I have to admit I brushed this 'boy off the first time I heard him. You know how it goes...seen it all before and all that rattle & hum. But this clip is really good:
I like his voice - first point of QC for this kind of music. Nice delivery, not too OTT. Extra points for playing a single pickup guitar - especially if you take a look where that pickup is. Not very common and a bit of a trick. Of course you can't knock his style. Well, you can - but I wouldn't necessarily agree with you. I am definitely inspired to dig a little deeper and check him out a bit further. You should too. Tell me what you think.
2 hours ago
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Nick, thanks for posting this clip, which led me over to YouTube for a slightly better version of the same clip (i.e. for some reason, on your blogsite I can only see a portion of the full screen view of the clip on my iMac.) I concur that at first I thought "good grief, another white copycat of the black originals" but on seond thought/listen I put that cynicism aside and just enjoyed what he is doing. He stands right alongside cats like James Hunter and the late Sean Costello in carrying on "the tradition". Which is pretty much what I did as a teenager in 1964-'68 era when UK bands like Them and the Animals and the Pretty Things (and some band with stones in their name) turned me on to "the real thing", e.g. Muddy and the Wolf and Otis Rush and much much more. I started to buy all the "orignals" but also continued to dig the white "expressions" -- I'm white too, after all, so why should I hate myself? I still get into any and all good music today by whoever does it. Oh yeah, the other white boy who served as a transitional guide for me was Lonnie Mack, whose guitar playing, use of the Magnatone amp and incredible singing eventually led me to "discover" Robert Ward and a host of other artists. Years later I was priviledged to help in the process of getting Robert back on the scene and in the studio for CDs on Black Top and Delmark -- alas he passed on Christmas day, 2008, victim of numerous medical woes that beset him in the late 1990s. At least he was able to bask in a bit of "worship" in his last decade from fans like me, and in turn he left us with 4 CDs worth of fresh music, alongside his original recordings with the Ohio Untouchables in the early '60s that I helped compile on CD in 1994 for Relics Records.
John Berg, Seattle fan
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