If your tastes are strictly of the blues-rock variety á la Bonamassa or Kenny Wayne Shepherd, or maybe straight up Chicago blues, then I suggest you look away now. Do The Rump! ain’t that kinda thang.
What we have here is blues mavericks JD Simo and Luther Dickinson getting together with Simo’s drummer pal Adam Abarashoff to rehash a selection of deep blue classics in singular fashion. Seems they basically chucked some appealing song titles in the air, found a groove or rhythm to start the engines, then riffed and wriggled around it on the fly while the tapes were rolling. The result is a magnetic, immersive journey to the centre of . . . somewhere pretty damn trippy.
To be fair, they ease you into it with the swampy strut of opening track ‘Street People’. But by the denouement of the nearly 10-minute closer ‘Peaches’ they’re off the main drag into an Electric Ladyland of asymmetric, zig-zagging disassociation, for want of a better description.
‘Street People’ kicks off with buzzing guitar from Simo, followed by a slightly off-kilter rhythm from Abarashoff that Dickinson joins with some deliciously dirty, guttural bass to create a jagged, swampy groove. Simo’s slide guitar then slurs around an ear-catching line for a moment before his vocals make a drawling entrance. Dickinson peels off into a different bass riff, over which Simo ducks and dives into a squawking, squeaking solo, and they’re off and running.
JJ Cale’s ‘Right Down There’ is also patient but buoyant, but with its repeated offbeat rhythm low swooning guitar, and Simo groaning away at the simple lyric before adding a slinky, slithering slide break, it's a taken on Cale fit to give Clapton kittens.
What we have here is blues mavericks JD Simo and Luther Dickinson getting together with Simo’s drummer pal Adam Abarashoff to rehash a selection of deep blue classics in singular fashion. Seems they basically chucked some appealing song titles in the air, found a groove or rhythm to start the engines, then riffed and wriggled around it on the fly while the tapes were rolling. The result is a magnetic, immersive journey to the centre of . . . somewhere pretty damn trippy.
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| Abarashoff, Simo & Dickens - as they don't call themselves Pic by Zac Childs |
‘Street People’ kicks off with buzzing guitar from Simo, followed by a slightly off-kilter rhythm from Abarashoff that Dickinson joins with some deliciously dirty, guttural bass to create a jagged, swampy groove. Simo’s slide guitar then slurs around an ear-catching line for a moment before his vocals make a drawling entrance. Dickinson peels off into a different bass riff, over which Simo ducks and dives into a squawking, squeaking solo, and they’re off and running.
JJ Cale’s ‘Right Down There’ is also patient but buoyant, but with its repeated offbeat rhythm low swooning guitar, and Simo groaning away at the simple lyric before adding a slinky, slithering slide break, it's a taken on Cale fit to give Clapton kittens.
From there on though, things start to follow a more trance-like path. Dickinson takes over on lead guitar and vocals for ‘Lonesome Road’, calmly harmonising with himself while Simo’s bass bumps around deep below. They surface on a lighter groove, Luther orbiting around it with a scratching, grinding, bleeping solo like a satellite transmission gone wonky. Then ‘Come And Go With Me’ is their first outing in two-guitar-no-bass mode, the two guitars winding in and out of each other while Simo hollers the minimalist “Yeaahh, come on baby!” lyrics, the ghost of Hendrix flitting in and out of earshot here and there.
John Lee Hooker’s ‘Serves Me Right To Suffer’ opens with a stuttering rhythm and expressively plonking bass, while Simo’s guitar picks and pecks away like a bird chasing a worm. Simo’s drawling vocal is very Hooker-like, but what really makes the track stand out is the way the guitar work mutates into sub-Saharan blues shapes, acquiring a sparkling, twinkling, twirling character over Abarashoff's relentless drum pattern.
The rhythm on ‘Do The Rump Louise’ is another wacko animal, like a three-legged horse trying to break into a trot. A mash-up of Junior Kimbrough’s ‘Do The Rump’ and Simo channelling the lyrics of Fred McDowell’s ‘Louise’, it’s all stop-start stuttering guitars welded to a North Mississippi Hill Country groove, until Simo devolves into an impressionistic, volume knob-twiddling solo, followed by Dickinson embarking on another screeching, clanking excursion. ‘Come On’ follows, the only original fare on the album, and a perky little vignette spun off from ‘Come And Go With Me’ that's a palate cleanser before the climax of ‘Peaches’.
‘Peaches’ is an RL Burnside song that Dickinson and brother Cody tackled with North Mississippi Allstars on their album Up And Rolling. That NMA reading was a bright and sassy duet between Dickinson and Shardé Thomas, but this is a not-quite-lazy, loping creature that sounds like a spliff was sparked in the break beforehand (and not the first one of these sessions, perhaps). It's a low slung, two-guitar affair, with a nagging riff and drum pattern as backing for Dickinson’s languid vocal. Then in their own good time the guitars start conversing, trading discordant flourishes and jazzy, flickering forays, before plunging into that final disintegrating coda.
There’s a sense in which a blow-by-blow account of proceedings like this is beside the point, of course. Do The Rump! isn’t just a collection of songs. It’s a spider’s web, spun out of country blues and more exotic ingredients, to capture the listener and cocoon them in the vibe. Turn on and tune in, hipsters!
Do The Rump! is out now on Forty Below Records.
John Lee Hooker’s ‘Serves Me Right To Suffer’ opens with a stuttering rhythm and expressively plonking bass, while Simo’s guitar picks and pecks away like a bird chasing a worm. Simo’s drawling vocal is very Hooker-like, but what really makes the track stand out is the way the guitar work mutates into sub-Saharan blues shapes, acquiring a sparkling, twinkling, twirling character over Abarashoff's relentless drum pattern.
The rhythm on ‘Do The Rump Louise’ is another wacko animal, like a three-legged horse trying to break into a trot. A mash-up of Junior Kimbrough’s ‘Do The Rump’ and Simo channelling the lyrics of Fred McDowell’s ‘Louise’, it’s all stop-start stuttering guitars welded to a North Mississippi Hill Country groove, until Simo devolves into an impressionistic, volume knob-twiddling solo, followed by Dickinson embarking on another screeching, clanking excursion. ‘Come On’ follows, the only original fare on the album, and a perky little vignette spun off from ‘Come And Go With Me’ that's a palate cleanser before the climax of ‘Peaches’.
‘Peaches’ is an RL Burnside song that Dickinson and brother Cody tackled with North Mississippi Allstars on their album Up And Rolling. That NMA reading was a bright and sassy duet between Dickinson and Shardé Thomas, but this is a not-quite-lazy, loping creature that sounds like a spliff was sparked in the break beforehand (and not the first one of these sessions, perhaps). It's a low slung, two-guitar affair, with a nagging riff and drum pattern as backing for Dickinson’s languid vocal. Then in their own good time the guitars start conversing, trading discordant flourishes and jazzy, flickering forays, before plunging into that final disintegrating coda.
There’s a sense in which a blow-by-blow account of proceedings like this is beside the point, of course. Do The Rump! isn’t just a collection of songs. It’s a spider’s web, spun out of country blues and more exotic ingredients, to capture the listener and cocoon them in the vibe. Turn on and tune in, hipsters!
Do The Rump! is out now on Forty Below Records.
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