You might have seen a couple videos from Deep Blues Festival 2009 of the a-fkn-mazing Black Diamond Heavies show (which features a reunion with guitar Buddha Mark "Porkchop" Holder as they cover Nutbush City Limits and Paul Wine Jones' Guess I Gone and Fucked It All Up!).
I've had the new James Leg cd titled Solitary Pleasure sitting on my desk for weeks.
Mocking me.
The tense, yet meditative cover depicting two hands, fingers intertwined. Waiting. Patiently.
Listening a couple nights ago it finally struck me. This is the album I've been waiting for from James Leg since day one.
As you might know, James Leg co-helms with the drummer Van Campbell,The Black Diamond Heavies(BDH).They rule as East Nashville's dirrrty soul blues boys. Listen,I'm a drummer and I don't much like other drummers. Whatever. That's kind of a dick thing to say but It's not personal. With most other drummers I hear what they should have played. Campbell always plays what should be played. That's why he's arguably my favorite drummer working today and why it took me some time to connect. I missed the sound of Van Campbell. I know, right? Pfft. I digress. Sorry James. Let's start:
A warning siren wails through a blast of feedback and James Leg makes it clear that this is his new thing. And it's gonna get loud. Track one is the low-down grinding sandpaper howler Have To Get It On, which slides hard into the Sexxxy stony booty moving moaner Do How You Wanna*, which falls to the old-timey piano balled of Nobody's Fault But Mine. With that three song baptism James Leg makes a seasoned and strong return. Whatever It Takes is a totally delightful surprise. It's like nothing you've heard from James Leg before. An English-infused, horn-augmented, pure pop, bitter-sweet soul nugget. In a better world this song would be a hit somewhere. This is music played by an envelope pusher who has terrific musical taste. A man Sinatra would have called,"broad minded." It's really been a pleasure listening to this guy grow as an artist. I've been following him for years now and while each of the BDH albums have been a step forward this album is a long stroll and roll forward.
Solitary Pleasure is ingrained with James Leg's extensive knowledge of the rock and roll canon and the album displays his passion and originality to full effect. Granted, Leg's gargled-with-goat vocal style could be an acquired taste, but it's also a quality instrument that, like his keyboard work, will prove powerful, yet supple and dextrous over the course of the album. Imagine Tom Waits doing Bobby "Blue" Bland covers.
There's some wonderful Waits-ian weirdness spread throughout and Leg takes some good chances. Perhaps some efforts succeed more fully than others, but these are James Leg's ladies and he works them properly.
I'll tell you what: I have no idea where drummer Andrew Jody came from but he rocks, drives, and follows Leg's lead like Leg's ghost. Ace job, sir.
The barrel-rolling gospel piano rave-up No Time To Tarry ends the album. It features Leg on piano accompanied by tambourine. A nod to our man's righteous upbringing, perhaps. It's in him. It's hot and bound to seek release. One of the things I dig about Solitary Pleasure is that it sounds like freedom. It sounds, from beginning to end, like he was having a great time and would be happy to kick if it serviced the song. He and we are rewarded by that ethic.
Solitary Pleasure is an album that bleeds rock and roll, from dirty garage blues to potential old skool AM radio hits, to 1969 Detroit (occasionally played at the same time) then filtered and distilled by James Leg.
We've got this movement of folks around the world who've absorbed punk, metal, electronic music, and all of it's mutations, then walked and wallowed backwards thru hill country hard blues, deep soul, primitive gospel, and rare early rock and roll. These folks, like James Leg, like it raw, rough, and real. James Leg's Solitary Pleasure reminds us why he is a Vice-Lord and High Worthy Icon of that movement.
James Leg - Solitary Pleasure - Drowning In Fire - mp3
Alive Records brings us more good music than any of us should be allowed to have. They need and deserve our support. Some folks you back up.
Go to the shows, buy the merch, support art.
........................................
*Hey- Will somebody please tell me: Who the hell is Dillon Watson? According to the liner notes the dude plays, "Impromptu Guitar Wizard" on Do How You Wanna. This track is fully frkn epic. The howl of his tone made me walk with a limp. Like i'd fallen while dancing to The Stooges playing P.Funk's MaggotBrain(that never happened so don't freak out). Anyway,on this track Watson plays Thee Best Guitar Solo I have heard in years, then makes no other appearance on the album. Wtf?
There are few things more enthralling in the natural world than seeing the Black Diamond Heavies live. Everything you have heard about the band's live vibe are true and you will be knocked out by the power of the robot-hive-mind interplay of Reverend Doctor James Leg (Government name: John Wesley Meyers) on keyboards and Mr. Van Campbell on the tubs and skins. They are tight as fuck. I'm a drummer. I don't give a damn about drummers. I almost never hear a drummer that doesn't disappoint in some way. I have neverever been disappointed by Mr. Campbell. His taste and style is always fresh, smart, muscular, nimble, Swazyesque and HARD driving while supplying backup and brakes to keyist Leg. The right Rev.James Leg is a traveling man from Port Arthur Tejas where his daddy was a preacher or something. His voice,Waitsian and salacious. His countenance part-Dionysian barker, part-1987 Metarie Louisiana afternoon Swaggert. His hands work the black and whites like a punk rock Barry White. He's got a hot wet spirit in him and it's got to come out. It's a sonic revival. Black Diamond Heavies conjure healing power. Step in to it. Ain't it good to ya! Like the godforsaken overdue redemption of the long haunted spirit of rock, soul, and blues.
BUY iT NOW! BLACK DiAMOND HEAViES - ALiVE AS FUCK - AMAZON / iTUNES / BUT iT NOW! On LTD EDiTiON BEAUTiFUL BLUE ViNYL FROM ALiVE RECORDS!
Rather than aiding and abetting you in stealing a couple tracks from a band as hard working as the Black Diamond Heavies I thought i'd hook you up with a couple live tracks from a recent show that do not appear on their new live disc. Rock 'em loud and Thank Chris "Wisconsin" Johnson for the bonus tracks!
Black Diamond Heavies - Oh Sinnerman MP3 Black Diamond Heavies - Guess You Gone And Fucked It All Up MP3
BlackDiamondHeavies have recently released their second album as a two piece and I call bonus points to AliveRecords for having the ears and cojones to support some of the toughest blues infected music out there. A Touch of someone Else's Class , is technically the Black Diamond Heavies fourth album if you include their first album You Damn Right with guitarist Mark "Porkchop" Holder and the great lost and unreleased followup titled All To Hell (some tracks from All To Hell ended up on their first duo piece titled Every Damn Time). Live they are unbeatable. Each show is a death-defying no-holds-barred low down sexy tight fatass hunch boogie thrillscape of keys and drums and bad side of the track vocals that will knockout all comers. This is a band that all other bands should fear having to follow on stage. The new album is a fine and simple expansion on the previous albums raw dirty blues and super soul and I LOVE it! It's exactly what I was hoping for from them. Subtle new directions, flavors and growth while remaining the same BDH we dig. The first single Bidin' My Time is a gorgeous heartbreaking slow song for all the ladies in the house (and the brothers who ain't got no ladies) and a delicious departure thanks in part to the addition of (BlackKey's drummer Patrick Carney's Uncle) Ralph Carney's sax work and the backing vocals of The Tour-ettes. This track and their original take on Dr. NinaSimone'sOh Sinnerman as the real glaring standouts on this set, tho the addition of Black Key Dan Auerbach on guitar on the album closer Happy Hour is a treat as well. Happy Hour also features John Wesley's first use of tack piano which is a cool new texture as well. All the songs on this album show the artistic growth that comes from relentless touring and the BDH are heading in a truly rightous direction . If I have any gripe it would be in the production. It's often sonically too lo-fi and distorted which lends the album a same-y-ness that troubles me a bit, when considering the quality of the material, and it gets in the way of the BDHs own brand of punkass wigged out heaviness. The BDH are bad as hell by themselves with out forcing the needle into the red for emphasis. I understand recording time was limited, which can be a good thing, but a touch more refinement would be welcome. I'd love to hear them record with Paul Beat of Mudlow, or perhaps as a commenter at Ninebulletsblog suggested, working with producer Dennis Herring who recorded Buddy Guy's North Mississippi hill country homage Sweet Tea to get that natural sound. Inspite of this small qualm Black Diamond Heavies have succeeded in making their finest and most varied album yet. I cannot wait for the next slab of Black Diamond Heavies brand dirty punk blues soul power.
Our pal over at the totally coral Ninebullets blog just did a nice piece on the Black Diamond Heavies and has allowed me to re-post it here. Read on:
Ever since The White Stripes hit the scene, there has been no shortage of two man (or woman) bands out there releasing cds. Hell, there’s been no shortage of coverage for them on this here web site, either. And while there are more two man bands out there than you can shake a stick at, I promise you there are none, and by none I mean ZERO, that are quite like the Black Diamond Heavies. The Black Diamond Heavies are not for the uninitiated…Nay, the Black Diamond Heavies are for people who are ready to feel sin and salvation through the low end of a B3, with a tumbler full of whiskey and Van Cambell’s growl as a drinking partner. I’d been kicking around various ways to describe BDH’s sound and then I saw it spelled out perfectly on a CMJ review of Someone Else’s Class as such, “humid tone over heated tunes.” A perfect description for a gutturally raw and fantastic band.
A Touch of Someone Else’s Class is the follow up to last year’s fantastic Every Damn Time. It features production work by Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys and a guest horn appearance by Ralph Carney. As with any proper blues album, punk-ass or not, it features several covers, including a version of Tina Turner’s “Nutbush City Limit” that may be the best version of the song I’ve ever heard. The disc even offers a surprising change up for the band in “Bidin’ My Time”, a somber ballad that seems as if it was written by Campbell near last call in a smoky piano bar five states away from his girl. While I wouldn’t want an album full of songs like “Bidin’ My Time”, this particular track has become one of my favorite songs on the album.
A Touch Of Someone Else’s Class isn’t only Essential Listening, it’s another slam dunk for both the band and Alive Records…a label that just continues to drop monster album after monster album out of their catalog. If you haven’t already, check them out. And speaking of checking them out, The Black Diamond Heavies are another band that will be playing the Deep Blues Festival next month. They are one of the bands I am most looking forward to getting to check out. I’m telling you, if you are anywhere near Minnesota or in a position to get on a plane and be near it, you need to get to Lake Elmo July 18 thru 20. It’s gonna be an event fans of this sound will be talking about for years to come.
Downbeat, that venerable monument to hi-brow grow'd up jazz and otherwise goodness gave us mention the other day and included a very brief blurb from our close personal friend Van Campbell of Black Diamond Heavies. It's his reminiscence of our 2007 fest. Sadly they did not include the whole quote (and it doesn't appear online at all) so I'll lay it for you here. It's probably the nicest thing anybody has ever said about us. Thanks Van!:
"It was almost perfect that it rained so relentlessly at the first Deep blues Festival... It was the most uncharacteristic weather I had ever seen for July... more like November......More than "rained out" we were all "rained in" together. It was a family reunion of lost relatives. We had no idea that there were so many people that were doing a similar thing to what we were doing. It was like finding the land of misfit toys.. We were all there together braving the rain, playing our songs and a lot of time playing different versions of the same old songs! It was the beginning of something we all knew was special. Rick Saunders has been the sort of poetic voice of this festival that seems to have become more of a movement. Rick has been responsible for gathering people together from all over the place. Chris Johnson seems like a "regular guy". In fact he is just that....a regular guy with a house and a sweet family, he just happens to also be somewhat of a visionary. That dichotomy has us all pretty stupified, as you can hear in songs like 'Mr Johnson" by Left Lane Cruiser.......a modern tribute to the man that we hope is making history. It doesn't matter though how big it gets because its just all done out of love and anyone involved could attest to that..."
Here's a new track from the forthcoming BDH album A Touch Of Someone Else's Class Bidin' My Time MP3
The Black Diamond Heavies will rock us all to hell and back on DAY TWO of The Deep Blues Festival Saturday July 19th 2008. Their new album, recorded with Dan Auerbach of Black Keys will be available June 6th. Tickets are still available!
"...and what makes it so good is that everybody is original, everybody has their own taste of the blues. Their own feeling of the blues. Their own form of the blues. Told in that way, that's what makes it historical - it will never die."
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The Cure for The Purist.
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Bad Luck & Trouble as Travelogue Webcast! W/ yr hosts Jeff Konkel & Roger Stolle, and an array of Who's Who in hard blues!
Truth.
"...authenticity without evolution isn't authenticity, but mimicry. And not terribly authentic or interesting at all." -Ted Drozdowski
Via Folio Weekly Magazine
My 15 Minutes..14...13...
And, of course, that is what all of this is -- all of this: the one song, ever changing, ever reincarnated, that speaks somehow from and to and for that which is ineffable within us and without us, that is both prayer and deliverance, folly and wisdom, that inspires us to dance or smile or simply to go on, senselessly, incomprehensibly, beatifically, in the face of mortality and the truth that our lives are more ill-writ, ill-rhymed and fleeting than any song, except perhaps those songs -- that song, endlesly reincarnated -- born of that truth, be it the moon and June of that truth, or the wordless blue moan, or the rotgut or the elegant poetry of it. That nameless black-hulled ship of Ulysses, that long black train, that Terraplane, that mystery train, that Rocket '88', that Buick 6 -- same journey, same miracle, same end and endlessness." -- Nick Tosches, Where Dead Voices Gather
"My songs, they have just the one chord, there's none of that fancy stuff you hear now, with lots of chords in one song. If I find another chord I leave it for another song." -Junior Kimbrough
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Broke & Hungry Records 5 year Retrospective! Must Own.
(BDH
).They rule as East Nashville
's dirrrty soul blues boys. Listen, I'm a drummer and I don't much like other drummers. Whatever. That's kind of a dick thing to say but It's not personal. With most other drummers I hear what they should have played. Campbell always plays what should be played. That's why he's arguably my favorite drummer working today and why it took me some time to connect. I missed the sound of Van Campbell. 
I'm a drummer. I don't give a damn about drummers. I almost never hear a drummer that doesn't disappoint in some way. I have neverever been disappointed by Mr. Campbell. His taste and style is always fresh, smart, muscular, nimble, Swazyesque and HARD driving while supplying backup and brakes to keyist Leg. The right Rev.James Leg is a traveling man from Port Arthur Tejas where his daddy was a preacher or something. His voice,Waitsian and salacious. His countenance part-Dionysian barker, part-1987 Metarie Louisiana afternoon Swaggert. His hands work the black and whites like a punk rock Barry White. He's got a hot wet spirit in him and it's got to come out. It's a sonic revival. Black Diamond Heavies conjure healing power. Step in to it. Ain't it good to ya! Like the godforsaken overdue redemption of the long haunted spirit of rock, soul, and blues. 
