mrs. Marsalis we are playing fast and loose with the term BLUES. and YES there Ain't nuthin' sacred but what's in my heart and soul. That's ALL that matters.
What I like. Here are their and my suggestions:
Click on the Artist name...that'll take you to Amazon.com
Links below the Artists name go to the Artist's web site.
which is a NuBlues nite roving thru various London and surrounding area venues and features many of the bands below and their ilk LiVE as all hell.
Our friends in Leicester are rockin' a similar vibe and calling it SNAKE DRiVE. Please Help yr Brothers and Sisters out! Lend yr ears and support my people.
which lies halfass between San Antonio and Austin. That ain’t too far from Hondo but far enuff from Big Foot. Biram and his truck got flat creamed by a semidoin’ 75. One month later he’s back on stage at Austin’s famed Continental Club in a wheelchair with an IV hangin’ out his arm and flailin’ that ’59 Gibson hollow body like a man born again. Scott plays like a man possessed by the thought that this could by-gawd be his last gig ever and if he’s gonna die afterwards he’s takin’ yr ass and soul with him.
Combodestroyed the woods and mountains around their tiny hometown of Mustio Finland by carving their guitars, drums,
and harmonicas from whole ironwood trees with their bare hands and using John Henry's twelve pound hammer (with four foot handle) they beat those mountains down for the brass ,
silver , and iron (and coal to fire this thing) to fashion the rest of the parts they needed. When they were finished they stomped their thirst with a bottle of R.L.Burnside's Bloodymthrfckr and sat down in the full moon light at that muddy crossroads between Holly Springs Mississippi , Mustio and County Kisko to
I flew to the future on my Dickelfueled rocket one night but I missed it and had to come round the horn via 1927 where I crashed landed in a maelstrom of hail and hellwater into a basement somewhere's near Murfreesboro which is where I found Creech Holler. They'd done the same which explained them amplimafiers and that. They were playing their own music and when I asked what it was about they told me to check their myspace page when I got back to the present and so I did:
"A haunted road hog with a brimstone growl and guitar mixed hotter than Lucifer. Road Angels and Torrential Rain imagines Nick Cave waking up on the wrong side of the bed, fighting cottonmouth and arrest warrants in several Southwestern states."
-Christopher Gray. The Austin Chronicle.
"Minor chords into the dark trails of the night, the best new artist of the 2000's."
-Dexter Romweber
Ghostwriter has the stamp of Dexter FKN Romweber which
is as far as i'm concerned is Pure Platinum Butter. Check him.
RE'Presentin' the Dark Blues and lettin' it roll straight and low outta the bad side of Seattle! Like if when the pressed the button to blow the dome a GRAVEL ROAD song played instead. BOOM!
I've got a live Rev.James Cleveland record where he admonishes the crowd to "go home, get yr bible...and dust it off! and turn to the 150th Psalm."
"They don't want the gospel to go into nightclubs and [concert] venues. But I know that is where Jesus would have done his preachin'...," he says. "The 150th Psalm says to 'Praise the Lord with string instruments [and] praise him with the drum and praise him with the tambourine.' It don't say 'Be quiet.' "
Hells Kitchen crawled out of the dank forests and steamin' stankass swamps of GenevaSwitzerland aka theLand of Dirty snowy fkdup blues. Sure as the twist in the devil's tail you'd never hardly know it. Their 2005 release Doctor's Oven Combinine's the most diabolical and base elements of Mssr's WaitsandBeefheart with the shtbug rollin' styles of Mr. RuralBurnside and the unspeakable grease , grime , and bits of rotten fruit, blue tainted loose meats (possibly fattened possum), noodles and metal shavings found in the bottom of their sodden black ceramic sink Hells Kitchen whomp up a stew that is deep, satisfying and darkly thrilling if not downright dangerous. In short one of the best cds of the last couple years.
PS-My four year old Roscoe sez that when he looks at the cover of this cd
he thinks that it's a cool kitchen that cooks dead fish in a stinky house and
ok...lets get this straight up and send this out as a warning to every penny-ante-two-bit two-man band out there...It's Go Time. all y'all need to go out and get yrselves suspenders to wear with yr belts and start walkin' backwards and then just go ahead and get yr ass a bass player. If not I guarantee you suckers that
The High Plane Drifters and those savvy enuff to dig them will be hunting the rest of you with dogs by 2006. Mark my words.
it's over. No more Floridas. High Plane Drifters are Kings of the two-man universe. a stoogian wrayesque sonic powernuthouse guitar vs swangin' slayerific rumpus pounding beatdown drum ackackackshun + songs sung blue not writ for/by ex-10yr olds. REAL. and for the first time since everybody rightfully started giving up on bass players I almost don't miss it. Git 'em.
The one man band hand of Jawbone can not be touched. It ain’t no damned monkeypaw. No man’s desert sound. Ol’ timer came down from the old country Detroit carcrash mountaintop of tortured thieves and jilted lovers pre-stripped. Unmined. Holler’d out. Jawbone eat and Jawbone talk. Jawbone eat you with knife and fork. Don’t go huntin’ for Jawbone down in the dark. You’ll have trouble on your doorstep. Jawbone got snake in his blood, blood on his hound. Wormwood whiskey women and war. A 1000 year old foot of burnished brass comin’ down running like a man. His healing hand holding a hatchet. Like Jesus everybody wants to know his name. Some call Bullcat. Some call on Rooster. Big Chief. Daddy. Jawbone call down Dr.Isaiah, and Charlie, and Rankin’Jeffrey Lee. Rice. Sonny. Dock. Woody. Poole. Emmett. Takes all them to blow out that candle and make that big ol’ tombstone hihatbassdrum rock down moaning low and ride that steel slide downtown. Jawbone strap up that blue harp, that wind blown pine, that Hillstomp, that ol’ possum, that black noon Wolf howl that all kin of earth, hill-folk, city-folk, and country-folk alike will wail because of him.
Left Lane Cruiser hail from the source of most all good things: Indiana. Fort Wayne to be exact. No where near Turkey Run State Park but named after Gen. "Mad" Anthony Wayne. As cool as Indiana is (except for the summer when it's hot like a freakin' cast iron skillet with a beautiful cloudless thick blue glass lid on top)it's not the place one might think of when one thinks of the good ol' Punkass Blues. But then hell neither is Indianapolis which boasts of being the home of the early late punk blues band Chickenleg. And other than some river bluffs it ain't exactly much like Mississippi's legendary hill country. That does not stop Joe and Bren, the two-headed-four-armed-six-legged thing that is Left Lane Cruiser from draggin that ol' Fat Possum'esque sht thru the Black Swamp mud like a Brown County tornado til' it shakes and rolls and hunches full up of Deep fried chicken Blues, 1970's f150s with a Larry Brown cooler on the floor, broom stick n' wire slide and a couple of tubs and old skins maybe stole from Othar's back shed. It's greasy hot, shaved dry, and crazier than yr smokin' methd-up ex-girlfriend who keeps singin' Down By The River I Shot My Baby thru a two-dollar pawn shop mic she jerry-rigged thru that ol' gunshot b/w tv in the backyard and dedicating it to you with love mthrfckr. For fans of Black Diamond Heavies, T-Model Ford, Chris Johnson, Rev. Peyton, Scott Hiram Biram,Deltahead, Hillstomp, Honkeyfinger, Me, and all that mess.
Fronted by Col. JD Wilkes who is perhaps 'Merica's Greatest Frontman and Showman and hailing from NashvilleTNTh' LSS will destroy yr mind (what little bit you got left), snuggle yr baby sister, and heal yr by-gawd heathen hamsuckin pea-pickin' soul. I can hold in half my paw the bands the put on a live show with the style, power and hump buckin' rollin' in beer and loogies good time-ness. First time I heard 'em was on a boot of a live show in Scotland where they were booed endlessly. Th' LSS would take none of it and sonically kicked Scotland's ass in a full reverse Braveheart. Oh Gee...what do they sound like? They say it best th'mselves: "Field hollers, funeral marches and murder ballads...amped up to eleven. Sounds Like SouthernGothic/punk blues" . Throw in some ElmerGantryb'damnedheavy metal parking lot marching band sideshow barker beer barrel polka rump chaffin' covers of SlimHarpo and you got a taste in
yr mouth that won't quit. Simply? Stunning. Can't touch this.
a just shy of legendary sideman for the likes of Misters Cedell Davis, Junior Kimbrough, R.L. Burnside (incl various mutations involving R.L.'s boys) , T-Model Ford, Robert Belfour, Odell Harris, LC Ulmer, Afrississippi and many others whose names should hardly be spoken out loud out of respect. At home on the tubs and skins as he is on his six string razor strop this home is a one-man North Mississippi Hill Country wreckin' Krewe.
Lord Vagrant are a gang of White Lightening addicted, cow tipping reprobates based in South London and Brighton. Debuting at the London NTSOBC Punk Rock Blues Festival in August, they unleashed their "Punk Fried Hayride" on an unsuspecting crowd, created a stage invasion during Clambakes set and then rounded the night off with a Tombola raffle to give away more White Lightening !! Beware!
have done what many of the bands here have done. They made a life changing pilgrimage totheMississippiHillCountryanddeltaregion. As luck would have it they hit Memphis on a night that had the great Richard Johnston rockin' one side of Beale and the vastly underated and highly deadly Robert Belfour cuttin' heads on the other. Their liner notes read " Needless to say, we were never quite the same afterward." Damn straight they weren't. From roping their new pal Johnston to guest with his Lowe Bow gitar on the deep N. MS groove of Long Past Midnight to their Black Keys rivaling cover of JuniorKimbrough's sweet Meet Me In The City these Kansans (Kansas? Kansas!) have learned their lessons. See, that HillCountrysound can't be done by most blues players. It's too loose and open and sexy. One can't wank it. and that is the difference. You gotta take 'er easy and just let it go. You cannot pound it. Moreland, Arbuckle and Floyd get that. You just gotta roll in it. and they do. They got the stank , the vibe, the skills and the kansas-sized mudboot to stomp down on the neck of every precious kandyass that spells the Deep Blues with two O's and a Z. Go see 'em and Buy 'em!
Gawdamn I love a band with a horn section! That said it's the 1st
track Catherine Wheel that I think sets the tone on this 6 slice ep.
Spare and TENSE as hell if the UK has some sorta CrossRoads equivilant like a road just over the hill from the Westbury Horse on a black cold wet night at 3am...that's where i'd like to hear this song sung. Chilly. I kept waitin' for the whole thing to explode with horns but no Mudlow is smarter than that. The guitar rings and calls Mudlow out to the 2nd track which is the rompin' stompin' arse whoopin' of Down In The Snow. That's when they drop the other boot. Tobias pulls out Tom Waits' vocal cords to flog a horn section that eye gouges and pulls hair while his swangin'mud covered gitar cuts throats like Nugent. Bass and drums are right where they oughta be bobbin' and weavin' and drivin' Mudlow to the next bar on the way home.
Brother Owens racked 45 years with the Flying Clouds before going it alone. Deeply alone. alone-r than Hasil Adkins. alone with the Lord and Ann Talbert. you can not handle The Truth. You Without Sin Cast The First Stone comprises 14 songs selected from original radio broadcasts and multi-track studio recordings of performances from 1998-2001 and at the age of 69,
When a thousand foot tall tree falls in the woods does it make a sound? Hell yeah it does and it sounds like The Pack. What’s that Barbara Walters? What kind of tree? While I’m gettin’ all dendrological let’s say when it falls it makes the same sound the last Golden Spruce on the Yakoun River made when that psycho bastard cut it down…if the Yakoun was running thru the turpentine woods of North Mississippi. Can you not love a band that lists the ConfederateprisonofAndersonville, Aretha Franklin, Buddy Rich, Jeremiah Johnson and the years 1860-1920 as influences? Not to mention Hooker, Blind Willie, and JuniorKimbrough? A two-woman band with crossed swords for a logo and a photo that shows a Farley Mowat book amongst their jumble of important stuff on the back of the album is something worth hunting down. Oh gee... yeah…I said two woman. Got a problem? Skeered? They rock much much harder than you ever will. They do not play at pretty girly songs (‘tho their music is no less womanly than say L7 or Jessie MaeHemphill) or act like they need to prove a damn thing to the men folk or anyone else. Imagine if you can the raw power of a young Courtney Love, had she listened to more Joplin and John Lee than Patti Smith, backed by early Black Keys or better yet Polly Jean Harvey backed by The Stooges and you might have a very vague idea of the level of thick beautiful heaviness you are in for. But even that sells them short. While the B.K.s understandably and respectably disavow their “blues-ness” The Pack fully embrace the vibe and best of all the sonics of the blues music they love and live. They understand that it’s the feeling you get and give that gets you and that’s what’s important. What they can and will do is get your rump shakin’ , your head bobbin’ and your ears listening hard. They play like they got something in ‘em that needs to come out and it’s gonna come out rough, hard, sexy and deep dark blue and neither you nor this weeks Tyra-fied faux fierce mini skirted cat walkin’ melisma maniacal stiletto shoe stomper is gonna stop them. I’m reminded of the gals who used to come into the bar I worked when I was young that drank IrishCoffee. Oh it’s coffee for fuel alright but the real fuel for those gals was the whiskey. Those were the women I wanted to hang with. The Pack's brilliant 17 track album TiNTYPE is available at CD BABY. Newly signed to a three album deal with Canada’s sooper kool Mint Records they’ll be in yr local record...er..cd bin soon and on the eternal tour winning the hearts and minds of you and their fellow blues insurgents world wide!
Brother Jackson is thee undisputed king of the Texas Washboard. He is also one deelightfully opinionated MF who also just happens to rawk like its goin' outta style with our man Mr.K.M. Williams in the four-fisted ensemble better known as
TRAiNRECK! Catch 'em now cuz they gonna blow up huge!
Jimmy Wolf’s guitar tone is as tight and tough as his vocals, his band , and his songs. Rome New York’s tiger man hails from the Mowhawk Nation which can’t help but inform some songs but don’t get Jimmy Wolf ‘s thing confused with some other brands of modern native derived music. He ain’t playin’ no flute and the only new age Mr. Wolf delivers is that of straight up american roots music. Although scarred and marked by Hound Dog Taylor at an early age I’m sure he grew to love the north Mississippi masters like Kimbrough, Burnside , and Ford among others as well whose emphasis is more on full vibe than on some wanky over-used abundance of manual dexterity. Some call Wolf’s music “Punk Blues” but that ain’t all right and does not tell even the half of it. Yeah he kicks his blues up to “8” ‘til it rocks harder than the ‘stones vs Chuck Berry street fight. He’ll also shift it low down onto Highway 7 and make your girl want to roll in the midnight cotton with him and a quart bottle of golden ‘shine. He’ll break your heart like Bon Scott or Jerry Lee or Black Crowes and it ain't pretty. But when he throws a chunk of kool smart art alt pop from behind you you gotta hope he’ll do it again. Jimmy Wolf’s thing is Super Live Full House Rockin’ Back Alley Scrappin’ dirty lovin’ blues. and more. Young Wolf joins a growing rank of roots freaks who see full well that sometimes even the old things that you love need a respectful kick in the head and be-hind and Jimmy Wolf administers that kick with a wild heavy passion that will inspire followers and leaders alike.
a place for all the other junque that don't fit in upstairs. send me yr links . help me run that voodoo down.
"Hannes Coetzee is a soft-spoken 72-year old whose job is tapping the aloes that grow around his Karoo hometown of Herberstdale (South Africa) for their medicinal juice."Self-taught, Hannes composes his own songs and plays slide 'optel-en-knyp' guitar, using a teaspoon. The only known practitioner of this style, he holds the chord with the fingers of his left hand, thumps the rhythm on the bass strings with his thumb, and plucks the top strings with the fingers of his right hand. At the same time he slides out the melody with a teaspoon in his mouth." "He plays traditional and original compositions using a teaspoon in his mouth to slide the melody on his guitar. The only known practioner of this style, he is able to play the melody and the accompanying chords at the same time creating the sound of two guitars with one."
"Blues musicians of the 1930s sang about the dire straits of people affected with "jake leg." The condition meant permanent paralysis for as many as 100,000 people who drank ginger extract cut with a potent neuro-toxin."
Get some Misissippi mud on yr feets or kneel down in the Alabamared clay. Go to the places in New Orleans they tell you not to go...with a friend. Slow down! But go.go.go!
A well detailed site with plenty of pictures and trivia.
If you are planning a similar trip start here.
VOODOO GiRL'S BLUES PiLGRiMAGE
hits a lot of places the others don't and most that they do and have more fun than you should be allowed. I'll make it easy on ya...nobody else visits the grave of Memphis Minnie.
Ken, Alex, and Doug went to Nashville, Memphis, the Mississippi Delta and New Orleans in February 1999.
139 photographs you want to see + a real fine soundtrack.
CHRiS and MATT's DEEP SOUTH TOUR 2002
While not a Blues Tour exclusivly they do hit the spots
as well as a number of Civil Rights sights.
Sharp photographs by the ton and plenty of Pez!
RiDE ALONG WiTH TiM CAHiLL
of Slate Magazine and funny-ass book writin'
fame as he swings 8 virtual pages to "trace the history of the 'deep' blues, from its birthplace in the Mississippi Delta to its ultimate migration to Memphis, Chicago, and eventually the far corners of the world as we know it."
My second favorite blues site. Jammed with great info on juke joints and honky tonks + pictures, maps to grave sites etc, and even recipes. If you are planning to visit the south in search of the blues check here first. If you never plan to visit but want a taste of the flavor check here, too. While yr there please buy some stuff from Junior or click on his banners. He needs the dough to keep the Bluesmobile runnin'. Check his documentary JUKE! featuring T-Model Ford and pre-FP Johnny Farmer aka Farmer John and his son. This video even at only a 1/2 hr is a must have.
Bill Steber is my personal favorite because he photographs the players I like best: The musicians of Mississippi. His black and white photographs have a richness and rawness that really show the power and reality of the deep Mississippi blues.
Mr. Waterman has photographed America's legendary Blues Musicians beginning in the 1960's to today. From Son House to Muddy Waters to John Lee Hooker to Lightnin' Hopkins and on and on Mr.Waterman is considered one our very best and most respected photographers .
Robert Crumb is The Big Poppa of artists influenced by the blues. His "comic" book of the life of Charlie Patton is epic. His collection of trading cards "The R.Crumb Gallery of Bluesmakers" combined with his work on album covers are both fine examples of Crumb's deep love of the blues and the players. I encourage you to get your hands on his
Everybody and their dawgs cover the usual suspects like
those Johnson boy's, Robert and and to a lesser extent Tommy,
as well as Mr.'s Waters, Patton, House, etc etc etc.
While their names are so beautiful they should hardly so much as be spoken aloud i'm more interested in helping you learn about the unsung fringes. That you are reading this in the first place means you got the great sense the Good Lord gave a goose to know the difference between stank and stink. I heart stank. Click on.
Anytime this girl ask me, "Mr. Wolf what make your teeth so big?" They say "The better to eat you with my dear," They say "What make your eyes so red?" "The better to see you with my dear," and when they finally killed a wolf and dragged him up to the house and showed me the wolf and I told them it was a dog. No. That's a wolf. And I say "What do a wolf do?" Yhey say he howl, and so I got afraid of this wolf and every time i'd kill some of my mother's chickens she say, "Ahhh-ooo." So that would scare me and it made me mad. And they started calling "wolf" and I gets mad about this till they just kept calling me "Wolf." I got to the place where I don't care what they called me. I didn't care if they called me "Padder." If they want. You know I was afraid of this wolf. I was three years old or less.
band leaders. If we're lucky his kids and grandkids will carry on and keep this ancient style alive. Mr.Turner still holds his famouspicnic every labor day weekend at his farm and it just gets bigger every year. Fife and Drum music is deep, primal, and sexy martial music. I hope when it's my turn to walk that milky white way that Otha Turner and NapoleonStrickland and SidHemphill and the Youngbrothers and them will be there to fife and drum and shake me on home.
Sadly Mr.Turner has now passed on. He was 94 years old. He was followed in death by his daughter Bernice two days later.
If you can send a donation please do so. I'm sure that it would be greatly appreciated! You can send any donations -- and sympathy cards -- to Othar's daughter: Bobbie Turner, 3339 Gravel Springs Rd, Senatobia MS 38668.
![Blues People by LeRoi Jones- "The path the slave took to 'citizenship' is what I want to look at. And I make my analogy through the slave citizen's music -- through the music that is most closely associated with him: blues and a later, but parallel development, jazz... [If] the Negro represents, or is symbolic of, something in and about the nature of American culture, this certainly should be revealed by his characteristic music."So says Amiri Baraka in the Introduction to Blues People, his classic work on the place of jazz and blues in American social, musical, economic, and cultural history. From the music of African slaves in the United States through the music scene of the 1960's, Baraka traces the influence of what he calls "negro music" on white America -- not only in the context of music and pop culture but also in terms of the values and perspectives passed on through the music. In tracing the music, he brilliantly illuminates the influence of African Americans on American culture and history.](/web/20080210033257im_/http://ricksaunders.homestead.com/bluespeople.jpg)
