Rant ‘N’ Roll: Going Deeper

When a talented drummer, composer, producer, and bandleader like Canadian Joel Jeschke finally puts it all together to record a promising debut like Time & Place, it’s time to sit up and take notice. His years of experience in metal bands, the jazz bands of others, and musical theater has prepared him for this occasion. Emboldened by like-minded improvisors on sax, guitar, piano, and bass, Jeschke’s beats run rampant, going out on a limb during numerous tracks, but always coming back right on time. This makes for gut-punch repeated listens what with the oddball time signatures, the juxtaposition of dissonance and melodic loveliness, or, another way of putting it, the chaos and the solemnity. 

Oregon singer-songwriter-guitarist-producer Chad Rupp once spent a frigid night trapped in a Dallas-Fort Worth airport en route to Memphis during an ice storm, but met Karla there, for whom this album’s title is dedicated. He won’t soon forget Gate C23 (Lightning In A Bottle Records). His Sugar Roots band is right there, a cast of 17, on this barn-burner of a blues album. The bonus is a scintillating cover of O.V. Wright’s 1973 “Blind, Crippled and Crazy,” but the highlight has to be “Fat Kid Boogie.” I like to fantasize about how it’s about Randy Newman’s “Davy The Fat Boy” and wish Newman could hear this. 

The 10th volume of Black Pearls is Wiggle It! (Koko Mojo Records) and it’s a doozy: 28 pre-’63 rarities that rock, stomp, and ooze with soul. TV Slim got his name from working in a Houston television-repair shop. North Carolina’s Guitar Crusher got his name after he smashed his instrument over the head of a rowdy customer at a dive he once placed. Between Left Hand Charlie, JB Hutto, Lonesome Sundown, Woodrow Adams & His Boogie Blues Blasters, Howling Wolf, Hound Dog Taylor, Big Walter, Big Boy Crudup, Lightnin’ Slim, and Square Walton, there’s plenty of gristle here for your Saturday night fish fry. 

Honeysuckle (Family Owned Records), by Rev. Peyton’s Big Damn Band, like the Stones in their first few years or John Lee Hooker for decades, is a rollicking blues machine hardened into a Mack Truck via constant touring in 48 states domestically and 38 other countries. The Indiana Reverend leads his merry band here on his own songs and his own production (mixed by six-time Grammy winer Vance Powell). Guests include The McCrary Sisters, Chicago blues-harp master Billy Branch (who blows sweet on a cover of Blind Lemon Jefferson’s 1928 “Prison Cell Blues”), bluegrass superstar fiddler Michael Cleveland, and The Dead South’s Colton Crawford on banjo. “Recorded in my living room in front of the fireplace,” says Peyton, “I had a handful of friends pressing the record button so I wouldn’t have to run up and down the stairs.” 

Sax-man Ben Soloman debuts with Echolocation (Giant Step Arts). The title refers to how certain animals navigate their surroundings using sound waves to map terrain, identify prey and predators plus interact with others of their species. In this case, the band becomes the living organism, the instruments – sax, piano, bass, and drums – become the means of defining space and time. In the animal kingdom, the ability to change color – be it for protection, hunting, or mating – are analogous for how the musicians use technique. John Coltrane [1926-1967] hovers over these proceedings. Soloman also has a solo sax album – Chromatophores II – of classical etudes. Dude’s deep.