Holy Flurking Schmidt! This thing is awesome!  Allow me to quote from the cd website for a moment:

From the first compelling minutes of TEN DAYS OUT: Blues From TheBackroads, it’s immediately evident that bluesman Kenny Wayne Shepherd is up to something different. Shepherd embarked on a ten-day trek into the heart of America. Traveling highways and byways with a roving documentary film crew, aportable recording studio, portable house band—the esteemed Double Trouble, with producer Jerry Harrison, Shepherd visited blues veterans in their homes,backyards and local clubs, creating as intimate and intense a blues film as has been seen in many a year. The resulting film allows music lovers to join in theexploration and witness the artistic creation of both the film and the accompanying live CD.

With TEN DAYS OUT, Kenny Wayne Shepherd continues his love affair with America’s homegrown music, introducing his fans to a varied lot of his blues predecessors.The goal was to get intimate recordings in intimate places, and maintain authenticity: the album has no overdubs, no high-tech fixing. “Live as it went down,” says Shepherd. “What happened is what you hear. We kept it as real as possible.”

The DVD lays bare that truth, taking us into the small rooms, the kitchens, the dense woods where this music was made. “I was trying to convey the place that produced this kind of music,” says the film’s director Noble Jones, a self-confessed culture junkie, “the elements that came together to produce the blues. The environment these people came from and how it weighed on them.”

So that is the overview. In July of ‘04 KWS and the others hit the road, 10 destinations in 10 days. Jamming with blues legends all the way. From the moment Prison Blues starts you know they caught lightning in a bottle. Even though this is technically a Kenny Wayne Shepherd release, the real stars are the ageing musicians whose chops are still sharper than most indie rock kids ever will be. One of the highlights (there are TONS) of the cd is when Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown plays his fiddle like it is a lead blues guitar in Born in Louisiana. I ain’t never heard anything like that in my life. I had already listened to the cd 6 or 7 times before I noticed it and had to listen to that part over again about 4 times in complete awe.

As bad ass as the cd is the real reason to buy this release instead of downloading it is the 1 hour and 46 minute documentary it comes with. I sat riveted to the couch through the entire thing. From juke joint’s to front porches to KWS and Buddy Flett’s performance at Ledbelly’s grave you get to see some amazing performances but some true legends, some of which have already left us. Along the way you also get some really good insight into the history of the genre and the characters that these guys really are. When I was a kid I would watch a skateboarding video and get jazzed as shit to go out and skate.  This dvd makes me jazzed as shit to spend a night with a whiskey neat in a sweaty bar listening to howling guitars and haunted men releasing their demons.

I seriously can not recommend this enough to anyone who is a fan of blues music.  Especially if you are a peripheral fan, since it will give you so much insight in this, one of the only all American forms of music. Check out the trailer for the documentary and hear Kenny Wayne Shepherd play with B.B. King on “The Thrill Is Gone” and I bet that you will be in a full sprint to the record store to pick up a copy for yourself. However, should you need anymore incentive to go and buy this cd/dvd consider this, partial proceeds are being donated to Music Maker Relief Foundation, a non-profit organization helping impoverished blues artists. More information about the artists involved and the project itself can be found at the Official Website.

I think this cd will be a reoccurring feature here on ninebullets. I tend to follow musical chains and I think this one really poses some impressive links to pursue. I have already ordered some cds from the Buddy Flett fronted band The Bluebirds and I suspect I will be buying material by plenty of the other artists featured on this album.

Kenny Wayne Sheppard w/Cootie Shark and Neil Pattman - Prison Blues
Kenny Wayne Sheppard w/Buddy Flett - Honky Tonk
Kenny Wayne Sheppard w/Bryan Lee - Tina Marie

Kenny Wayne Sheppard Official Site, 10 Days Out Official Site

P.S. Since we are on the subject of blues documentaries I feel obligated to mention another, equally impressive doc featuring some of the old Mississippi backwoods bluesmen including RL Burnside, Junior Kimbrough and T-Model Ford. It has a much grittier feel to it than 10 Days Out but is equally captivating. From imdb:

You See Me Laughin’ is a full length documentary that takes a look at the often untamed lifestyles of the last great North Mississippi bluesmen and the Oxford, MS based label- Fat Possum Records- that struggles to record them. The film is an exciting collage of exclusive interviews, live performances and personal anecdotes. It includes rare, black and white footage of RL Burnside from 1974, disturbingly funny stories about touring told first hand by Iggy Pop and John Spencer Blues Explosion as well as an interesting encounter with Junior Kimbrough described by Bono from U2 and much more. This is not for the faint of heart.

I saw You See Me Laughin’ on IFC a few years ago and will stop on it every time they are airing it to this day.

I added a page today called Essential Listening. It is linked in the toolbar above. The page’s purpose is to basically keep track of the cream of the crop that I have heard this year. I have been holding back on writing about a few cds till I put the page up. Hopefully people will like it. I am not too sure on the title though. Essential Listening sounds so dull. Any ideas for something different?

The challenge: To write about a cd that you love from beginning to end without sounding like a cheap PR one sheet. I have been thinking about this piece for a little over a week now. How do you tell people that a cd is completely wonderful but keep it close enough to the vest that people will still look into it…..and should I even bother? Should I say The Dirty 30s cd is 11 tracks that will not ever see the skip track button on your cd player and you will send me countless emails thanking me for telling you about them? Who knows but whatever I am gonna say, I am gonna say it now.A few weeks back I contacted The Dirty 30s and asked for a copy of their cd. I had been listening to the tracks on their myspace site for a few weeks and the Miles of Music goes and labels their cd “It’s a Cracker”. For the uninitiated, It’s a Cracker means they guarantee that you will enjoy that record. If you don’t, send it back and they’ll give you full credit of the cost of the CD towards your next purchase. It’s a great way to check out people you have never heard of. So the cd shows up and I promptly tossed it in the cd player and knew I was in love after one time through.The Dirty 30s are Jason Riley (guitar, vocals), Jeb Venable (Bass), Brian Heuring (Guitar) and Stu Farris (drums) from Cape Girardeau, Missouri. They play a loose at the hinges brand of American rock. The loose feel can be attributed to the band rarely practicing as a full band. When I say loose I don’t mean sloppy. I mean the bolts have some wobble to them. It really adds to the atmosphere of the cd. I get the feeling that these guys are the consummate bar band and as a St. Louis Times reviewer said, “To call them a bar band is no slur: They play fast and loose with free-wheeling blues-based guitar riffs, always a dependable soundtrack for drinking till last call and smoking up on the way home.” If you are a fan of the earlier (more raw) Drive-By Truckers, Lucero (both bands get the Replacements comparisons), or gimmick-free American rock and roll, do yourself a favor and check these guys out. If you hate it just send the cd back to Miles of Music and get whatever Ryan Adams released that week. Personally, this is my favorite cd to have entered the house so far this year and even though it came out in 2006 I am labeling it my favorite cd of 2007 so far.

The Dirty 30s - Rode Hard
The Dirty 30s - Local Anesthesia
The Dirty 30s - Justine

The Dirty 30s Official Site, The Dirty 30s on myspace, Buy The Dirty 30s cd from Miles of Music

I am so fucking tired of the Fall Out Boy / Pete Wentz marketing blitz.

They are a pop-punk boy band….no matter how hard you try that is all they ever will be….stick to giving 13 year old girls a face for their first self-love venture and get the fuck off my radar.

[tim gunn] Carry On. [/tim gunn]

If a person is going to dis hip-hop, inevitably they will mention sampling. “Fucker’s can not even write their own songs! Take someone else’s music and talk over it….where is the talent in that?” blah blah blah…. While there are a multitude of angles from which to attack this argument, I am not here to convince people of the legitimacy of hip-hop as an art. If you can not recognize it on your own then you are probably an asshole. The other day I was listening to the new Swollen Members cd, Black Magic, while I ran some errands on my lunch break. Something in the song Torture reminded me of a long-ago cover of Natural Born Killaz by the band Christ Analogue. The cover was from a 1996 release titled Operation Beatbox put out on the now defunct Re-Constriction Records. Operation Beatbox was a compilation of industrial bands covering hip-hop songs. While it was largely forgettable it did contain some real gems such as the Christ Analogue cover. This chain of thought quickly lead to how much I like The Gourds version of Gin and Juice. Somewhere amidst my stack of cds I have a Drive-by Trucker bootleg where they do a quick cover of Outkast’s song Roses in the middle of one of their shows. I guess that as the high-school and college kids of today grow and their bands start to gain recognition you’ll see a lot more covers of hip-hop jams. They were raised with hip-hop and see it for what it is. See, Puffy is to hip-hop as Hinder is to metal. Lloyd Banks is to hip-hop as Kenny Chesney is to country. What I am saying is none of those mentioned artists are really representing their claimed genre. They are just pop music in the correct and carefully selected/marketed uniform. That, at the core, is the most annoying aspect of trying to defend hip-hop to people who do not care for the genre. They only see hip-hop as MTV. All of this bled over into the afternoon where I sat in my cubicle downloading hip-hop covers I suddenly wanted to hear. I figured I would share some of them with you today. I am gonna post the cover and the original. See who did it better.

Original: Natual Born Killaz - Dr. Dre and Ice Cube
Cover: Natual Born Killaz - Christ Analogue

Original: Gangstas Paradise - Coolio
Cover: Gangstas Paradise - Battery

Original: Gin and Juice - Snoop Doggy Dog
Cover: Gin and Juice - The Gourds

Original: Renegades of Funk - Afrikka Bambatta
Cover: Renegades of Funk - Rage Against the Machine

I made mention of these covers on a message board I frequent and a friend of mine sent me a link to a cover of Natural Born Killaz that his band rec|use did. Personally, I think they did a phenomenal job. Check it out:

rec|use - Natual Born Killaz

While I was doing all of this I ran across an ooooolldddd school hip-hop jam that I loved back in the day and since I have no idea if or where I would be able to post it again I am gonna drop it on y’all now:

Man Parrish - Boogie Down Bronx

Not really but am I the only one who remembers the movie PCU?

In all seriousness though: Saturday night: Free Beer

yup! and everybody knows the best beer is free beer. My friend owns a tattoo shop in St. Pete and they are having an art show Saturday night with free booze and desserts for all who show up. I will be missing it because of The Roots show in Orlando but you shouldn’t. The artists look pretty dang talented and one of them will be doing tats as well.

Honestly, I read about Revival on songs:illinois, and after listening to the mp3 he posted (Fog Rolling In) I knew I wanted more. Flash forward about a month and I’m sitting at my dining room with the last clean glass in the house (a coffee cup) full of Jim Beam, a splash of water, heat on 70 (hey! 50 is cold for Florida!) and Revival - Horses of War on the stereo but not too loud.

Revival is a relatively young band, having formed in 2005. However, the band members had all cut their teeth plenty in previous efforts. Josh Reid’s (vocals) previous band, Canyon, even backed Jay Farrar on a tour. They write these songs, it’s hard to describe, like waves in the Gulf of Mexico they approach, swell up, and gently wash over and by you. Something about them reminds me of the Counting Crows, a band I admit I like, but I can’t really put my finger on it. Perhaps it’s the intimacy of the lyrics coupled with the honesty of their delivery.  I look forward to hearing more from Revival in the future.

Horses of War was released on February 20.

Revival - Fog Rolling In
Revival - King of King’s
Revival - Dizzy

Revival on myspace, Gypsy Eyes Records

I wasn’t gonna say anything at all about this show. I figured since I already admitted SHB was one of my 3 favorite artists then it would be obvious that I thought the show was awesome. I did. This show was so much better than the last time he came to town. A bigger crowd made him even better and the crowd actually knew the songs. Instead of me going on and on about how good the show was I figured I would let someone else tell you. I have this friend who really digs live music who came out for the show even though he is no real fan of Biram’s recorded material. So, before the show I asked him if he would do a show review afterwards. Well, he agreed and here you go:

Scott H. Biram Show Review by Jason Richardson

You know I am not the biggest Biram fan but I like live music in general regardless of genre. In my opinion that is how music is meant to be enjoyed, technology allows recording only recently and the expense of the equipment it once required is why we are now embroiled in the arguement over copyrights and illegal downloading.  Long after the reason for paying for a record is gone we still do so which I find curious. Anyway, I checked out the opening acts on their respective myspace pages earlier in the day and was excited to see the first group.  A large band from Lakeland called Semisoul was a great surprise. Female lead vocals, a rapper, and a horn section round out the stardard power trio very well. That and I think the female singer was checking me out a little bit.  Well…maybe she was just worried because I almost bumped into her but I will give her the benefit of the doubt.

myspace.com/semisoul

My friend Diana was excited to see the Dead Popes and I realized that I am friends with the drummer only when I saw them setting up.  Fun rockabilly guys with a very tight sound and a fun attitude and I was pretty happy with the show by this point.

myspace.com/thedeadpopes

Finally it was time for Scott Biram.  I had heard him earlier when he was doing his sound check and the amount of music he can generate all by himself is really staggering.  He was really a great performer and musician.  He was able to banter with the audience, tune his guitar, work a bass pedal to keep the beat, blow on the harmonica, and growl into his mic/bullhorn.  You don’t really know what to expect when the little guy in the green trucker cap sits down on the stage. Biram looks like a guy you’d pass coming out of the bathroom at a Flying J truckstop on I-10.  However he attacks honky tonk and blues with a vicious growl and doesn’t let you go until you are stomping you feet and screaming “Whiskey!” along with the 40 or so others that stayed all night on a Sunday evening.
Anyway you wanted to see what I thought about the show and this is it, if you are a lover of music I think you should make time to go see all kinds of music, sometimes you find something live that you would never even consider on your Ipod or cd player.

And there you go. Biram was awesome. Go see him when he comes to your town.

OH YEAH! I also managed to take some pictures this time. If you want, CHECK THEM OUT.

Scott H. Biram - Blood, Sweat and Murder
Scott H. Biram - Been Down too Long
Scott H. Biram - Raisin’ Hell Again
Scott H. Biram - Long Fingernail

Scott H. Biram’s Official Site, Scott H. Biram on Bloodshot Records, Scott H. Biram’s myspace site

I remember when Biohazard released their first album, Urban Discipline. Man, that shit hit me like a jab coming right up the pipe. Raw as a freshly popped blister with more grit than a fish fry. You got the feeling that the songs on that album were written from experience and when he sang “you’re on the wrong side of the tracks” it probably wasn’t the first time such an encounter had occurred. While Mat D. and the Profane Saints don’t sound anything like Biohazard they still manage to remind me of that debut cd in every other way.

Mat D and the Profane Saints are like a well worn pair of jeans. Frayed edges, skoal can imprint in the back pocket and too many stains for them to be proper in local eating establishments but you do it anyhow. Mat D writes songs about the underbelly of the American dream. Dive bars, dead lovers, drag queens, and liquor fueled nights. All the while you have his Profane Saints providing a southern fried blues back beat with a little rockabilly and country thrown in for spice. All of this is performed with more familiarity than a Bible College graduate should have. On a personal note, I am glad the devil’s siren, rock and roll, pulled this guy off the path of righteousness and pointed him down the seeder road of lost faith, sexuality, and sin of back roads rural America.

Mat D and the Profane Saints are Mat D (Guitar & Mandolin, Vocals), Jeff Deignan (Drums), Kurt Mullins (Bass) and Kelli Johnson (Lead). With the recent break-up of their other Deignan and Mullins’ projects the Profane Saints became a full fledged band and are currently in the process of recording tracks for a new cd scheduled to be released sometime this year. If you come around this blog looking for new music then you are probably right up the Profane Saints alley. Mat D puts it best when he says, “I don’t try to market myself to a very young rock ‘n’ roll crowd because I don’t think they’ve really caught on,” he said. “What I go for are people that are probably more into the country thing, probably classic rock. I think my age group is probably 30 and over.”

So there you go. Check out these guys internet offerings and be on the lookout for that new cd. I am guessing that deciding to be an exclusive band will only make their new material stronger.

Mat D and the Profane Saints - Rambling Mary Jane Walker
Mat D and the Profane Saints- Swivel Town
Mat D and the Profane Saints- Drinking Gin and Sipping Tea

Mat D and the Profane Saints Official Site, Mat D and the Profane Saints on myspace, Buy Mat D and the Profane Saints cd “Small Town Burning”

backstory: the guy who was lined up to interview Slayer for Reax Magazine isn’t exactly the biggest Slayer fan on earth. So I was asked if I could maybe come up with a few questions for the band. I did and they actually got asked. So, while I did not actually perform this interview they are my questions. The interview is in the current issue of Reax so if you live in the Bay area go grab a copy.

You can read the original here.

Slayer
Interview with Kerry King
Words: Michael Spadoni and Bryan Childs <—–THAT’S ME
Photo: Josh Rothstein

Appearing:
February 23, 2007
House of Blues – Orlando

Thrash Metal gods, Slayer are visiting the House of Blues in Orlando for a highly anticipated show with Unearth on February 23. Their latest offering, Christ Illusion, marks a milestone in their career by showcasing the talents of recently reunited Dave Lombardo on drums with the rest his historic band mates. Having entered the Billboard 200 charts at number five and a surprising Grammy nomination, they have once again proved that are masters of their craft. Reax was able to speak with Kerry King before a sold out audience in Oklahoma where he gave us some insight on where Slayer has been, where they are going, and his thoughts on Metallica.

REAX: Playing Oklahoma tonight – what has it been like touring for this album?
Kerry King: It’s cool; we’ve had four shows out of six sell out… so we can’t argue with that.

REAX: So, Slayer on Jimmy Kimmel… who would have thought? How was that experience?
KK: I haven’t seen it yet. I totally forgot to set my TiVo. We were going to play Jihad as the main song, but the day before they decided that about forty percent of the song wasn’t cool. So, we were like, “bleep us”. That would be the total “Slayer” way to do it. They said no and they would edit the parts out of the song so it just wouldn’t make any sense. I saw Jimmy for about five seconds, he shook my hand and left. I don’t know if he’s a dick or anything, but he had this chick on the show that night so maybe he was just spending time with her.

REAX: Slayer sold the place out in a couple of hours…
KK: It was the fastest ticket giveaway that they’ve ever had. We had no other show in Los Angeles so that’s the only way people could come see us. We played six songs compared to the eighteen songs we usually play at a show on this tour.

REAX: Are you pulling from any specific albums or are you playing songs from your whole career?
KK: Definitely the whole career…but there are some absentees at the moment. We aren’t playing anything from Hell Awaits, Divine Intervention, Diabolus in Musica, or Undisputed Attitude. Everything else is covered including four new tunes off of Christ Illusion.

REAX: A lot of people have praised “Christ Illusion” as the return of Slayer’s brutality. How much of that do you feel is true? And, how much would you credit Dave’s return to the band with that?
KK: I think God Hates Us All definitely went down that road. It was a very angry record. Dave plays with such reckless abandon that it translates to the music. Once Dave came back, everyone was asking if he was going to play on a record and we said it was up to him. When he decided he was into it we took it from there.

REAX: “Christ Illusion” earned a Grammy nomination…
KK: Yeah… [laughs] did you hear the chuckle in my voice? Who decided that? If they go by longevity, yeah, we’re going to win. If they’re going for somebody new, then it will probably be Mastodon or Lamb of God. It would be cool to have a Grammy sitting on my shelf just so I could say, “Look at what the fuck I won… how’d I do that?” It’s not really meaningful to me because its not the fans picking it, its generally people who have no idea what we sound like. It’s people in the industry picking the winners, but if you don’t like metal and you’re just going by who you’ve heard of… chances are it’s going to be us. I am nominated, so I can vote. When I got the hip-hop area, I knew Little John, so I’m like, “Yeah, pick him!”

REAX: You have had some well-publicized feuds with other bands over the years and were recently quoted referring to Metallica as “a sinking ship”. Has there been any blowback from those statements?
KK: I don’t think there is anything to say back to that. What are you going to say? I wasn’t lying. They could start taking pot-shots, but realistically there is nothing good about their last record. If you took the whole album and took riffs from there and there, you would probably have one good song. That’s not just talking smack, that’s how I really feel.

REAX: Do you think there is any hope for a band like Metallica to return to what they once were and do you think Rick Rubin can help them do that?
KK: Rick is a very hands-off producer so I don’t know if it’s a good marriage or not. When he passed up doing Christ Illusion and decided to do Metallica’s record… it better be the best fucking thing they’ve done since the Black Album. It would be bad for both of them.

REAX: While some bands seem to be becoming a caricature of their former selves, how is it that Slayer has managed to maintain your relevance in the metal scene over all of these years without ever compromising your integrity?
KK: I definitely keep my finger to the pulse of what’s going on. If there is a metal show coming through town, I’m always there. I go to the Anaheim House of Blues so much that people don’t even want my autograph anymore.

REAX: How do y’all feel about all of the old 80’s hair bands trying to make a comeback – like the Van Halen / David Lee Roth reunion?
KK: Generally… it’s just a moneymaker. They’re doing it because if you take one piece out of the puzzle, the puzzle isn’t cool any more. People realize that even though Van Halen was gigantic with Sammy Hagar. Maybe its giving fans something they’ve been dying for… realistically David Lee Roth was cool in the seventies, but now he’s just a fucking old man, a little bit fucking creepy too. Eddie is out of his fucking mind. I just got the last Guitar World where he is on the cover with the DVD and I couldn’t wait to see what he had to say because that guy is nuts.

REAX: In a recent article in Maximum Ink, they said Slayer has become more than a band that you have become a right of passage. Did you ever imagine that Slayer would become such cornerstone of metal?
KK: We just kind of roll with it and when you’re not rolling, you have to stick your head up and see what’s going on. I’ve heard from one of our fans, “I just went to church, I just saw Slayer and that was church.” I thought to myself, wow, that’s pretty cool. What I like to do… I don’t do in a preaching kind of way. I got fed up with all the fucking religious-heads around that I had to write songs about it. Usually I’ll throw out an idea where ten kids will hear a song and they will get ten different ideas about it. I like to raise questionable issues, throw them out there and let people know what I think. Kids are so impressionable that you have to be straight up. I want to let people know what I think, but don’t think the same way because I said so. Make up your own mind.

Slayer - Dead Skin Mask
Slayer - Fleshstorm