By Tom O’Connor
Guitarist/songwriter, Jim Allchin will likely wind up back at the top of the Blues charts again with his newly released collection Prime Blues, available through Sandy Key Music.
With the help of Grammy winner, producer/drummer Tom Hambridge, Jim Allchin has assembled a studio band with the experience and chops needed to handle these fourteen uncompromising blues and blues/rock tracks. A platoon of rhythm guitarists, including Rob McNelley, Bob Britt and Kenny Greenberg were enlisted to give Allchin’s lead guitar room to run, while bassist Glenn Worf and keyboardist Kevin McKendree successfully find their sonic space in the mix. Guest shots by The Memphis Horns elevate every song they touch, while award-winning guest vocalists add an extra spark to a couple of stand-out tunes. Basically, when so many good players are eager to get involved in a project, you should really pay attention to the end result, and Jim Allchin always seems to attract the best players.
All the elements are there in the opening seconds of the first track “Give It Up.” A propulsive guitar riff is immediately joined by a confident bass and drum stomp, then juuuust a taste of keening keyboard makes way for a quick guitar lead that skates over the mix and is soon punctuated by the sting of the horn section. The essence of the entire album, all in about 10 seconds.. A stand-out vocal is found on the rollicking “Devil Don’t Sleep” which pops along without apology, tied together by some especially motivating Hammond B3 playing from McKendree. The well-paced and considered solo is a bonus along with some clever lyrics like “A man gets weak and the Devil don’t sleep” that still manage to tap into the core of the blues. From there we go straight to the swamp rock of “Voodoo Doll” about the kind of woman everyone hopes they’ll meet in New Orleans, even though they know it’ll end badly. Interesting “Snuggle Up” is definitely a tune with more than snuggling on its mind. This is a hard blues/rocking tune that needs to be shouted live to a room full of swaying hips. Some straight-up guitar gasoline follows on “Jimmy’s Boogie,” and it had better. If you’re going to name an instrumental boogie after yourself, it better burn. This one does.
The vibe shifts to the soul-side with the ballad-y “Summer Sunrise,” a languid, horn-section fueled love song. Even with a few added modern twists, like keeping “a picture of you on my phone,” the sentiment and the soul is timeless. Jim Allchin turns over vocal duties to heavy-weight Mike Zito on “Enough is Enough,” which frees him up to hammer on the honky-tonk rhythm and then launch into an especially gritty and transporting solo. Things get back to the silky-smooth on autobiography-adjacent “Found the Blues,” Allchin keeps it mid-tempo while describing his discovery of, and baptism in, the Blues. All this sets up album stand-out and future-classic “Two Bad Dreams.” Anchored by the full force of the Memphis horns and the slow and relentless bass and drums, Allchin has to dig everything he can out of his guitar in order to keep up with the guest harmonica of Blues Hall of Famer Bobby Rush. This is definitely the tune other musicians and vocalists are going to notice, and want to cover.
Allchin digs out the acoustic guitar to compliment the barrel-housing piano on the toe-tapping ditty “Pawn Shop Man.” The piano then takes charge on “Lost My Mind” leaving Allchin’s guitar free to burn as hot as it did on “Jimmy’s Boogie.” The gears shift again on the dreamy hazy ballad “Up to Destiny.” The lyrics aren’t the most hopeful on the album, but they’re honest as heck and earnestly delivered, while the guitar lead and organ stings highlight the heartbreak that is likely to be just around the corner.
The last two tunes “Tech Blues” and “Log Off” most directly address Allchin’s misspent youth as a successful tech executive. What could be a throw-away little number “Tech Blues” instead uses the traditional blues structure to address some new, 21stcentury sources of legitimate Blues for a lot of people. It is also the second new blues song about cellphones I’ve heard in the past month. Sounds like it just might be in the zeitgeist people. Album closer “Log Off” has Allchin once again, to my ears anyway, sounding like Jackson Browne both in sound and lyrical content; searching for better ideas and a better way in a time, place and civilization that doesn’t make those options easy to even find, never mind take.
There is a real point-of-view on display here, as well as a level of craft and quality that will certainly create some real buzz in the Blues community and beyond.
For more information on Prime Blues by Jim Allchin:
Website: https://www.jimallchin.com/primeblues
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jimallchinmusic
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