Can you deal with it? When we are talking about the life of Andre Williams, the answer is no. Andre Williams has been from the bottom to the top to the basement to current. George Carlin once said that with the blues, it’s not enough to know what notes to play; you have to know why those notes have to be played. The ‘what’ comes via knowing how to create the sound of turmoil and strife in music. The why comes via experiencing turmoil and strife in life. Andre has had mad turmoil and plenty of strife, and his version of soul music is as close to the blues as you can get. Here is are the Cliff’s Notes of his life:

Andre’s mother passed when he was six and he moved to Detroit when he was sixteen. He found the R&B Top 10 in the late 50’s with Fortune Records, wrote Stevie Wonder’s first song in the 60’s, worked with Ike Turner, Parliament and Funkadelic in the 70’s, and was dubbed “Mr. Rhythm” by Redd Foxx. Then came the 80’s and drug addictions. At one point Andre even found himself homeless on the Chicago bridge. The mid/late nineties found Mr. Rhythm back in the studio, and he landed on my radar in 1998 with his release that same year of Silky…which, per wiki, is considered the sleaziest album ever. While the critics didn’t care for it, I (and many like me) couldn’t get enough. Then 1999 came along and he released an underwhelming (I think) album with The Sadies and I had forgotten about him until I saw his name in the subject line of a recent PR email from Bloodshot Records.

Andre Williams and The New Orleans Hellhounds - Can You Deal With It?

The curiosity was more than I could bear. I checked out the sample track…dug it…asked for the cd..and here we are. Can You deal With It? is an album of almost unprecedented punk-soul blues. Thick, humid, sweaty and sleazy…even the freaking high-hats have a bass tone to them on this album. Andre holds form with lyrics that are dirty as a pig in mud and….lemme be honest here…I’ve never heard of the New Orleans Hellhounds or their (apparently) more famous alter-ego, Morning 40 Federation, but they are the absolute perfect backing band for this album…bringing to mind the Drive-By Truckers backing up Bettye Lavette. On the third time through this album, the wife and I agreed this is what we wanted to hear the last time we were in New Orleans but never found.  If you were at the Deep Blues Festival, or if you wanted to be at DBF, this album is mos def Essential Listening for you.

Andre Williams & the New Orleans Hellhounds - Can You Deal With It?
Andre Williams & the New Orleans Hellhounds - Never Had A Problem
Andre Williams & the New Orleans Hellhounds - If You Leave Me

Andre Williams on myspace, The Morning 40 Federation on myspace, Buy Can you Deal With It?

So begins the segment where I start talking about bands I saw and fell in love with @ the Deep Blues Festival. We’ll start with American Relay. These two hit the stage Sunday evening and I was totally captivated by them.

American Relay comes out of Denver, Colorado with a monstrous guitar driven punk blues sound that brings to mind Soundgarden as much as it does Burnside. Really, I could go on and on trying to fill screen space telling you about the sound these guys create but I think I pretty much just summed it up. American Relay is R.L. Burnside meets Soundgarden. Sometimes it’s that easy. Let the audio convince you. It’s awesome. It’s Essential Listening.
Get some.

American Relay - Bonedry
American Relay - Homeland Blues
American Relay - Weekend

American Relay’s Official Site, American Relay on Myspace, Buy Corn and Oil

I think, no, I know, I’ve mentioned before that I read every single PR email and listen to my band email I get. The signal to noise ratio pretty much sucks but the fact is I started this site and all of those emails (and believe me, it’s a lot) are a sign of a little bit of success of the site so I feel I owe it to myself and the bands to a least read the email. Besides, sometimes you get some really cool little gems out of it and such is the case of John Paul Keith and the One Four Fives.

John hit me up on my last day at work before jetting out to Minneapolis. His email mentioned a recent Ardent Studio session they did and since I was pretty much just killing time till five I decided to give it a listen. What I got was a wonderful helping of 50’s / 60’s (think Jerry Lee Lewis, not Elvis) rock and roll that was too much fun to ignore. JPK has been at this thing for a long damned time. He even played in one of Ryan Adam’s numerous backing bands, The Pink Hearts.

In addition to the Arden Session the band recently released a 7″ which you can download from their myspace profile. It’s worth checking out too. Personally, I am putting these fellas on my radar for a full-length. Below is the Ardent Session and if you’re interested you can read their Break Thru Radio Bio here.

Smoke in a Bottle
Pure Cane Sugar
Memphis (Chuck Berry)
Second Hand Heart
Lookin’ For a Thrill
Otherwise
Drinkin’ For Two
Hide Away (Freddie King)
If I Were You
Too Hip
She’ll Dance To Anything
Phonograph
Baby’s Got A New Tattoo
Sweet Little Rock n’ Roller (Chuck Berry)

July is creeping by and the concert is getting closer, time to start pouring things into 3 oz bottles.  This post features three bands that I like a lot, one of which I am completely in love with.

The Parlor Mob

Fucking. Brilliant.  I can’t say enough about these guys and coming up with just a couple songs to post was nigh impossible.  This blues heavy rock quintet is definitely one of my favorite discoveries while doing this little project.  Mark Melicia’s vocals are desperate, earnest, strident, and sincere, meanwhile the other four band members, David Rosen and Paul Ritchie on guitar, Nick Villapiano on bass, and Sam Bey on drums, seriously rock everything.  Listen to them, seriously.  Hot damn.  10 ponchos for sure.

The Parlor Mob- Tide of Tears
The Parlor Mob- Everything You’re Breathing For

The Parlor Mob on MySpace

Mates of State

I was undecided after the first couple runs through  However, as the songs started to pop up on rotate on my ipod I liked them more and more.  This husband and wife duo out of Lawrence, Kansas make fun and pretty indie pop songs that come across like they’re just having fun and happen to be recording it.  I imagine they’re one of those couples that always making a big production of singing “Happy Birthday” in two part harmony at friends’ parties while everyone secretly rolls their eyes at each other, but everyone loves them anyway because they’re so damned cute.  I would like to see if their energy translates in a live show and have them at 8 ponchos, but they’d better play “Help Help”.

Mates of State- Help Help
Mates of State- Get Better

Mates of State on MySpace

Cadence Weapon

Apparently Autopsy was listening to him 2 years ago.  That is why he’s Mr. Bullets.  I, however, just discovered this smooth-ass hip hopper while doing this project and I am incredibly impressed.  He has a beautiful and graceful flow and his words are insightful and refreshingly un-cliche, with a perfect amount of tongue-in-cheek.  So far I only have “Afterparty Babies”, but I definitely intend to check out more of his music and I have him at 9 ponchos, I definitely want to see what he brings to the stage.

Cadence Weapon- Tattoos (And What They Really Feel Like)
Cadence Weapon- Juliann Wilding

Cadence Weapon on MySpace

To quote the great Hannibal from the A-Team, “I love it when a plan comes together”. While this was unplanned I still like the feel of it.

The new episode of It Burns When I Pee features music from the new .357 String Band album, Fire & Hail. I recently picked up the same album after watching the band at the Deep Blues Festival. Those guys look more like they should be Al Jurgenson’s backing band than a string band.

Anyhow, check out the new episode.

.357 String Band:

I guess this is what you call the “afterglow”. I am home from Minnesota. I’ve had a descent meal and managed not to ingest a stupid amount of whiskey last night. In a few days my digestive track will settle down and it’ll all be over except for the stories. I plan on posting a foggy recollection/recap of the whole thing in a few days. Needless to say, so bands blew me away and some underwhelmed. While some unknown bands left me stunned. For today I am posting a photo blog of the weekend. I didn’t take a ton of pictures…I was there to watch music not document via digital camera.

You can see all the photos here.

Here are some of my favorites:

That’s it kids. As soon as I press the “publish” button on this entry I am shutting off my work PC and heading home to pack, hang out with the dog and get ready for my A.M. flight to St. Paul, Minnesota for the second annual Deep Blues Festival. To say I am excited about this thing is an understatement of epic proportions.

I seriously doubt ninebullets.net will see an update one minute before Wednesday but you never know…I might sneak in a late night drunken ramble some time during the weekend. I will have a digital camera and a flip camera. Perhaps I can score some video interviews. For those that might care I will be attempting to fully assimilate into the Web 2.0 culture by posting frequent updates to my twitter account. If you wish, you can follow the feed here. It might be interesting to see how comprehendable the posts get as the nights wear on…it could turn into sad, sloppy drunk tweets before it’s all said and done.

Finally, before I say goodbye. I made a Deep Blues Festival muxtape full of bands playing the festival for folks to listen to if they want. Check it out:

I feel real bad about this. All three of these bands have been in the disc changer for two weeks. I’ve been intending to write about them but time just slipped by. Here we are now, on the eve of me leaving and I still haven’t written a single word…So let it be known, all three of these bands deserve far more attention than they are about to get.

THE SCISSORMEN

The Scissormen come out of Nashville and featuring a fella on slide-guitar, Ted Drozdowski, that just plain kills it. As much rock and roll as they are blues they are exactly what I wanna hear from a band when I walk into a foreign bar.

The Scissormen have 2 albums available, 2005’s Jinx Breaker (produced by Billy Conway of Morphine) and 2007’s When The Devil Calls. They will be performing at The Deep Blues Festival on Sunday night as well as a collection of shows around the St. Paul area before and after their set.

The Scissormen - Death Letter


GRAVELROAD

Gravelroad come out of Washington State. As of late, as well as doing their own thing they’ve been acting as T-Model Ford’s backing band. An honor and weight that has not been lost on them. They have the kind of sound you would expect from a few kids from the state that created grunge that probably own everything from the Fat Possum roster. Don’t let that come off as a slight to them cause it could not be further from the desired affect. This album, Shot the Devil (released August 5, ‘08),has a sound so dirty and thick it kind of oozes out of the speakers and into your ears much like the mud of a Mississippi swamp. All the while the grit in Stefan’s voice plays the perfect compliment. This is whiskey drinkin’ music and I’ll be right primed to do just that about the time they take the stage at the DBF Friday afternoon.

Gravelroad - Call My Name
Gravelroad - Taildragger


CICADA OMEGA

I initially wrote about Cicada Omega last August after they sent me a 5 track EP. Flash forward a year and I’m listening to their full-length getting ready to see them live thousands of miles from either of our homes. These Bones has a sound that could best be described as hill-country revival blues. The songs build and swell to feverish jams while Winfield’s vocals, howls and cries mesh to remind anyone who has been to a Church of Christ revival of that lady in the back who breaks into feverish tongues.

Every single thing coming out of Portland written about these guys talks about how awesome this band is live and lines like this from the Willamette Weekly only make me wish Cicada had pulled a night slight at the DBF:

the local quartet has proven itself a live act to be reckoned with—leaving audiences (and the members themselves) shaken and sweaty by the end of their howling, fiery performances.

Too bad they aren’t playing any club shows this weekend.

Cicada Omega - Last Night
Cicada Omega - Big Black Chain

We missed last month’s mixtape…hell, in all honesty, I missed a lot of stuff last month but things have returned to their equilibrium and a comfortable routine is returning to my life. With the routine comes the return of the monthly Lucero message board mixtape post. This month’s is coming online just in time for me. I am 3 days from hopping on an airplane and heading up to Minneapolis for The Deep Blues Festival for 4 days od whiskey, lies and punkass blues…While I am physically still here in St. Petersburg, mentally I already have one foot out the door…Today I’ve been making the list of stuff that needs to get loaded on the iphone for the trip. At the top of that list? Lucero July mixtape.

As always, you can d/l the entire comp here and you can check out the official comp. thread over on the message board for track by track commentary.

Here is the track listing:

Thin Lizzy - Are You Ready?
Avail - Lombardy St.
Steve Earle - F the CC
William Elliott Whitmore - Run Johnny Run
The Most Beautiful Losers - True Love Story
Chuck Ragan and Austin Lucas - Cold Night
American Princes - Gravel
Leatherface’s - Can’t Help Falling in Love
Two Cow Garage - Swingset Assassin
Ben Prestage - The Giver
Pete Townshend - Drowned
The Dents – Get Over It Or Get It Over With
William Elliott Whitmore – Lee County Flood
Jacob Golden - Church Of New Song
Jon Rauhouse - Harbor Lights
The Ramones - Sheena is a Punk Rocker
The Hinges - Hide Away
The Damnwells - Electric Harmony
Pearl Jam - Footsteps (live)
The Hollyfelds - Empress Of Wyoming
Neko Case - Somebody Led Me Away
Austin Lucas w/ Chuck Ragan - Sun or Snow
Lagwagon - Losing Everyone
Chris Knight - Crooked Road (live)
Harvey Knuckles - Health Insurance Blues
Quicksand - How Soon is Now
Steve Earle & The V-Roys - Johnny Too Bad (Hillbilly Mix)
Eleven Hundred Springs - Rock Island Line
The Paladins - Slippin’ In
Randy Rogers Band - They Call It The Hill Country
Two Dollar Pistols - Wine Me Up
Olin & The Moon - Call Me Up