Delta Land

Got some more Deep Blues Festival love for y'all today. I know there's at least 3 of youns' gonna be there, but what about the rest of ya, slackers all? Honestly, can you convince us that there's a better value for yr hard earned buck out there? They even have camping available. Bet they'll be some picking and grinning going on with a few cans of something tasty to drink. Are you really gonna waste yr money on another Telluride corporate cash grab? Jaysis, just check out the line up!

Well, here's another feller to whet yr appetite. Jim Mize is a favorite 'round these parts. We posted, briefly, way back when, when his last record "Release It To The Sky" made our Top 10 Albums of the Year. Our opinion hasn't changed one bit. In fact, the record's gotten better with age. Here's what we said then:

Mize is a beer-drinking juke and VFW honed singer and musician in the vein of other Mountain favorites like Seasick Steve, Tom House, Cast King, and James Hand. He's been in the trenches too long to be pretty. Ostensibly, Mize is a blues singer, minus the guitar solos and throaty wails. He's taking you to a darker place, a wellspring of down and out beyond the cliches of the genre. His voice has a cracked weariness that matches his neon-lit, southern observations. A dark album that rocks, taking you to closing time with a shot glass and loneliness.

That just about says it all, then, really. Check it out.

Jim Mize: Delta Land (mp3)

Jim Mize: Acadian Lullabye (mp3)

Jim Mize: Disappear In America (mp3)

Please support your local, independent...well...anything. In these tough economic times, it's yr local businesses that need the most help. Wal-Mart's gonna be just fine, thank you very much. Help your neighbor out, instead.

A Day That Will Live In Infamy

Well...why the fuck not? Hooray for me!

Oh, and none of these songs are the "traditional" one. Probably goes without saying...

Clem Snide: Happy Birthday (mp3)

Wild Billy Childish and the MBE's : Birthday Boy (mp3)

Sugarcubes: Birthday (mp3)

Cracker: Happy Birthday To Me (mp3)

Buy a Cake!

Six Pack

Howdy folks, and gather 'round. Gonna try something today, and perhaps it'll turn into something regular-like in these parts. Call it a way to get more posts up without having to worry about all that messy exposition 'n' all.

We tend to buy way more records than is probably healthy. We've been slowly "digitzing" these swell little frisbees, which is nifty since a record demands a closer ear than a cd with it's "next/skip" function or an mp3 download with the always handy "delete" button. That's neither here nor there, really, just pontificating.

What we'd like to do every week or two is toss up a quick "six pack", appropriately enough, of some fine tunes we've culled from our vinyl obsessiveness. Some of the songs come from classic albums by artists we'd like to cover more closely in the future, some are from crappy records with one killer track, and some are from super duper records that have fallen under the radar. We're gonna have brand spanking new stuff and older stuff with varying degrees of scratchiness. We'll have tracks off of 45's, LP's, and EP's. 7 inches, 10 inches, 12 inches, whatever your, ahem, preference is (Sorry, couldn't resist). Sound quality will be, as can be expected, in varying degrees, but, hell, isn't that supposed to be some of the charm?

Let me know how this works for all y'all. Yea or Nay?

Our first six pack starts off with a David Allen Coe track pulled off the soundtrack to the vile film, "Take This Job and Shove It". Kurt Vile gives us a perfect summer driving song courtesy of his 2008 record, "Constant Hitmaker". More summer holiday fun follows from disturbed, masked, and,apparently, smelly sleaze-trash god NoBunny from his record "Love Visions". After that we need to cleanse our souls with a superb track from Numero Group's recently issued Local Customs: Downriver Revival double LP. Rounding things off, we've got a couple of 7" tracks: a garbage can Country lament from the immortal DM Bob and the Deficits, and then back on the road with a hitchhiker's tribute from the legendary Bob Luman.

Songs are not arranged in any kind of "best" to "not best", so check 'em all out.


David Allen Coe: You Can Count On Beer (mp3)

Kurt Vile: Freeway (mp3)

NoBunny: Chuck Berry Holiday (mp3)

Gospel Supremes: Sinner Man (mp3)

DM Bob and the Deficits: Blind Man With A Pistol (mp3)

Bob Luman: Interstate 40 (mp3)

Please support your local, independent record store.

Going For Broke

Well. Gonna be a bit of a homer today. Normally I avoid covering local bands for fear of accusations of bias, which of course is silly, since we're completely biased in terms of the music we post. We've got...opinions.

So The Black Oil Brothers command our complete attention.

From their website:

"Before the blues found its way to Chicago and redefined itself with electric guitars and drummers, bluesmen were minstrels playing juke joints in the Mississippi Delta armed only with their guitars and voices while the crowd kept the rhythm by stomping their feet in time. Born and raised in Chicago, The Black Oil Brothers aim to channel that kind of boot stompin' blues that doesn’t need a backline or distortion pedals to make it cook. Resonators played with steel slides, wailing harmonicas, 3 part harmonies and the righteous twang of acoustic guitars and mandolin strings define our music (and very well may be saving our souls at the same time). Let us save yours."

As ever, we ask the question: Why Should You Care?

Well, you should care because the Black Oil Brothers create an amalgam of Country and Blues not beholden to contemporary "alt" whatever, forging their sound from a deeper well, stripping away the trappings of contemporary naval-gazing to find a purer sound. Strapped to the concrete acreage of the big, big city, the Black Oil Brothers find the wide open spaces of beyond, and the smallness of life lived in overgrown yards and back porches lit by fireflies.

Regret and bad choices made in the midnight hour, then. The kind of Country Blues record we love so dearly.

On their new record, Long Way From The Delta (scroll down for album link), the Black Oil Brothers pile us into the pickup truck and take us down the road a fur piece to the end of the line, literally and figuratively. On "Going For Broke", we get a loose-string laden chugging meditation on love and loss. "Robert From Hibbing" (our favorite tune) is a classic drinking song that posits the relationship between the aspiring songwriter and the immortal bard, Robert Zimmerman, and features the classic lines, "I want to be Bob Dylan/But I play the guitar wrong/So I guess I won't be singing her this song". And "Wednesday Afternoon" is a gloriously muted, mandolin-driven hoedown that's guaranteed to find you on the rare mid-week day off, feet kicked up, beverage of choice gripped in hand, singing lustily to the sky.

If you're in the Chicago area at the end of June, be sure to check out the band for their record release party at Quenchers on June 26th. We'll be there.



The Black Oil Brothers: Going For Broke (mp3)

The Black Oil Brothers: Robert From Hibbing (mp3)

The Black Oil Brothers: Wednesday Afternoon (mp3)

Please support your local, independent, string shucking Country/Blues band.

Stitched In Sin

Edit: It is very highly recommended that y'all check out the first comment on the post below. Good news for anyone sitting on the fence about the Blues Fest. And make sure you say thank you.

More Deep Blues Festival today. They've announced the full lineup and daily schedule, and also have made single day tickets available. So what's your excuse? Do you really need to see a reunion of some crappy, overly-precious band from LA at LollipopAlooza? We think not. You need to hear some deep blues, all throbbing distorted hoot an holler. This aint no pussy-assed Blues, this is the real deal, from octogenarian shouters from Mississippi to snotty whippersnappers with a blues punk urge.

Got yer perfect example of the latter right here.

The Black Diamond Heavies hail from, ahem, "the Southern States of America" (Nashville?), and make an unholy mess of rumbling sweat-drenched gut-bucket blues noise. A duo (yes, one of those...), vocalist/guitarist/organist James Leg sounds like the bastard son of Howlin' Wolf and rips off shreds of filthy guitar scunge. But then he hits the organ (or keyboard of choice), and the whole affair goes swingslut soul. Drummer Van Campbell keeps it slime-oozed tribal and rumbles yr ass like god on vacation in hell. They're, like, heavy, maaaannnnnn. A fucked up excursion into the dark heart of the crossroads, swinging like a sharecropper's reaper through the brush and twisted weeds of the devil's favorite swampland. Tasty like a green-fuzzed peach.

The Black Diamond Heavies are playing on the Saturday portion of the Festival. Take a listen to the following killer tracks and start making your travel plans.

Black Diamond Heavies: Poor Brown Sugar (mp3)

Black Diamond Heavies: Take A Ride (mp3)

Black Diamond Heavies: Stitched In Sin (mp3)

Black Diamond Heavies: Numbers 22 (Balaam's Wild Ass) (mp3)

Please support your local, independent holy ghost shouty types.

Oh Pioneer!

Hey! Please vote in the poll over on the side. Help me help you.

Now. Goin' back to that old-timey stuff today, home on the range, and all that.

The Sons of the Pioneers are perhaps best known nowadays, if known at all, for the classic cowboy tunes "Tumbling Tumbleweeds" and "Cool Water", both composed by Bob Nolan.
They also, for a time,and seminally , featured a feller named Leonard Slye, better known as Roy Rogers.

It's interesting to question the mythology ensconced in the songs of The Sons of the Pioneers, in the same way we question the adventures of Gene Autry, Tom Mix,John Wayne, Roy Rogers, and all. Did hardened cowpokes really sit around the campfire singing songs about their day as the sun set in the canyons around them? One would guess the answer as no, as many of these men were probably barely literate and not given to sentiment. But it's mythology, innit?

The Sons of the Pioneers created, or perhaps perfected (cuz someone always did it first, right?), the cult of the singing cowboy, the traveling horseback rider with guitar in hand (and how in the world did they steer the horse?), taking note of the shadows, the sun, the desert sage. A world where some wacky character always had a tin of beans prepared at the end of a hard day rustling, the dust and sweat miraculously purged, and always a campfire prepared by the hand of god himself.

The above is quite the opposite of disparagement, as The 'Pioneers' brand of deep canyon pining is one of our favorite music genres. A dreamscape in clay and open sky, moons and fire, drifting through the neverwas with a yodel.

"Blue Shadows On The Trail" is a particular favorite, perfect for your next twilight reverie, where sleep beckons, but the twinkle of a far off star holds you still.

Sons Of The Pioneers: Blue Shadows On The Trail (mp3)

Sons Of The Pioneers: Tumbling Tumbleweeds (mp3)

Sons Of The Pioneers: Old Man Atom (mp3)

Sons Of The Pioneers: Bound For The Rio Grande (mp3)

Sons Of The Pioneers: Ridin' Down The Canyon (mp3)

Please support your local, independent lasso ranger.

Pale Rider

As promised a couple of posts ago, we're gonna alternate between "regular" posts and posts about artists who will be performing at the Deep Blues Festival this summer. For the record, we are not in any way financially affiliated with the Festival (hell, we bought our ticket just like everybody else), but we are extremely enthusiastic about this Festival, and we'll do everything in our power to promote it. Keep yr ears and eyes tuned to this spot as we near the start of the Festival for more info in regards to any plans we have while attending. We're kinda shameless about the things we like, obviously, but we really believe that there's no other music festival out there this summer that matches this one for kick ass music. Just sayin'.

Willem Maker has a spectral, haunted approach to the Blues, sounding like the apocalypse in hushed tones across the blasted horizon, a dark ragged thing, baked and scarred on a mountain crossroads, soul sold for a dime and a flask of gas and fire.

Maker's guitar work is equal parts shredded fuzz and delicate thrum, bobbing hypnotic over a voice mumbled-murmered, hollered-hoarse.

Feller claims to be from sumsuch place called Turkey Heaven Mountain, Alabama. Possibly that's all you really need to know.

He's got two records out, "New Moon Hand" and "Stars Fell On". We'll have more to say about "New Moon Hand" later this year, but we'll let the music speak for itself, with a couple of tracks from each record.

If this aint enough to get you to the Deep Blues Festival (and his opening slot for Bob Log III, which we're also psyched about checking out), then, well, we're not sure what will. But we'll keep trying.





Willem Maker: Saints Weep Wine (mp3)

Willem Maker: Black Beach Boogie (mp3)

Willem Maker: Raised In Praise (mp3)

Willem Maker: Pale Rider (mp3)

Please support your local independent Blues festival. But only if it doesn't suck.

Mercy Now

Before diving into today's dive diva, we'd like to draw yr attention to a new blog on the block, Groover's Paradise, where they celebrate their favorite 20th Century rock, country, and soul music. Truth be told, they invited me on as a contributor, so if you like what I post here, but can't stand the interminable wait, or get frustrated with my rambling posts, this is the site to get yr quick fix without the wordy rants. Every contributor at Groover's Paradise has impeccable taste in music, so you can't go wrong making it a daily stop in yr internet trawl. We'll bring the potato salad.

Today, let's take a look at our recent poll winner, Mary Gauthier. Hope she doesn't mind if we share a few of her great tunes with y'all. We'll get to some of the others shortly.

Mary Gauthier has been compared in some quarters to our secret best friend, Tom Waits. While this comparison doesn't exactly hold sonically, she certainly possesses his gift of exploration into the darker world of the down'n'out, the life between the walls, life'n'hope'n'sex'n'dreams. Listening to her songs, you can imagine the smallness of time and the ticking of the clock, with the smallness of life examined under the most intense of magnifying glasses.

We spend a great deal of time here talking about voices, the sonic tenor of the sound an individual can make with only their vocal chords as their primary weapon in the battle of expression. Gauthier possesses a voice that will break your heart, leave you stranded in the sand of the furthest desert, running through the heat to find the the nearest oasis filled with liquor and regret. Husky and soaked with liquor, haunted by the regret of being, will be, and have been, Gauthier paints the corners of life in sepia-tinged tones, alive with the force of life and the heart of the beauty of sadness, trapped and free, swiveled on the pinpoint of circumstance and running to stand on the edge of yr steepest cliff of becoming.

Yeah, she's pretty damned good.

We wanted to post a tune from all of her albums, but we're a little gun shy, so we'll give you a very small sampling of the Gauthier brilliance. "I Drink" is the pinnacle of her tunes, so far as we're concerned (she'd probably disagree). But it's a tune that agrees strongly with our besotted temperament. "Mercy Now" is a lament for the human condition. "Ever Easy" is a love song for those of us who live in the real world (replete with fiddle goodness). And "Camelot Motel" is the culmination of nights too long in the wasteland.

Mary Gauthier receives one of the highest approval ratings we could possibly give. What are you waiting for?

Mary Gauthier: I Drink (mp3)

Mary Gauthier: Mercy Now (mp3)

Mary Gauthier: Ever Easy (mp3)

Mary Gauthier: Camelot Motel (mp3)

Please support your local, independent hourly rate motel.

Deep Blues

Hey, hey all y'all.


Thanks for votin' in the poll. We'll hit up your poll winners later this week, but we've got a new project and passion that's gonna take up some space over the next few months. Let's say we'll alternate between regular posts and pimpin' posts. That way you're not overwhelmed.

There's a super duper festival coming up this summer that any fan of this here blog should circle their calendars for. It's called The Deep Blues Festival, it's in Minneapolis MN, and it features a lineup that's pure nirvana to fans of real, dirt-crusted gutbucket Blues and Trash-Blues. You can find the god-like lineup here, a blog dedicated to the festival here, and a myspace page here. We plead with you to visit these sites regularly.

I'm gonna be there, oh hell yes, and hopefully will have some news regarding my presence within the next few months. So get your travel plans in order, folks.

As I said, we're going to be doing features here, sporadically, over the next few months, about as many of the artists as we can fit in.

For today's post we're just gonna throw out some tunes by some of the artists who will be there that you may already be familiar with. Fat Possum and Big Legal Mess are gonna be represented in full force, so that should tell you something about how great this event is gonna be. Screw yr pitchforks and lollapaloozas, this will be the place to be.

More indepth posts to come.

T Model Ford: Ugly Ass Grin (mp3)

Robert Cage: Get Outta Here (mp3)

Elmo Williams: Natchez Fire (mp3)

Kenny Brown: Shake 'Em On Down (mp3)

Pure Country Gold: Lady Low (mp3)

Please support your local, independent, Blues festival.

Greasy Fingers

Note: The following mix has been deleted by my server because someone who was featured on the mix protested. This seems to be an ongoing problem with bloggers recently. I'm trying to find out from my server who it was that didn't want you to hear one of their songs, so that I could warn you away from purchasing their music. Once I know, I'll let you know, and you can make your purchasing decisions accordingly. Shit, this is my second warning, so god knows how long we'll be around....

Ummm...hello? Is this thing on?

Eh. There's no point in apologizing for delays any longer. We are who we are. Not like folks are stopping by for breaking news or whatnot.

To tide all y'all over we've got another one of them there super duper Big Rock Candy Mountain mixes for yr listening enjoyment. We stand by every damn track.

But, wait, there's more. Before downloading the following mix, take the opportunity to vote in the poll to your left. Help us make you happy.

The Big Rock Candy Greasy Fingers Mix
(mp3 link follows track listing)

1. Rock Bottom (Wheels On Fire)
2. Lookin' For A Thril (John Paul Keith and the 145's)
3. If I Get Low Enough (Johnny Dollar)
4. The Good Times (The Chatham Singers)
5. Downtown (Mott The Hoople)
6. My Own Kick Going (Ronnie Self)
7. Wild West (Quintron)
8. Blue Train Station (The Cynics)
9. Party Dolls And Wine (Red Steagall)
10. Veronica Lake (New Bomb Turks)
11. The Lord Is Coming Back (Reverend Beat Man)
12. Every Goddam Thing To Hell (Rev. Frost)
13. There's A Higher Power (Brother Claude Ely)
14. Relief Is Just A Swallow Away (Eddie Noack)
15. The World's Greatest Sinner (The A-Bones)
16. Swing Low Sweet Truth (The Mustang)
17. Dirty Nails (Tennessee Tearjerkers)
18. Get It (Scat Rag Boosters)
19. Back Door Man (Black Oak Arkansas)
20. It's The Law (Bob Log III)
21 Daddy Wants A Cold Beer (Menster Phips and the Phipsters)
22. If You Don't Like My Apples (Gentleman Jim)
23. Truck Stop Girl (Little Feat)
24. Atom Bomb Baby (Carlos and the Banditos)
25. One More Beer (Big Bill Lister)
26. Satisfied (Elder Charles D. Beck)

The Big Rock Candy Greasy Fingers Mix (mp3)

As ever, please support local, independent businesses as best you can.