Reviews
Reviewed by Lou Novacheck
Truckin’ My Blues Away is a mesmerizing and compelling work which draws you in, like a spider drawing you into her web, until there’s no escape. It’s devastatingly effective and will leave you pensive, energized, and determined to drive right down to North Carolina and offer your help to Tim, Denise, their staff, and volunteers, which I’ll explain below.
Truckin’ My Blues Away is an hour-long podcast and radio show featuring four of Music Maker’s many mainstay musicians. The musicians featured in this broadcast include Boo Hanks from Virgilina, Va.; Captain Luke from Winston-Salem, N.C.; Eddie Tigner from Atlanta; and…
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Reviewed by Dave Esson
A hugely-talented trio of young musicians resurrecting the black string-band and jug-band sounds of the 1920s and 1930s, the Drops have delivered a wonderfully energetic collection. They leap from banjo to fiddle to kazoo to snare drum with abandon. There are traditional songs of the era, a couple of originals, thentwo great covers – a country-blues stroll through Tom Waits’ Trampled Rose, and a fiddle-frenzy drives Blu Cantrell’s Hit ‘Em Up Style.
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Reviewed by Robin Denselow
Two years on from their debut album Heritage, Carolina Chocolate Drops are now recording for a more high-profile label, have acquired a more high-profile producer (Joe Henry, who has worked with Allen Toussaint and Elvis Costello) but are sounding as fresh and enthusiastic as ever. When they first emerged, they were inevitably seen as something of a novelty – a young black trio determined to show that black musicians played an important role in the history of American string band music – but the strength of their playing and singing showed that they meant business. If anything, this set is…
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Reviewed by David Hutcheon
The second collection by Dom Flemons, Rhiannon Giddens and Justin Robinson is impressive, mixing traditional old-time string-band tunes with covers borrowed from Tom Waits and (superbly) Blu Cantrell. Their songs most often come to praise lovers but somehow end up burying them — feel free to write your own epilogue after Robinson sings: “Tell me, pretty baby, do you think you’re too sweet to die?” on the standout original track Kissin’ and Cussin’.
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Dom Flemons is a true virtuoso. A musician that is equally adept at singing, playing, and the craft of songwriting, Flemons enjoys testing his skills on a variety of musical instruments in a variety of musical genres. As a member of acclaimed North Carolina trio The Carolina Chocolate Drops, Flemons carries on the stringband tradition of fiddle and banjo music so closely tied to that region of the U.S.
Flemons’ 2009 release on Music Maker Records is American Songster, a term Flemons exemplifies in the flesh. There are 15 songs, the majority of which are under the three minute mark,…
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Reviewed by Ben the Harpman
Lee Gates is one of those smalltown blues legends we normally wouldn’t get to hear about if it weren’t folks like Music Maker Relief Foundation’s search of such artists. Gates, a first cousin of the Master of the Telecaster Albert Collins, has been one of those small town working class blues heroes all of his life. ‘Shucking steel like a slave’ during the week and playing the blues on Fridays and Saturday nights, Gates began his national touring debut in 2003 and been playing ever since. Recorded in June 2006 in Huntsville, Alabama; Touring with Lucy sounds not a whole…
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Reviewed by Lloyd Bradley
An extraordinary and stylish history lesson of an album
Lloyd Bradley, 1/8/2010, BBC Music Reviews
Carolina Chocolate Drops are one of the last exponents of Piedmont string’n’jug band music, an African-American rural style dating back to the early 20th century from the Piedmont Plateau, essentially the foothills of the southern Appalachian Mountains.
For the most part this album’s an unashamedly foot-stomping countrified fiddle-and-banjo racket, and with it the trio reclaim what is usually assumed to be exclusively hillbilly property. But this historic black style is mountain music with something more, as these 12 tracks show how it fits between…
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Reviewed by Lou Novacheck
Lee Gates has Mississippi Mud running through his veins. He also has blues genes, since he’s a first cousin to Albert Collins. If Lee isn’t a true-blue, Mississippi Delta bluesman, then nobody can carry that moniker.
But Lee isn’t just a bluesman. He’s also a Luther Allison-style blues rocker from Pontotoc, Mississippi. Lee hasn’t had any of the breaks that many other less-skilled blues-rockers have had in spite of his blazing guitar work and good writing skills. He’s had several brushes with greatness, coming close to the golden ring, but never quite reaching it. But he’s most certainly not lacking…
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Reviewed by Chad Radford
Mudcat is one of the few blues musicians of the decade who actually understands the art of subtlety and innuendo. The loose, ramshackle pace and homespun sound of Freedom Creek comes together with humid and comedic restraint that plays a vital role in making the simple melodies and lonely horn honks of “San Antone” and “Empty Room Blues” so catchy. Of course, an undeniable gift for the art of storytelling in such songs as “Police Dog” and “Peter Rumpkin” doesn’t hurt, either. But rather than hit listeners over the head, each song plants a seed that connects the dots. The…
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Reviewed by David Whiteis
Big Ron Hunter, a native of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, learned guitar from his father when he was a young boy; he also received tutelage from the late Guitar Gabriel. Virtually unknown outside his circle of family, friends and acquaintances, Hunter would seem to be representative of the prototypical blues (or folk) “discovery”- a workingman who has spent most of his life playing and singing primarily for his own satisfaction.
Hunter strums with a somewhat heavy-handed but dexterous propulsiveness. Although he proclaims himself a bluesman on several of these selections (and despite the liner notes’ reference to B.B. King), his rhythmic,…
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