Listened to lately - Southern Avenue, and Ghost Town Blues Band

It’s time to catch up with the 2019 album releases from a couple of Memphis-based bands, which one way or another I never got round to covering last year.

Southern Avenue – Keep On

Voices.  That’s where to focus first of all when you listen to this second album from Southern Avenue.  Because lead vocalist Tierinii Jackson and her drumming sis Tikyra dish up some of the most sublime soul vocals you’re likely to encounter in this day and age.  That’s not all

that Southern Avenue have to offer, but oh mama it’s a helluva trump card.

The vocal quality is probably most obvious on the dreamy soul ballads ‘Savior’ and ‘We’re

Southern Avenue - cool threads gang!

Pic by David McClister

Gonna Make It’, both of which feature the combination of the Jackson sisters’ voices in luscious harmonies.  The former features a delicious vocal-dominated outro, and demonstrates their willingness to shrug off typical verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-solo etc song structures. amd the latter serving up a delicate, bluesy guitar solo.  The latter is a gospel-tinged closer, sporting an affirmative lyric and a delicate, bluesy guitar solo from Ori Naftaly.

But they can funk it up too.  There’s the tickling riff and sparse rhythm section of ‘Whiskey Love’; the twitchiness of ‘Jive’ with its spiky guitar line, its upbeat sax break that adds seasoning, and Tierinii’s soaring vocal notes; and best of all ‘Switchup’, which sounds like a James Brown track sung by Aretha Franklin.

The do straighter soul well too, as on the opening title track with its sophisticated rhythm, its shifts from ripples of guitar to toots of horns and the swirl of Jeremy Powell’s organ, and a divine Tierinii vocal that peaks with a startling high note.  Or on ‘Too Good For You’, where a skipping rhythm, smooth swells of horns create a sweet soul groove that gets jaunty over repeated “Bye byes”, ahead of a brief and understated piano-guitar interlude.

The other highlight though, is the bump’n’grind of ‘She Gets Me High’, a frank description of how, when things go wrong with her man, the protagonist is more than happy to get some sexual healing from her girlfriend.  The horns double up on a neat guitar line over a steady beat, and after a nifty little bridge a piercing Naftaly solo leads towards a more urgent, er, climax.

Now and then I reckon Naftaly’s guitar and Powell’s keys could be given more prominence, to complement the plentiful vocal pleasures and lend a bit more oomph to a couple of rather slight songs.  But Keep On does more than enough to ensure that Southern Avenue stand out from the herd.  And they can do it live too, where Tierinii Jackson shows off firecracker performance levels.  Little wonder they’ve picked up Blues Music Award nominations for Band Of The Year and Best Soul-Blues Album.

Keep On was released on Concord Records in May 2019.

Ghost Town Blues Band – Shine

I’ve had a soft spot for GTBB since encountering them live in the Rum Boogie Café in Beale Street, while holidaying down the Mississippi.  Their combination of rhythmic blues and horn-infused Stax soul, with occasional injections of cigar box guitar from front man Matt Isbell, was delivered with wit and a sense of fun, and was right up my street.

Listening to their latest album Shine, I get the impression they’ve been broadening their horizons a bit.  They can still serve up a warm Southern vibe, as on the opener ‘Running Out Of Time’, with its light, loping riff complemented by horns, its rootsy slide guitar fills and its easy-going chorus.

GTBB enjoy the Blues Enthused verdict on Shine

Or on the Stax-like blues of 'Shine' itself, with its grooving rhythm guitar and horn riffing, sparky, scampering guitar solo, undertow of organ and “C’mon people” refrain.  But now there are also songs that seem to carry hints of Southern rock.  There are distant echoes of ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ in the laid back ‘Lyin’ To Yourself’, with its tinkling piano and patient, clear-toned guitar soloing from Taylor Orr that acquires more bite when they surge into another gear towards the end.  But in the latter half of the album it’s the Black Crowes who seem to enter the equation, ranging from the mid-paced ‘High Again’ with its appealing melody and tripping rhythm, to the slower highlight ‘Carry Me Home’, with its woozy guitar intro and mournful swells of horns, and ‘Heading Nowhere Fast’, on which an organ break mingles with flickers of guitar, while Isbell’s distinctive, husky voice sings of “Heading nowhere fast but making good time”.

They do have other strings to their bow though, with the upbeat shuffle of ‘Givin’ It All Away’ showcasing an excellent trombone solo from Suavo Jones, some hip-hop rapping giving a modern edge to ‘Dirty’, and the slow and quiet start to the engaging ‘Hey There Lucinda’ featuring weeping slide guitar and organ before the beat picks up.

Shine demonstrates that Ghost Town Blues Band aren’t content to keep peddling the same old, same old.  It may feel a bit sombre at times, but overall it does what it says on the tin.  And my soft spot for them endures.

Shine was released on 4 October 2019.

Listened to lately . . .

So what have I been lending my ears to over the last few weeks then?  Well, amongst other things there have been:

Bob Dylan – Blonde on Blonde

Malcolm Holcombe – The RCA Sessions  (This is seriously good.  Think laid back Seeger Sessions.  Think polished up Picnic Sessions.  Think Tom Waits doing Heart of Saturday Night, country-style!)

Thunder – Wonder Days  (Only discovered by accident that they had a new album out.  Just a couple of listens so far, but Luke Morley still has a handy way with a hard rock riff.)

Samantha Fish – Runaway and Black Wind Howlin’  (As a precursor to getting my mitts on her imminent new album Wild Heart.  I'll be reviewing that very soon, but meantime here's a taste of her doing 'I Put A Spell On You' on YouTube.)

Ghost Town Blues Band – Hard Road To Hoe (Really good Memphis band, as mentioned in Adventures in the South – Memphis, Part 2.)

After 50 posts, and 2,500 page views, I only realised recently that my settings for comments were too restricted for anyone to leave a message on the blog.  That’s been fixed now folks, so feel free to share your thoughts on some of the music you’ve been getting an earful of lately!

Adventures in the South - Memphis, Part 2

To start Adventures in the South from the beginning, click here.

To read Memphis Part 1, click here.

Our second day in Memphis opened up with the return leg of our visit to the Memphis Rock’n’Soul Museum, picking up where we’d left off, and among other things learning more about the development, and ultimate demise, of Stax.  But Stax was just one of a number of significant studios and labels in Memphis in the 60s/70s, and the museum painted the broader picture too.  And it also showed how black music reflected an increasing assertiveness in the black community in the wake of the civil rights movement, epitomised by major stadium gigs headlined by the Isaac Hayes and others.

Dynamic Duo left, Million Dollar
Quartet right

Another “museum” visit took up the middle of the day – to Sam Phillips’ Sun Studio.  For such a legendary rock’n’roll location, it’s a small space, and it doesn’t take long to do the tour of the upstairs exhibition space.  But of course the highlight is actually the visit to the studio floor itself, where you can pose with one of the original mics used in the 50s, on the actual spot where Elvis recorded his vocals – an X literally marks the spot.  On the wall is the famous picture of the ‘Million Dollar Quartet’ of Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins, and it’s fascinating to hear about the one-off, unplanned jam session that took place between them – and which Phillips astutely recorded. I especially liked the letter sent by the studio manager Marion Keisker to her son, serving in Germany at the time, which recounted the story in her own folksy way, oblivious to the momentous nature of what had just occurred.

While we were at Sun we bumped into a couple from Dublin, who told us they were staying at the actual Heartbreak Hotel – and it was “a shit hole”.  Laughing, they went on to say that the only option to eat seemed to be “Elvis’s favourite burger joint”, to which the hotel had a direct line to make bookings, and to which they could be chauffered in a pink Cadillac. It was, the couple reckoned, a too cosy arrangement – and the burger place was rubbish too.  Be warned, folks!

And on that note we were off to Graceland ourselves a little while later.  What to say about Chez Elvis?  Well, it’s the Valhalla of kitsch, perhaps.  The house itself is surprisingly small – but jeez,

Wheels of Steel in Beale Street

the decor!  Whether it’s the ‘Jungle Room’, with its collection of wild animal carvings, or the basement pool room with its suffocating drapes, the ambience is OTT.  There are a number of outbuildings as well, where back in the day Elvis and ‘the boys’ would mess about with whatever the recreational flavour of the month might be – a racquetball court that now houses his costumes, for example.  Just who were ‘the boys’, I kept wondering?

Back in town, we grabbed a decent bite to eat, and set out in search of our own recreation – to discover that Wednesday night is ‘bike night’ in Beale Street.  On a warm summer night, the place was mobbed with happy go lucky biking types and their pimped up, customised hogs, making for a noisy, colourful scene.

But what we really wanted was some honest to goodness blues music – and we found it at the Rum Boogie Cafe.  For a couple of bucks entrance fee, we got treated to the Ghost Town Blues Band, and were chuffed to find that these guys were the business.  Playing classic (but not obvious) covers and originals, with horns, cigar box guitar, the works, these guys felt like more than a gang of local wannabees.  Subsequent investigation revealed that they’d taken part in serious ‘blues challenges’, and had released a couple of albums well worth acquiring – Dark Horse and Dust The Dust (and there's another released since). One of the guys from Jerry Lee Lewis’s place the night before turned up, and promptly got up on stage to jam.  They were having a good time, we were having a good time, and it was the ideal end to a great day in Memphis.

The Ghost Town Blues Band at the Rum Boogie Cafe

To continue reading Adventures in the South with Memphis Part 3, including the Stax Museum, click here.