Scott McKeon - New Morning

British guitarist Scott McKeon has played with a host of big names both in the studio and on the road.  But when the list of his credits is rolled out, the name of Sir Tom Jones is usually at the top.  I very much doubt though, that McKeon ever wrangled his guitar like this when he was accompanying Jones the Voice.
McKeon previously came to my attention via the band Rufus Black, whose album Rise Up came over like Free-meets-funk, with plentiful injections of stinging, imaginative guitar.  New Morning is

Scott McKeon - he plays guitar a bit

Pic by Rob Blackham

a largely instrumental album that steps further into left field, with the leading role handed to McKeon’s guitar playing.  But the rest of the cast are also kept mighty busy by the intricate stuff captured here.
This is particularly true of drummer Jeremy Stacey, who kicks off ‘Fight No More’ with a complex, twitching pattern that gives a glimpse of the shape of things to come, augmented by some rich, ducking and diving bass from Rocco Palladino.  McKeon overlays this with some tweeting lead licks, then develops a wiry, Hendrix-like solo before crashing into some slam-dunk power chords.  A meditative vocal refrain swings around a couple of times, but then they don’t spare the horses on an explosive crescendo.
There’s an enjoyable whiff of the Rufus Black sound in all this, and the last couple of tracks, ‘Everything Is Nothing’ and ‘Take Me Back’, swing back round that way to complete the circle.  Rufus Black vocalist Gavin Conder pops up on both of these to add his Paul Rodgers/Steve Marriott-like voice to the equation, giving them a soulful blues tinge.  ‘Everything Is Nothing’ has a funky drummer foundation too though, and Conder’s singing alternates with bouts of a chunky, Zep-like, staircase-climbing riff, while McKeon sets off on some scragging, strafing solo breaks.  ‘Take Me Back’ has a more restrained feel, with McKeon and guitar buddy Ben Jones conjuring up a guitar conversation at one point, and a vocal/guitar interchange that’s less yer typical call-and-response than a dialogue between two languages.
In between, the title track has a creeping guitar intro that McKeon overlays with drifting strands of reflective lead playing, before he slowly builds a solo with a tone that cuts like the edge of a knife.  Meantime Stacey again lays down some byzantine rhythms that bring a jazzy air to proceedings.  ‘Zapruder’ wades in on a sturdy, strutting riff that Ross Stanley’s Hammond Organ swirls around, before it dwindles into some twisting and turning guitar musings that straighten out to find the riff again, en route to some frantic variations on a theme before cooling off.  It’s like a supersonic jet roaring into the sky, then morphing into a gull gliding in to land.
Conder does another turn on ‘Third Eye Witness’, adding a crooning vocal to some brooding guitar chords and an offbeat rhythm, evoking a dreamy, latter-day Robert Plant vibe.  Then McKeon splutters into life with fuzzy, jagged notes like the signal coming and going as the dial is turned on an old-fashioned radio.  At times like these I suspect that McKeon is infinitely more knowledgeable than I am about Jeff Beck’s guitar explorations.
‘Crossfader’ is differently atmospheric, as discordant organ weaves over drums that patter like rain on a windowpane before resolving into a more assertive rhythm.  It’s the undertow for squelched and squeezed guitar notes that eventually coalesce into a squalling solo, while the drums turn into a hail shower that swirls in the channel-switching of the title.
There are nine tracks on offer here, spread over 54 minutes, so you know you’re not in three-minute wonder, three-chord trick territory.  Me, I like the stuff that leans most towards that Rufus Black funkin’ soulful rock vibe, especially with Gavin Condor’s voice in the mix.  But I reckon the people who will really dig New Morning are fans of fusion-leaning guitar wizardry that bends licks out of shape and turns them inside out.  If that’s your bag, then I suggest you let Scott McKeon lead you on a journey to another dimension.

New Morning is released on 23 April, and can be pre-ordered here.

Adventures in the South - New Orleans, Part 2

It was a lazy start to our first morning in New Orleans.  We’d promised ourselves that after driving all the way from Nashville over the last ten days or so, we were going to kick back and take it easy in the Big Easy.  So we took a leisurely breakfast in the dining room of the hotel before setting out to explore.
We sauntered down to the wide boulevard of Canal Street and then towards the Mississippi Riverfront.  Passing by the hulking mass of Harrah’s Casino, we made our way to the stop for the Riverfront Streetcar – never can resist a historic streetcar.  And there we waited  in the

That there is Satchmo's cornet, on display at the Jazz Museum

sweltering mid-morning heat.  For quite some time.  Early August, it has to be said, ain’t the most comfortable time to visit New Orleans, but other commitments had dictated our holiday period.  Even wearing a hat it helps to find any scrap of shade you can – and have a bottle of water to hand.  Eventually though, the streetcar arrived, and pulling away towards the Lower French Quarter we could immediately feel the movement creating a blissful breeze through the streetcar.
Getting off at the French Market, we had a stroll through the (thankfully covered) Flea Market.  Chatting with a local artist from whom we picked up a couple of pictures capturing the colour of the French Quarter, we mentioned our interest in music and asked if he had any tips.  Nearby Frenchman Street was the locale to aim for, he reckoned, and added that we should try to catch local legend Walter ‘Wolfman’ Washington playing in a club there the following night.
From there we headed for the Old US Mint in Barracks Street.  Now a museum, the Mint neatly tells the story of New Orleans’ chequered history through its frequently changing currency, as it changed hands from one “occupying power” to another – French, Spanish, then French again before the United States acquired it through the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.  It also houses the excellent New Orleans Jazz Museum, during our visit including a temporary exhibition about the historic venue Preservation Hall, which can be found in nearby St Peter Street.  For some reason we didn’t cotton on to the Louisiana State Museum, so the Mint was the closest we got to exploring the history of New Orleans.
Having done the culture vulture bit, we returned to the French Market for a spot of street food

There's always a gig somewhere in New Orleans

lunch – gumbo for me and a po’ boy for Jill, and very tasty it was too.  Much more satisfying, for my money, than the much-vaunted but disappointing beignets we sampled at Café Du Monde, the “Original French Market Coffee Stand” since 1862.  I mean, I like a good doughnut now and then - and that's all beignets are - but these didn't strike me as anything special.  What’s more, much of the icing sugar in which the doughnuts were swimming ended up on the tiled floor, turning it into a skating rink.
Meandering back towards our hotel, we passed through Jackson Square, with its statue of former president Andrew Jackson, and took in some jazz musicians playing al fresco, in relaxed but still impressive style.  And so back to the hotel, and some reading and cooling off around the outdoor pool.
 
That evening we set off for Mulate’s Cajun Restaurant and Dance Hall in the Warehouse district, where cajun music is played every night.  Having failed to score any cajun music a couple of nights earlier in its heartland of Lafayette, we were intent on making up for it now.  Mulate’s is a large and airy, pleasant room, but on this Tuesday evening customers were sparse.  Maybe we’d arrived too early, but while we did get a band knocking out some cajun stuff on the stage, the atmosphere was far from energising.  The food seemed uninspired too – or perhaps I’d had just had a surfeit of fried stuff after nearly three weeks on the road in the States.
Somewhat deflated, we walked back to the hotel in the decidedly warm and humid night air.  On the way, rather surreally, we passed two police horses tied up next to a multi-storey car park, their riders nowhere to be seen.  The horses seemed entirely unconcerned.  Taking a leaf out of their Big Easy nonchalance, we spent the rest of the night chilling out over cocktails in the cool of the hotel.

To read Adventures in the South from the beginning, go to the Prologue.

Chris Cain - Raisin' Cain

It’s clear, right from the start on ‘Hush Money’, that Chris Cain knows his stuff.  He should do mind you, given that Raisin’ Cain is his fifteenth album.  But still, the bright guitar lick he delivers over a horn backdrop on the intro, and the rich voice he brings to bear on the vocal, tell you that he’s a pro.  It’s a lightly funky tune, with an amusing lyric and a vibe reminiscent of ‘Master Charge’ by one of Cain’s heroes, Albert Collins, and his jazz-inflected solo is an engaging embellishment.  And that pretty much sums up the Chris Cain style – smooth, classy and mature, in a manner descended from BB King, which can’t be bad.
He’s backed up in this endeavour by musicians who know their stuff, too.  So the following ‘You

Chris Cain demonstrates the white man's overbite

Pic by Marilyn Stringer

Won’t Have A Problem When I’m Gone’ confirms those initial impressions as it swings briskly into view with walking bass from Steve Evans and swishing cymbals from Derrick ‘D’Mar’ Martin, to which Greg Rahn adds some rinky-dink piano fills while Cain drops in a perfectly fitted solo.
Indeed Cain’s guitar playing is ear-catching throughout, full of crafty twists and turns on the slower ‘Down On The Ground’, vibrant on ‘I Believe I Got Off Cheap’, and clever again on the jazzy and soulful ‘Found A Way To Make Me Say Goodbye’, on which Greg Rahn underlines the jazz credentials with his Wurlitzer piano turn.  And on the bouncing, uptempo ‘Out Of My Head’ Cain’s fluttering guitar licks, set against sharp flurries of horns over swinging drums and stair-climbing bass, advertise his Robben Ford-like chops.
The Robben Ford reference is telling on the songwriting front though, because Cain’s all-original material feels a bit safe compared to what Ford might produce.  Cain keeps things short and sweet, in and out without messing about, which is fine by me.  But while his lyrics are wry and well-assembled, the subject matter sometimes feels overly familiar, lacking the freshness that someone like fellow Alligator artist Toronzo Cannon brings to proceedings.
Still, ‘Can’t Find A Good Reason’ captures a Robert Cray-like mood of romantic disappointment well, with a slow, lyrical opening, and patient soloing that shifts pace beautifully.  This is one song where stretching out at greater length could really have been worthwhile.  But Cain sings it with feeling, evoking those BB King influences.  Meanwhile ‘Born To Play’, a simple enough song when you get right down to it, manages to pack a lot into its three-and-a-bit minutes. Warm horns and slinky bass lay down the foundations, and Cain pings guitar notes around over the top like he’s enjoying a game of Space Invaders.  (Younger readers – ask your parents.)
Speaking of space, the closing ‘Space Force’ is a real headscratcher of a selection.  An instrumental on which Cain decides to amuse himself with an ARP synthesizer, it sounds like it belongs on a whole other album.  But in so far as it’s still entertaining, it’s thanks to Evans’ funky, squelchy bass, and spots of clavinet from Cain and melodica from producer Kid Andersen, rather than the featured synth.
But leaving that oddity to one side, Raisin’ Cain is a polished collection of old school blues, given added zest by Cain’s citrus-sharp guitar playing.   Expect the unexpected, as the saying goes, because Chris Cain pulls out plenty of licks that deliver just that.
 
Raisin’ Cain is released by Alligator Records on 9 April.

Quickies - Wily Bo Walker, Jed Potts & The Hillman Hunters, Jo Carley & The Old Dry Skulls

Wily Bo Walker Presents . . . Tales Of The Mescal Canyon Troubadours
 
I could have sworn that Wily Bo Walker had already released an album going by this title a few years back, but further research suggests not.  Probably I’m just getting older and a bit more addled.  But it may also be that I can’t keep up with the Wily one’s constant re-working, re-

Wily Bo surfs it up

Pic by Sally Newhouse

imagining and re-purposing of his material.  In any event some of the songs here are familiar landmarks from cruising around the streets of “Voodooville”, the noir-ish, B-movie locale that’s the imaginary backdrop for Walker’s songwriting.
With that kind of cinematic taste, it’s little wonder that the likes of ‘Drive (Mescalito Mix)’ and ‘Jawbreaker (Surf-O-Rama)’ carry echoes of the soundtrack to Pulp Fiction.  The former tune swathes Walker’s characteristic growl in Hank Marvin-esque twang, while the latter is an instrumental firmly in Dick Dale/Del Shannon terrain.
My favourite track here is cut from different cloth though.  ‘Velvet Windows’ is catchy and rootsy in a JJ Cale ‘Tulsa Sound’ fashion.  It canters along with rippling acoustic guitar and banjo accompanied by pattering drums and stand-up bass, adorned by an Albert Lee-style guitar solo.
Different guitar styles are in evidence elsewhere.  Regular compadre E D Brayshaw contributes typically biting and sizzling six-string stuff over the loping beat of ‘Walk In Chinese Footsteps (Bardo Thödol Mix), and adopts a piercing, Santana-without-the-Latin-rhythms persona on the closing ‘Moon Over Indigo’, with its hints of Gershwin’s ‘Summertime’.  (Bardo Thödol is the Tibetan Book Of The Dead, by the way.  Go figure.)  Meanwhile the uptempo ‘Chattahoochee Coochee Man (Southern Slide)’ does exactly what it says on the tin, dialling up a squealing solo that turns grittier as it progresses, bouncing off some underplayed injections of horns.
If you’re not familiar with the Wily Bo Walker oeuvre, Tales Of The Mescal Canyon Troubadours offers an ideal entrée – ten tracks that are all roads to Voodooville.

Tales Of The Mescal Canyon Troubadours is available now from Mescal Canyon Records.
 
 
Jed Potts & The Hillman Hunters – It Won’t Be Long
 
‘It Won’t Be Long’ is the third in a series of original singles coming down the pipe from Scotland's Jed Potts & The Hillman Hunters, and finds them coming over all Howlin’ Wolf.  Which is some going, because Jed Potts isn’t six foot four tall, doesn’t have a bass voice like gravel, and sure as hell ain’t black.  But fair play to him, he digs deep to find all the vocal raunch he can muster to go with the scratchy, spiky, lurching opening to this latest outing.
It’s a tale of domestic less-than-bliss that sounds like it was garnered from some seedy Chicago joint, with Potts reinforcing the sentiments with jagged injections of guitar.  Then they cool things down halfway through and play around with the groove ahead of the lyrica

Jed Potts & The Hillman Hunters - not in a seedy Chicago joint

Pic by Mark Holloway

l pay-off.  All in all, ‘It Won’t Be Long’ is the best effort so far in this string of new releases from the Hillmans.
 
‘It Won’t Be Long’ is released on 20 March and available from Bandcamp here.
 
 
Jo Carley & The Old Dry Skulls – Voodoo Bones & Vaudeville Blues
 
Is Anglo-Voodoo a thing now?   Are sales of hoodoo dolls and gris-gris soaring along the Thames Delta?  Because if Voodoo Bones & Vaudeville Blues sounds like it has one foot in Louisiana Creole, the other seems to be planted in East End music hall.
To give a quick example, the brief instrumental ‘Crowhurst’s Lament’, with its creeping low-end guitar notes and funereal beat, may carry dark and atmospheric hints of a movie soundtrack – but that movie might well be Carry On Screaming.  I have visions of Kenneth Williams waist-deep in a vat of boiling oil, yelling “Frying tonight!”
I’m kidding. A bit.  But I’m not dissing Jo Carley & The Old Dry Skulls when I say this, because that comic tinge is deliberate.  As is, I imagine, Jo Carley’s occasional preference for a vocal approach that evokes Eliza Doolittle more than Marie Laveau – witness ‘The Jungle’, with its spoken intro.  Nothing wrong with that in principle – I call Ian Dury as an expert witness, M’lud – but here it does seem a bit mannered at times.  For me her more straight-up vocals work better, allowing her use of dynamics and story-telling to come across without distraction, as on ‘The Devil’ and the following ‘She Got Him (With Her Voodoo)’.

Jo Carley and pals - engagingly bonkers

The arrangements often suggest skiffle, but that’s not the whole story.  Carley, her husband Tim, and amigo James Le Huray have a range of weapons in their arsenal, and between them can chuck in mandolin, fiddle, banjo and keyboards as the need arises.  Sansula, even.  (A kind of African thumb piano, since you ask.)
The melody of opener ‘Little Limbs Of Satan’ reminds me of nothing so much as the daft old song ‘Three Little Fishies’ – you know the one, where the fishies “swam and they swam right over the dam”.   But there’s better fare elsewhere.  Highlights include the slow-ish ‘Lose Your Soul’ with banjo-picking leading the accompaniment, some spare guitar notes flitting in here and there, and sonorous backing vocals from the fellas.  ‘The Witchdoctor’ also bobs along in appealing fashion, with a cod-ominous vibe, and some fiddle duetting with guitar to hint at Gogol Bordello gypsy punk.  ‘The Devil’ could be a stripped down, esoteric take on something from Springsteen’s Seeger Sessions Band.  And there’s a characterful vocal to go with the tense and suppressed feel and syncopated rhythm of ‘The Bone Readers’.
Voodoo Bones & Vaudeville Blues is engagingly bonkers, and probably an acquired taste.  But if a little of that ol’ Black Magic is what gets your mojo working, then let Jo Carley & The Old Dry Skulls go do their voodoo on you.
 
Voodoo Bones & Vaudeville Blues is available now on Old Higue Records/New Retro Sounds, here.

Big Harp George - Living In The City

Big Harp George.  The name conjures up some man-mountain, his voice growling and groaning the blues, then letting loose a hurricane howl with his harmonica as beads of sweat run down his face.
Well, not so much.  Big Harp George, alias George Bisharat, is a mucho dapper dude in his mid-sixties from San Francisco’s Bay Area, with a neat and sprightly voice to match.  Sure, he plays a harp, but of the chromatic variety that appeals to jazz players, rather than blues blasters embellishing tales of crime, misery and debauchery. On which songwriting note, it’s worth knowing that before he retired from the 9-to-5 our George’s gigs included defence attorney and

Sharp dressed man Big Harp George

Pic by Peggy De Rose

law professor, and he's as sharp with words as you might expect.
All of which is to the fore on opening track ‘Build Myself An App’, which bobs and bumps along in breezy fashion, hinting at New Orleans and laying a diverting foundation for George to share the thoughts of a wannabe app developer who doesn’t know his ROM from his RAM but still harbours hopes of a fast buck.  And his harp break has an airy, swinging tone that sits easily next to the following sax solo.
Other winners include 'Living In The City' itself, and ‘Copayment’.  The former is heralded by cool bass and snapping fingers, to which George adds harp that comes over like muted trumpet.  The verses paint a picture of the urban jungle over a swinging ‘Everybody Wants To Be A Cat’ vibe, and if the chorus is less interesting then George compensates with an appealing harp solo, high-pitched and playing around with the melody, augmented by a brittle, pinging guitar solo.  ‘Copayment’, meanwhile, is a stop-time riffing affair with more swinging horns, on which George gets all snarky as the ordinary Joe discovering the limitations of his medical insurance, leading to some witty dialogue and his final protest that “If I wasn’t sick when I came in here, I sure am now!”  And ‘Don’t Talk!’ is similarly amusing as a lawyer stresses to his client the risks of opening his mouth, over a twitching, pseudo-Latin beat, embroidered with some interesting musical stings and harmonica and trombone solos combining in short order.
Some songs, like ‘Try Nice’ and ‘First Class Muck Up’, suggest jump blues foundations.  But Bisharat often ranges more widely into swingin’ terrain, with the instrumental ‘Bayside Bounce’, for example, springing off from a phrase redolent of the old Benny Goodman standard ‘The Glory Of Love’, and other tunes deploying one Latin rhythm or another.  Which is all well and good, but he takes things too far with ‘Heading Out To Itaipu’, a song that both musically and lyrically references the ghastly ‘The Girl From Ipanema’. I hate ‘The Girl From Ipanema’ George – I hate it!
Down the stretch things get more interesting though, with the slow waltz of ‘Enrique’, piano-led backing underpinned by sparse bass and whispered drums for the crooned story of a troubled brother, and enhanced by melancholy fiddle solo.  ‘Pusher In A White Coat’ sidles in on a slinky opening before developing into a bitter condemnation of medics making money out of misery as they take “incentives” to peddle drugs, with Kid Andersen (who shares guitar duties with the late Little Charley Batey) adding a sharp, spiky guitar solo.  And the closing ‘Meet Me At The Fence’ is a plea for Palestinian dignity that jumbles up a Latin rhythm with Middle Eastern instrumentation. (Bisharat, who has Palestinian ancestry, is a well-known commentator on Middle Eastern law and politics.)
There are thirteen tracks on Living In The City, which is a few too many – and a few are overlong into the bargain.  But I like George’s style all the same, as he combines an acerbic take on everyday life with the swing-era feel of snazzy hotel dance floors.  His sweetly horn-like harmonica playing is impressive too.   All in all, Big Harp George may well be the classiest former criminal defence attorney on the bandstand.

Living In The City is available now on Blues Mountain Records

Jimbo Mathus & Andrew Bird - These 13

Now as a rule, I don’t devote a great deal of listening time to Americana.  A little bit, here and there, if the songs are good – and if it doesn’t lean too much towards pedal-steel-peddling country sentimentality.  But I’m always interested in what Southern roots muso Jimbo Mathus gets up to, so when I saw this collaboration with Andrew Bird was coming down the track, I decided to give it a whirl.
Both these guys are multi-instrumentalists, and both of them inclined towards hopping around and muddling together various genres.  So it’s intriguing to cop an earful of them sticking with a pretty simple vibe, and yet conjuring up buckets of nuance with just a handful of acoustic instruments.

The single released in advance of the album, ‘Sweet Oblivion’, was enough to entice me into a

Jimbo Mathus and Andrew Bird -  time travelling tour guides

pre-order.  A toe-tappingly engaging song about ageing, and perhaps mortality, it has a trotting rhythm laid out by little more than Mathus’s acoustic guitar,  and handclaps, while Bird strums at his fiddle for a while before sawing away in more decorative fashion.
Now, that’s pretty straight ahead.  But it’s remarkable how they evoke a rather different atmosphere on, say, ‘Beat Still My Heart’, with much the same components.  It opens with edgy guitar chords and mere suggestions of pulsing fiddle, before Bird chimes in with reverb-drenched vocals.  With its waltz-time, and Bird’s weeping fiddle, it evolves into a soundtrack – in my mind’s eye at least - for a couple dancing around an abandoned, cobwebbed ballroom.
“Old fashioned” is a fitting description, not as a criticism but to suggest the way in which this music reaches back down the years.  The cover art captures the mood, looking like illustrations from some nineteenth century religious tome, not so much sepia-toned as browned with age.  So when ‘Stonewall (1863)’ turns up, all solemn fiddle intro and subtle strums of guitar, it comes over like the kind of American hymn that you’d expect to hear in some rickety chapel populated by those prospectors in the Clint Eastwood movie Pale Rider – notwithstanding that the title points to Southern, Civil War references.  It comes with a subtle, hummed and moaned middle eight - but also with some irritating spoken prompts of the next line from Bird to the harmonising Mathus.
‘Red Velvet Rope’ may be less antique, but as Bird lowers the pitch of his voice a notch, it has a whiff of Johnny Cash’s American Recordings, melancholy in its use of minimalist guitar and a scraping fiddle break as it contemplates the impact of celebrity.  I think.  ‘Dig Up The Hatchet’, meanwhile, has an ironic lyric backed with warm acoustic guitar picking and strumming as it follows a path that more folk than country.  (And speaking of lyrics, you’ve got to love the line from the opening ‘Poor Lost Souls’, “She’s just a lump of coal, but she should have been a diamond.”)
How should we describe ‘Jack O’Diamonds’?  Bluegrass?  Hillbilly?  Honestly, with Mathus’s guitar doing little more than bash out a percussive rhythm as he delivers a rough vocal and Bird joins in with bawled harmonies and some scratched out fiddle flourishes, they come across like the Soggy Bottom Boys.  Then next thing they’re getting into Hank Williams territory on the brief ‘Burn The Honky Tonk’.
Ultimately they stretch out on the closing ‘Three White Horses And A Golden Chain’.  There’s the barest picking of fiddle under an ever-so-familiar melody, until Mathus flutters in faintly on guitar and starts singing, and Bird adds keening harmonies.  Bird essays a mournful, elegant violin solo, and they get into some duetting of ghostly whistling with his fiddle en route to a solemn coda.
These 13 sure ain’t no rock music.  Here and there it brushes up against the blues.  But really it’s a time-travelling journey to an America seen through a glass darkly, with Jimbo Mathus and Andrew Bird your roots music navigators who don’t need a DeLorean.

These 13 is out now on Wegawam Music Co & Southern Broadcast.

New Moon Jelly Roll Freedom Rockers - Volume 2

If what you’re after is a slab of blues-rock seething with guitar sorcery, I suggest you get off the bus at the next stop.  This ain’t that kind of album.
The New Moon Jelly Roll Freedom Rockers – and that’s a mouthful I won’t be repeating much, believe me - weren’t a real band.  They were a bunch of roots music comrades who got together in the studio back in November 2007, set the tapes rolling, and  - well, played some stuff.  And it’s taken till last year with Volume 1, and now with Volume 2, for the fruits of those sessions to see the light of day.

Memphis big cat Jim Dickinson

The thing is, these weren’t just any old blues geezers.  They included Luther and Cody Dickinson of the North Mississippi Allstars, and their dad, that redoubtable stalwart of Memphis music Jim Dickinson, who died in 2009.  Also present were the respected Clarksdale harp player Charlie Musselwhite, Grammy Award-winner Alvin Youngblood Hart, and their pal and Squirrel Nut Zipper-in-chief Jimbo Mathus.
The feel of what they recorded is similar to Ian Siegal’s Picnic Sessions album, which was also recorded in the Dickinsons’ Zebra Ranch studio in Mississippi, with some of the same personnel.  The Jelly Rolling gang sat themselves down in a circle and played live, pulling out old covers and a few of their own songs, and capturing them in the most relaxed, down-home style you can imagine.
If a crate of beers and some bottles of rye were dispatched along the way, I wouldn’t be at all surprised.  The Charlie Mingus tune ‘Oh Lord, Don’t Let Them Drop That Atom Bomb On Me’,

Charlie Musselwhite - have harp, will wail

for example, is a slow blues that sounds like a bourbon-soaked funeral march, with Jim Dickinson delivering a plaintive moan’n’groan of a vocal, his chiming piano counterpointing a tentative guitar solo.  The closing ‘Blues Is A Mighty Bad Feeling’ is mournful too, the beat dragging like the half-step-and-pause of a slow march as Dickinson père croons along over warm, spare guitar chords and lonesome harp.
They can swing too though, as they show on a reading of ‘Messin’ With The Kid’ that’s way closer to Junior Wells than Rory Gallagher.  Dickinson senior provides vocals again, growling along over skimpy promptings from son Cody’s drums, twitching rhythm guitar, and Charlie Musselwhite tooting away on the stumbling riff before providing a solo to go along with a sparkling guitar break.  And there’s a similar light touch later, on Jimmy Reed’s ‘Can’t Stand To See You Go’, all chirpy piano and harmonica flourishes.
After taking the lead vocal on opener 'Blues For Yesterday', Musselwhite is also to the fore on the atmospheric highlight and dark-from-the-off ‘Black Water’.  He offers up ghostly harp to accompany lowdown guitar work that’s like an alligator gliding through the bayou, later migrating into a slithering harp’n’slide conversation, while stirrings of drum paradiddles conjure up snakes in the bushes.  But if all that sounds like the setting for a midnight-at-the-crossroads yarn, Musselwhite’s semi-spoken vocal is in fact a reflection on the modern world.

Jimbo Mathus comin' at ya!

  Brighter notes come in the likes of ‘She’s About A Mover’ and ‘Searchlight’.  Alvin Youngblood Hart takes the mic on the former, a Sir Douglas Quintet song owing plenty to Ray Charles, Hart’s voice light and airy for a big fella, over an oom-pah rhythm and jittery tweeting organ, ahead of a fuzzy guitar solo.  On the following ‘Searchlight’ it’s Jimbo Mathus who takes the floor, with some bass work lending a warmer sound, while harp, slide guitar and piano all interweave, Musselwhite gets his wail on for a solo, and some spiky guitar adds extra spice.  Luther Dickinson also gets the chance to shine on the instrumental ‘Blue Guitar’, his slide guitar moaning and slithering around the melody from ‘You Shook Me’, guitar and harp eventually squeaking away together over a grinding rhythm that’s very ‘Chicago Blues’.
What the New Mooners got down was ensemble stuff, feeling their way around each other and the songs to create something organic – loose and spontaneous rather than tight and structured.  Freedom Rockers indeed.  If that sounds like your kind of gig, then get yourself a beer, pull a chair up to the circle, and listen in.
 
New Moon Jelly Roll Freedom Rockers Volume 2 is released on Stony Plain Records on 26 March.