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

I owe a great deal of gratitude to Pete Stein of Truckstop Coffee for turning me on to Ben Prestage. Truckstop Coffee came up to St. Pete for a show one weekend and crashed on my couch, and as the night wore on we were drinking whiskey, tellin’ lies and talking music, and the subject of Ben Prestage came up. I had heard the name but not the music, so Pete and Caleb were pretty adamant about me giving Ben a listen, and, boy, am I glad they were.

Ben is a bluesman/one-man band from down in the Everglades. He’s made a living as a Beale Street sidewalk performer, having shared sidewalk space with such names as Robert Belfour and Richard Johnston, and has also been voted in the top 3 bluesmen at the International Blues Competition in 2003 and 2006. His pedigree includes a great-grandmother that was a vaudeville musician who toured with Al Jolson and in medicine shows, a great aunt who was a successful Boogie pianist, and a great grandfather who was a Mississippi share cropper and is the person that added the delta blues sound to Ben’s childhood soundtrack, which became the backbone of Ben’s music. Incidentally, Ben is also the only two time recipient of the “Lyons/Pitchford Award” for “best diddley-bow player” and can sometimes be seen playing a cigar box guitar.

Sure, none of this means shit if the dude writes crappy music, I know. But come on…why would I have spent all this time propping this dude up just to be like…oh yeah, there’s all of that, but his music is boring. No. NO. I have managed to puck up two of his albums so far, Beale Street, which was recorded while Ben was still living up in Memphis, and last year’s ‘gospel and blues meets booze and a diddley bow in an Everglades swamp shack’ that is Real Music. The sound is, in a word: Infectious. Just check out “The Giver”, featuring the cigar box guitar (bass and guitar), foot drums (run through a serious of effects pedals), and a rhythm that will “leave bottles empty and dance floors full.”

Now, what’s it gonna take to get Ben up St. Petersburg’s way for a show?

From Beale Street:
Ben Prestage - The Giver
Ben Prestage - Memphis

From Real Music:
Ben Prestage - I Wish I Was A Catfish
Ben Prestage - Sloppy Drunk

Ben Prestage on myspace, Buy Ben’s Albums (you can get them as mp3…no wait!)

Let the year that is 2008 begin to rock. Right now. Alive Records has released Left Lane Cruiser’s label debut, Bring Yo’ Ass To The Table, and it is everything fans of their self-released album, Gettin’ Down On It, could have expected and so much more. I got an iPhone for Christmas and in preparation for the beginning of the year, I planned to load the new LLC, Drive-By Truckers and N. Mississippi Allstars albums on it for listening in my New Years travels. I never made it to the DBT or NMA discs.

Joe and Brenn headed into Painesville, Ohio’s Suma Studios, a studio full of reel to reels and vinyl cutting machines, and emerged with a blues-fueled, rock-driven cd on the verge of a whiskey rage. This is a must add to the Essential Listening list and currently my favorite cd of this young year. You like this site? You’ll love this disc…trust me.

LLC is currently on the road with another ninebullets fave, Black Diamond Heavies….I can’t imagine the awesome concentrate that this show must be, but seeing as how the tour isn’t currently making it to Florida, imagining is all I got. Even if they don’t get down this way, they are supposed to be playing this year’s Deep Blues Festival, so I’ll be coming to them.

Left Lane Cruiser - Set Me Down
Left Lane Cruiser - Pork & Beans
Left Lane Cruiser - Amy’s in the Kitchen

Left Lane Cruiser on myspace, Left Lane Cruiser on Alive Records, Buy Bring Yo’ Ass To The Table

Left Lane Cruiser - �Set Me Down� Live Video:

and if that didn’t make you wanna shake your ass then you just need to start getting your musical suggestions from perezhilton.

Sometimes I think Dan Auerbach has the Midas Touch. From The Black Keys to Radio Moscow, everything Dan is involved in is an instant classic in the Autopsy IV household, and Patrick Sweany is no different. Patrick is a blues guitarist from Massillon, Ohio, who first gained prominence on the festival circuit as an acoustic blues guitarist back in the late 90’s. However, a lot has changed since then. Sure, Patrick is, at his core, still a blues guitarist, but it’s the soul and 50’s-era rock and roll elements he has added since signing with Nine Mile Records that really set Patrick apart from the rest of the pack.

Every Hour Is A Dollar Gone, released in June 2007, is Patrick’s follow-up to his 2006 Nine Mile debut, C’mon C’mere. It was produced by Dan Auerbach and Paul Hamman, who was also responsible for Grand Funk Railroad and James Gang classics. Largely recorded live, the cd has that retro-blues rock sound that Black Keys fans know and love, but also features songs that would more easily fit under the umbrella of Motown soul, with the switch between styles as easy for the listener as it appears to be for Patrick.

To put it simply, this cd rocks and will be the first entry on my 2008 Essential Listening list.

Patrick Sweany - Be Your Man
Patrick Sweany - After Awhile
Patrick Sweany - Wednesday Night

Patrick Sweany’s Official Site, Patrick Sweany on myspace, Buy Every Hour Is A Dollar Gone

The story goes something like this: In 1977 Muddy Waters, James Cotton, Johnny Winter and Pinetop Perkins did a small tour to support Muddy’s latest release, Hard Again and now, some 30 years later, that material has found its way from tape to the cd that’s been in my deck for a few weeks now. It is really by little more than luck alone we are getting this cd at all. The boxes that held these tapes were for all purposes abandoned and set out to trash by the long defunct Blue Sky Records. Fortunately for us, they were discovered, preserved and now brought to disc.

While one could believe that Muddy, Cotton, Winter and Perkins on the same stage might turn into a case of too many chiefs not enough Indians, the disc proves otherwise. And while no one would ever suggest that this is a monumental performance by any of the major players, it is an awesome glimpse back to a time with four blues veterans on a single stage trading licks and jokes, all the while creating a magic that can only happen on a stage, in front of a crowd.

I really wanted to mention this album at the front end of this month since Mr. Johnny Winter himself will be performing December 16th at The State Theater here in St. Pete. Local readers, this will be a good show. Seth Walker is the opener and as I’ve said many times before: Blues is a genre best enjoyed live.

Muddy Waters & James Cotton - Caledonia
Muddy Waters & James Cotton - Got My Mojo Workin’
Muddy Waters & James Cotton - Trouble No More

Buy Breakin’ It Up, Breakin’ It Down

Austin’s Seth Walker has released his debut latest cd on Hyena Records. From the soulful piano-vocal cover of Tom Waits’ “Picture in a Frame” to the infectiously catchy “2 Feet Left From the Ceiling”, it’s 11 tracks of soul blues. It’s a little too polished and clean for my everyday listening, but I have found the cd to be perfect companion for the quiet parts of a Saturday morning when the coffee is brewing and the newspaper is fresh. I think Taj Mahal may have summed it up best when he called Seth “a little, white Ray Charles” after Seth opened up for him in 2005.

I’ve said it before and I’ll repeat it here, blues is a brand of music that is always best experienced live. Seth will be spending the bulk of December here in Florida, which will include an opening slot at the December 16th Johnny Winters show here in St. Petersburg. Get out there and check him out.

Seth Walker - 2 Feet Left From the Ceiling
Seth Walker - By the Water
Seth Walker - Picture in a Frame

Seth Walker’s Official Site, Seth Walker on myspace, Buy Seth Walker’s self-titled debut

Last week’s piece on Chris Knight’s album, The Jealous Kind, has inspired this post. Floyd’s Market is Moreland & Arbuckle’s second album and it was released way back in 2006. I first heard of/about M&A when I was doing research into the Deep Blues Festival 2007 lineup. I have had Floyd’s Market for quite some time now and wasn’t writing about it based on the 1+ years ago release date. As sometimes happens with me from time to time, I got distracted from my own vision…blame it on the whiskey, I do, I didn’t mean to hold out on you. So when news came down last month that the band signed with Northern Blues, I had a great reason to finally tell y’all about Moreland & Arbuckle’s awesomeness.

Moreland & Arbuckle are a Mississippi Hill Country Blues outfit coming out of the plains of Kansas. Consisting of the band’s namesakes, Aaron Moreland on guitar/vocals and Dustin Arbuckle on the harmonica, and joined by Brad Horner on drums, they write and perform traditional Hill Blues, and they do it in fantastic fashion. Floyd’s Market was recorded the way the blues albums should be, live. Over the course of 17 hours in a studio, the band knocked out 12 tracks of electric blues with just enough acoustic numbers sprinkled in to give you time to top off your drink. If you are a fan of the juke joint/back porch/Mississippi brand of the blues with no silly twists, then these fellas should hit your ‘to check out’ list. Aside from being voted best non-rock album in Wichita and reaching #21 of the Living Blues charts, Floyd’s Market is about to get it’s greatest endorsement yet by finding it’s way onto the ninebullets.net essential listening list.

Now, hopefully they will be at the Deep Blues 2008 Festival so I can see them live and in person.

Moreland & Arbuckle - Date With the Devil
Moreland & Arbuckle - Long Past Midnight
Moreland & Arbuckle - Long Way Home

Moreland & Arbuckle’s Official Site, Moreland & Arbuckle on myspace, Buy Floyd’s Market

The other night I went to see Mr. Bryan Lee play at the Ringside Cafe’. I think at this point everyone knows of my admiration of Bryan, and if you don’t, you need only to read through the archives of this site. So, with that said, I am gonna skip on the Bryan Lee bio and my fanboy gushings and get to the subject at hand…..a new Bryan Lee cd.

IMO, the best place to start getting to know Bryan (and blues music at all), is via his live albums. Specifically, get Live at the Absinthe House….it’ll kick your ass. To my surprise, Bryan’s studio effort (this is the first I’ve heard from him) seems just as personable. Like he bypassed all studio trickery and just went for the “reach out and grab ya” card. There is nothing about this cd that will disappoint a Blues (Chicago mostly?) fan at all. At a time when anyone with a second cousin is writing songs about Katrina, leave it to a New Orleans resident and Bourbon street regular to write a song about the devastation in such a blunt and plain manner. People listening long after the words “Hurricane Katrina” lose their sting will understand exactly what happened in one particular port town on the Mississippi delta.

Bryan Lee - Katrina Was Her Name
Bryan Lee - Don’t Joke With The Stroke
Bryan Lee - 29 Ways

Bryan Lee’s Official Site, Buy Katrina Was Her Name

A few months ago, continuing my efforts at collecting material from my favorite artists appearing on the Kenny Wayne Shepherd 10 Days Out disc, I bought Cootie Stark’s Sugar Man from Music Makers ¹. Cootie Stark passed away in April 2005, and with him one of the last remaining links to the Old South died, as well.

A blind street singer, he learned his stuff from Greenville, South Carolina, bluesmen Uncle Chump and Pink Anderson in the 1930’s. At 70, he rediscovered his unplugged genius and headlined at festivals throughout the U.S. and Europe. His card catalog repertoire runs from soul classics to Piedmont blues songs like “Sandyland” and “Metal Bottoms”. Cootie Stark was one of the last authentic Piedmont blues guitarists/singers and provided a direct link to a South long gone.

Sugar Man gives the listener the blues in its true, oral tradition. In a time where so many people are stuck in the same hill country and Delta blues rut, hearing Cootie’s Piedmont shuffle and groovy rhythms, coupled with his unmistakable delivery, you just can’t help but smile while listening to the songs. I betchya ol’ Cootie was smiling when he sang ‘em. For me, Sugar Man has been my essential Saturday morning cd for months now. See, the wife works on Saturdays and I don’t have anything to do on Saturday mornings, ‘cept relax, drink coffee, read the paper and pet the dog. Cootie’s been providing me the perfect soundtrack for that as of late, and I have a hard time seeing how someone is gonna replace him.

For those that listen to these samples and get what I’m saying, I do not need to type anymore. For those that ain’t feelin’ it, come back on Monday…

Cootie Stark - Someday Baby
Cootie Stark - Metal Bottoms
Cootie Stark - Jigroo

Buy Cootie Stark’s music and support the Music Maker Relief foundation

¹Music Maker Relief Foundation, Inc. helps the true pioneers and forgotten heroes of Southern music gain recognition and meet their day to day needs. We present these musical traditions to the world so American culture will flourish and be preserved for future generations.

Our criterion for recipients is they be rooted in a Southern musical tradition, be 55 years or older and have an annual income less than $18,000.

Music Maker Relief Foundation, Inc. is a tax exempt, public charity under IRS code 501(c)3.

So I am sitting here watching the New Orleans Saints/Tennessee Titans game, waiting to see if Reggie Bush is gonna score enough points to beat my fantasy team or not, and I decided to type up this piece on the good Reverend Peyton. Everything about Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band screams New Orleans, except for their sound…that’s 100% pure Appalachian Blues.

“Big Damnnation” was produced by Paul Mahern and Jimbo Mathis of the Squirrel Nut Zippers and was recorded direct to analog tape with no overdubs, giving the album a live feel. All 12 tracks are band originals with the Reverend’s voice sporting a lower and gruffer sound reminiscent of the 1930s American Southern blues singer.

The band released a cd of seven gospel classics and one original on September 12 entitled The Gospel Album, which features the same direct-to-tape recording style and a minimized drum kit, featuring a kick, a cymbal, a snare and a five-gallon bucket.

Along with the music, I gotta say that the band’s myspace profile contains some of the most entertaining photo blogs I have seen in a long damn time.

Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band - Amberdeen
Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band - Another Bottle
Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band - My Old Man Boogie

Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band’s Official Site, Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band on myspace, Buy The Reverend’s albums