Review: Rev. Peyton’s Big Damn Band ‘Honeysuckle’

Review: Rev. Peyton’s Big Damn Band ‘Honeysuckle’

By Hal Horowitz

The moniker of Rev. Peyton’s longstanding outfit is a satirical, humorous reference to their stark, stripped-down, three-piece, rawer than raw, rickety porch Delta blues approach. They even titled an album ‘Front Porch Sessions.’

But on ‘Honeysuckle,’ somewhere around the outfit’s twelfth release, Peyton takes yet another step backwards. For the majority of these dozen songs, recorded in his living room, most of the “Big Damn Band,” (wife/percussionist Washboard Breezy and drummer Jacob “The Snake” Powell), provide subtle backing. Much of the album features just guitarist Peyton, howling, growling, shouting with his dusky baritone voice and pounding his trusty acoustic guitar with either a few guests or no supporting accompaniment.

That’s implied on the disc’s sepia-tinged front cover photo. It pictures Peyton, alone on a chair with his guitar, in the midst of some backwoods brush. An inside shot shows the other members. As he writes in the liner notes “what started as a solo acoustic record, soon turned into a collaborative acoustic record.” Even with a few extra musicians, this largely remains a one-man show.

From the opening dreamy title track where Peyton hollers about his romantic partner being “trouble trouble but it’s all mine,” to the frantic, near rockabilly “Freedom Man”–which includes the only bass (standup) on a Peyton album along with wildly sawing fiddle and some of the Rev.’s fastest shredding ever– he’s in full thunderous force.

A vibrant, unaccompanied, traditional “Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning,” perhaps best known through Hot Tuna’s cover, and his original gospel “Looking for a Manger” with essential assistance from the McCrary Sisters, who “opened the heavens to shine on it with their voices” (his words), further displays the clout of merely a few instruments and supporting vocals.

He treats us to austere folk blues with Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “Nell (Prison Cell Blues)” featuring powerful overdubbed harmonica from bluesman Billy Branch and drops the energy for a laconic, haunting appropriately titled “I Can’t Sleep” where he sings “I saw him dying mama in the street, now I can’t sleep” as his slide lines slither. Chilling.

The ghost of Robert Johnson is seldom far from the overall vibe. That’s never more so than when Peyton tears into “If I Had Possession Over Judgment Day,” with its classic lyrics of “I rolled and I tumbled cried the whole night long” performed with a passion nearly matching Johnson’s iconic recording.

On “Let Go” we get stomping feet, probably from Breezy, thumping with the intensity of a jittery motor. Peyton rips into his country blues licks like he’s downed his third pot of coffee with “If I don’t worry, who will.” He returns to unembellished slide on “The Good Die Young” asking “But if only the good die young/How are we growing old,” accompanied by The Dead South’s Colton Crawford on “one of the most tasteful banjo parts of all time,” enthuses Peyton.

With minor contributions from his cohorts in his acoustic blues outfit, ‘Honeysuckle’ is more a solo project than a band one.” Regardless, the guitarist/frontman is fired up for another hike into the shadowy woods of Delta blues and boogie, playing and singing with the guts and intensity of someone who still has a hellhound on his trail.

“Honeysuckle”