Review: ‘Tell Everybody!: 21st Century Juke Joint Blues’
By Nick Cristiano
“One nation under a groove”? You could say Dan Auerbach has taken that old Funkadelic adage/album title to heart. For the Black Keys frontman, though, it applies to the blues, not funk. The groove in its various permutations – elemental, ineluctable, “eternal and lowdown” as Ray Wylie Hubbard once put it – is the relentlessly beating pulse that links most of the 12 tracks on Auerbach’s exciting new compilation on his own label.
Tell Everybody! 21st Century Juke Joint Blues From Easy Eye Sound presents a generations-spanning collection of artists whose work shows us where the music came from and where it’s going. Spoiler alert: It’s in pretty good hands, proving the blues maintains a raw, enduring vitality. To be sure, that doesn’t mean that all these selections would blow the roof off that juke joint, but they’re mesmerizing in their own way.
R.L. Boyle, one of the old-schoolers here, conjures the hypnotic spirit of Hill Country greats such as R.L. Burnside with his slide-accented take on the Burnside staple “Coal Black Mattie,” which builds tension almost imperceptibly without boiling over. Another graybeard, Robert Finley, who already has two Auerbach-produced albums with a third coming in October, is his usual irrepressible self on “Tell Everybody,” penned with Auerbach. “There’s a party starting now,” he announces, as the R&B arrangement, with backup singers, reflects the atmosphere of revelry. It’s all punctuated by a solo by Mississippi guitar slinger Kenny Brown, who plays on several tracks here along with bassist Eric Deaton.
“Tell Everybody”
A contemporary of Finley’s, “Jimmy “Duck” Holmes, reaches way back for Robert Petway’s 1941 “Catfish Blues,” popularized by Muddy Waters. (It appeared on Holmes’ 2019 Easy Eye Sound album but is presented here in mono.) It’s notable for the way the guitar solo never breaks the momentum of the rhythm.
Auerbach takes the spotlight himself with an unreleased original. “Every Chance I Get (I Want You in the Flesh) has an atmospheric opening that gives way to a fuzztone workout as catchy as “Spirit in the Sky,” and includes a stabbing guitar solo. The Black Keys – singer-guitarist Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney – debut a new song, “No Lovin’,” that is nearly as engaging.
Gabe Carter, a young singer-guitarist from Chicago, gets two showcases, both written with Auerbach. “Anything You Need” and “Buffalo Road” reveal him to be an electrifying talent, with some of the most robust vocals on the album. Unlike Carter, Nat Myers, a young Korean American from Kentucky, goes unplugged, delivering delightful, straight-up country blues on his own “Willow Witchin’,” which is not on his terrific new Easy Eye sound debut, Yellow Peril.
The Moonrisers, a drums and dobro duo out of Detroit, present “Tall Shadow,” an instrumental that seems to have little to do with traditional blues but manages to sound both evocative and earthy, thanks in large part to a striking drum pattern.
Two of the featured artists are no longer with us. Leo “Bud” Welch, who died in 2017 before the release of his one Easy Eye Sound album, is represented by the galloping gospel-blues of “Don’t Let the Devil Ride” from that album. (Like the Holmes number, it’s presented here in mono.)
Glenn Schwartz, a onetime guitarist for the James Gang, was an inspiration to Auerbach in their native Ohio. They recorded his two originals here in 2016. “Daughter of Zion” is a rerecording of a gospel-inflected Schwartz tune that builds to a rocking crescendo (there’s some of that roof-raising for you), with Joe Walsh, who also considered Schwartz a hero, contributing on guitar. “Collinwood Fire” is an acoustic folk-blues about a real-life tragedy.
That contrast in the Schwartz tracks encapsulates the stylistic and thematic range of the blues presented here. Sobering and spellbinding, ecstatic and redemptive, they connect the past to the present, all held together by those eternal and lowdown grooves. Tell everybody.
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