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A Mix Of Old But Perhaps Eternal American Tunes
Cadillac born New Orleans based American traditionalist LUKE WINSLOW-KING plays a mix of old, but maybe eternal American tunes with his band: ragtime, country, blues, gospel, dixie, bluegrass, jazz, rock and roll with minimal and occasionally brass band orchestration.
New album BLUE MESA out soon on BLOODSHOT RECORDS (US)
„BLUE MESA” on Bandcamp
Andre Williams 80
„If you go fuck three girls in one week, you fuck all three of them good! You know what I mean? If you do a song, put you heart in it! Don’t come up with no bullshit lyric! Come up with the real lyric! If the word is „Take it out, let me see it”, then say it! Don’t say stuff like „Ooh, you look kinda mysterious to me.” That ain’t sayin’ the same damn thing!”
ANDRE WILLIAMS is a wonder. Not just because of his oeuvre, but also because he is not just alive, but active up to this date. He made many songs in various styles as rock and roll, blues, soul, funk, rap or garage rock, and not just for himself. In the first chapter of his career he worked together e.g. Supremes, Stevie Wonder, Ike and Tina Turner, George Clinton and more. In the second chapter which started in late 80s he worked with Jon Spencer, and members of such garage rock bands as The Oblivians, Dirtboms or Gories. Yestarday our black godfather turned into his 80th.
His career has started with a fraudulent enlistment in 1950. When he was 14 he joined the US Navy with his brother’s birth certificate, because the age limit was 17. But not long after this his brother got drafted.
I’m moving marines on the USS Compton Destroyer from shore to a hospital ship, under fire every fuckin’ night! Boom! Boom! I’m a trainee on the 40 mm. Fifteen motherfuckin’ years old, OK? These motherfuckers fly me back to Washington, give me a general Court Martial and send me to the penitentiary for a year! Fraudulent enlistment! On the Court Martial board, I’m sitting with five fuckin’ admirals. All stiff, bold, big motherfuckers, you know.
My lawyer said „Send this kid home, he’s a child!” Then they came back and said „One year in Fort Levenworth, and a dishonourable discharge” and I said [adopts slow dramatic tone] „Kiss-my-ass-mother-fuckers!” So they appealed the case and they sent me back from Fort Levenworth after 6 weeks for a retrial. I go back on the retrial, thinking they gonna cut me-a-loose. Them cocksuckers made the year stick and give me a bad conduct discharge. All they did change was the discharge. You get a red corduroy coat, a Ben Hogan cap, a pair of black pants, twenty five dollars and a train ticket with your choice of destination.
He didn’t go back to Chicago. He feared that would be send to a reformatory school, so he went to Detroit. It was a Tuesday when he arrived. There he found a theatre where on every Tuesday evening was a talent show. 25 USD was the first prize. Afternoon he wrote his first song and won. And next week won again, and then again and again, and finally got a contract from a little record label Fortune Records. His break trough hit was the „Bacon Fat” in 1956. He said about
When I came up with „Bacon Fat” I was travelling from Detroit to Memphis. That’s when I knew that I had to come up with a gimmick. So I stopped in Memphis and I got an egg and bacon sandwich – on toast! I’m driving and a lot of places where we used to travel, it was only a two lane highway so you’d see the cotton pickers on both sides and I’m driving and [starts tapping a beat on his thigh, starts humming] „Down in Tennessee… and the name of the dance is…” and I had the sandwich in my hand and there it came, „The Bacon Fat!”
He was there when Motown came alive, and also produced recordings for another little label Chess Records (Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley, Little Walter, Chuck Berry, Howlin’ Wolf). Worked together with Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gay, The Contours, The Supremes, Ike and Tina Turner, Edwin Starr, Parliament, Funkadelic and many more. But in the 80s he slipped into poverty because of his alcohol and drug addictions, and even he lived as a homeless in Chicago too. His comeback album „Directly From The Streets” in 1990 refers to this tract. It was a funk rap album. Since then he made many fantastic albums with different bands and musicians, for example:
soul band The Diplomats of Solid Sound, jazz-funk-rock band Morning 40 Federation under pseudonym The New Orleans Hellhounds, Canadian country rock and roll band The Sadies, Chicago garage rock band The Goldstars, members of The Oblivians, Dirtboms, Dirty Three, Crime & City Solution, Cheater Slicks, Gories and same ones.
This is his greatest hit. Originally it was written for The Five Du-Tones in 1963.
His brand new album released this summer on Bloodshot Records
Quotes from this interview
Our Black Godfather Is Here Again
bad motherfucker wanna go back to Detroit
where his career has started in a talent show at his age of 15 right after he was bad conduct discharged from US Marine Corps because of fraudulent enlistment in 1951.
New album I Wanna Go Back To Detroit in June by Bloodshot Records. Full of low-end heavy funk. With guitarists Matthew Smith (Outrageous Cherry, Rodriguez) and Dan Kroha (Gories, Demolition Doll Rods), with drummer Jim White (Dirty Three, Cat Power) and more.
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Q: Speaking of Jewish people, we hear you are a recent convert to Judaism. How did that come about?
AW: Well, I met a lady who I like real well and she’s from the Naftali tribe, she’s Jamaican. She’s a lawyer and she said „Well, Andre. If we gonna do something, you’ve gotta skin down!” [Laughs]
Q: Was it err.. painful?
AW: Well, it was an experience! I went to the doctor’s office and more in his best interview ever
Working Songs for the Drinking Class
Bloodshot is a Chicagoan independent record label where punk, country, soul, pop, bluegrass, blues and rock’n’roll mix and mingle and mutate. One, that is six, or rather seven from their brand new realeses
Bloodshot Six Pack to Go
Six 7″ singles featuring drinking songs. A collection where punk, country, roots and good times meet with many covers. For example:
Dead Kennedys’ „Too Drunk To Fuck” by Nashville outsider Elizabeth Cook. Black Flag’s „Six Pack” by bluegrass road man Al Scorch. Merle Haggard’s „Drink Up and Be Somebody” by JP Harris & the Tough Choices. JP Harris (see the picture above) „plays Country Music. Not “Americana,” not “Roots,” or “Folk”. Pogues’ „If I Should Fall From Grace With God” by Deer Tick
The second track is a Bad Lovers’ song performed by Banditos.
Limited edition box set (1000 copies). First 500 copies feature special 7th single featuring Chicagoan Devil in a Woodpile and Tijuana Hercules…they call it a Chicago Sixpack. Drink It Up & Be Somebody!
King from Cadillac
Luke Winslow King plays with his band a mix of old, but maybe eternal American tunes: ragtime, country, blues, gospel, dixie, bluegrass, jazz, rock and roll with minimal and occasionally brass band orchestration.
Swing That Thing
from second album „Everlasting Arms” by Bloodshoot Records (US)
King is living in the musical jungle of New Orleans, where he studied music theory, but his scholarship was received in Prague. He comes from a small Michiganian town, Cadillac.
Depression Era Metal
Scott H. Biram from Texas
“My music is the bastard child of Punk, Blues, Country, Hillbilly, Bluegrass, Chain Gang, Metal, and Classic Rock,” or in brief it’s “Depression Era Metal.” About love and jelaousy, alcohol and drugs, sin and forgiveness and similar stupid, but very important human affairs.
Never Comin’ Home
form the album Nothin’ But Blood on Bloodshot Records
Euro tour Sept-Oct: Switzerland, Austria, France, Spain, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany. Vienna Sept 4.
Listen to the full album
Brother & Sister
Ladies & Gentlemen
THE TWO ROMWEBERS
play rockabilly influenced rock and roll with a taste of psychedelia
Image 1/12
the night coming down, I’m alone again
from the album Images 13 by Dex Romweber Duo on Bloodshot Records
About Dex and this album on RNR666
Adult Oriented Rock
American musician Bobby Bare, Jr. got a hard smack, and wrote his best album about it.
Bobby is son of Grammy awarded country musician Bobby Bare, Sr. He was raised in strongly musical environment in Memphis. So much so that he was nominated for a Grammy at his age of 6 for a duet with his father “Daddy What If”. It was written by the family’s friend, Shel Silverstein. He made a huge impression on Bobby, Jr.’s song writing technique. Wrote with and had all his songs critiqued by him, till Silverstein passed on in 1999. “To take an idea and push it as far as you can and then push it a whole lot further” – was his ars poetica. Shel Silverstein was a poet, writer, singer/songwriter and cartoonist. For example he has written “25 Minutes to Go”, “A Boy Named Sue” and “The Ballad of Lucy Jordan”. The first two have become popular by Johnny Cash, the third was written for Dr. Hook, but also was recorded by Lee Hazelwood and Marianne Faithful. (Anyway he wrote the lyrics and music for most of the Dr. Hook songs.)
Thanks for these circumstances, his talent and the fate, “Undefeated” is the best album of Bobby Bare jr. so far. Thanks for The Fate above all. But “thanks” is maybe not the best phrase in this case. The fulfilled love, joy and happiness are never so stimulating to create master pieces* like desire, sadness, broken heart and trials. In his own words, this is a “pretty confessional”, “getting dumped” album about end of his relationship with the mother of his youngest child, or “My Baby Took My Baby Away”
And his ex-baby didn’t want to hear anything about his emotions. So it seemed the only way to tell her his feelings if he writes those to songs. Diverse moods and situations have inspired these various explicit songs. Almost all have a different kind of style. There’re danceable, almost new wave and old Americana tunes, a bit of ragtime, alternative country and rock. One of those is just like a Butthole Surfers song on this true adult oriented really alternative rock album. Unfortunately I can’t put it completely here.
Bobby Bare Jr.’s Young Criminals’ Starvation League – “Undefeated” LP, CD, digital on Bloodshot Records (USA). Young Criminals’ Starvation League is his ever-changing group of musicians, including members of Lambchop, My Morning Jacket and many more.
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* But the exception proves the rule. One of the best albums of all time, Histoire de Melody Nelson (1971) by Serge Gainsbourg is fruit of a fulfilled love.
„Travelling around, playing rock-n-roll”
„I was eleven. I took a few lessons, but not many really. I used to hide from my guitar teacher. Maybe I didn’t feel he was teaching me the right stuff or something.”
In the mid-80s under the influence of 50’s rock and roll Dex Romweber founded his legendary „hardcore Americana” band Flat Duo Jets – as if it came from the grave
Then they went US tour with The Cramps. Their records were released by roots and authentic rock and roll specialist Norton Records and others. 1998 brings the major label contract to them but the album Lucky Eye (with unusual horn and strings arrangement) was the swan song. After the break-up Dex made some solo records and founded the Dex Romweber Duo with his drummer Crash LeResh. In 2007 he was replaced with Dex’s sister, Sarah, who was member in indie pop band Let’s Active in the 80s. She says: „there are few things that me and Dexter absolutely agree on 100% – like Chopin, reincarnation, UFO’s, ghosts…” „and psychology” – Drex completes the list.
„There is a real film noir quality to what we do. Really man, you see the darkest alleys. You see the most haunted streets. You see the wildest prostitutes. You come across drugs. You come across incredibly long drives. You come across band arguments. You come across mysterious people. You come across great people. You come across tremendous assholes, you see this real weird part of America that most people don’t really see on that level. When each record comes, I’m trying to figure out what’s going to fit at this time and what’s a picture of the last two years I’ve lived. The songs that come to me are very much a mirror of what my life has been like since the last record.”
The next chapter is Images 13 with repainted versions of Who (So Sad About Us), Rachmaninoff (Prelude in G Minor), Henry Mancini (Blackout!), Harry Lubin (composer, 60s sci-fi series, Outer Limits, One Step Beyond) and there is a deadly love ballad We’ll Be Together Again, which was written by Eddie Cohran’s girlfriend Sharon Sheeley after the fatal car accident. She also was in the taxi. The song was never released formally but recorded by Jackie DeShannon in the early ‘60s.
Images 13 – new Drex Romweber Duo album on Bloodshot Records. Two intelligible, post-edited sentences from my notes about it: Dynamic roots rock’n’roll with surfy garage rock feeling. There’re some reminiscence of Elvis, Bowie, Iggy Pop.
Countryside
Per Prupp (1 week ago): Gaaaah! Scott H Biram fuckin rules!!! (Think slayerfan) SCOT H BIRAAAAAM!!!
Alcohol Blues, Never Comin’ Home, Only Whiskey, Nam Weed, Backdoor Man, Church Point Girls, I’m Troubled and more everyday stories from Texas by Scott H. Biram on his new album ‘Nothin’ But Blood’ on Bloodshot Records. His country music is spiced with sludge metal, punk, blues and hillbilly tunes.
From New Records
In 2010, San Marcos in Texas was listed in Business Week’s survey of the „Best Places to Raise your Kids.” Scott H. Biram, the Dirty Old One Man Band comes from here. „My music is the bastard child of Punk, Blues, Country, Hillbilly, Bluegrass, Chain Gang, Metal, and Classic Rock,” or in brief it’s „Depression Era Metal.” About love and jelaousy, alcohol and drugs, sin and forgiveness and similar stupid, but very important human affairs.
Nothin’ But Blood LP by Bloodshot Records
You can listen to the full album here
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Dirt Dress is a punk band in LA. I think their music is influenced by The Fall and Wire, and sometimes it reminds me the garage rock of Jack of Heart and JC Satán.
from split 7″ with Corners by Mono Records. You can listen to the Corners‘ song here. They’re a garage rock band with surfy guitar sound, piano and harmonica.