Month: September 2013

Minimalist begins to describe Durham’s music and approach, but it doesn’t capture everything that is involved. All 11 of the songs here feature pretty much some form of guitar and percussion and not much else. Yes, there is a piano on the folk-country ballad “Clementine” and the occasional mandolin and fiddle, but it’s a six-string show here.

That starts with the opening cut, “Drifting Wood” where Durham and Derek O’Brien trade simple acoustic licks that combine to sound like a droning single guitar at times. With that interaction, throaty vocal, and dark lyric, the song sets the intense tone for what’s to come.

There’s a certain sameness to the songs, but that never detracts from the overall quality of the record. The big beat and intertwining guitars of the aforementioned opener are the basis of other songs, including “Living This Hard,” which features distorted electric guitar and an ending that is pure feedback – the exact ending the modern-day work song needs.
Durham’s hypnotic, repeating acoustic bass figure is the focal point for “Mud Puddles,” which proves you don’t need an electric guitar to make the blues sound big and tough. Durham’s funky electric, harp, and lyric that name-checks several blues legends make “Reckoning Lament” one of the album’s most interesting cuts. To switch things up, Durham adds fiddle to “Mud Puddles,” and his Wooden Cone Resonator guitar is a key part of the folky blues of “People On The Land.”

Some high-powered help is around in the form of producer Ray Wylie Hubbard and all-around musical superman Derek O’Brien playing guitar on several cuts. It’s evident, though, from one listen that all on his lonesome Durham is a revivalist of sorts who has one foot firmly in the future – an interesting combination.

This article originally appeared in VG‘s June ’12 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

With a frenetic, funky solo and smooth dependable rhythm on this disc’s first cut, co-producer James Montgomery’s “The Blues Will Never Die,” Mike “Money” Wheeler demonstrates right off the bat how he earned his nickname. Wheeler is obviously influenced by Ernie Isley, whose mixed rep has him sometimes dismissed as derivative – an ersatz Hendrix who over-relied on effects. Well, if effects dependency is a musical crime, then expect the Edge to be tossed into Reading Gaol any day now. And who’ll escape the ax if guitarists can’t “borrow” from their six-string predecessors?

Wheeler, though, is expertly versatile, mixing bits from Hendrix and others with sweet Albert King-type strains to intro “All your Love,” a sweaty bit of funk to which he also contributes an eye-popping solo. On the slow blues “That’s Why I’m Crying,” he’s simultaneously forceful and tuneful and straight up lethal. Singer/trombonist Big James Montgomery gives his all too, blues shouting for all he’s worth with intensity and passion.

Produced by Montgomery and Jerry Del Giudice, the disc comes from a live recording at the Lionel Hampton Jazz Club in the Meridien Hotel in Paris, France. Something romantic and cool about the very name of the venue makes it easy to imagine that the excitement of playing such a club in such a location would make the band as “up” as possible, and they most definitely are.

The tunes range from a first-class treatment of James Brown’s “Big Payback” and a price-of-admission take on George Clinton’s “I’ll Stay” to a spectacularly funked up “Smoke On The Water.” It’s a masterfully executed set that will make you wish you’d been there when it was laid down.

This article originally appeared in VG‘s June ’12 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.