Description
The music captured in this ad-hoc, extremely loose-knit recording was created in sessions spread out over a few days in November 2007. Most of the participants (singer/harpist Charlie Musselwhite, singer/songwriter Alvin Youngblood Hart, deep South garage rocker and Squirrel Nut Zipper founder Jimbo Mathus, and North Mississippi Allstars’ Cody and Luther Dickenson, with their famous dad Jim) met while touring together. They became fast friends, taking that road energy back to the Dickinson’s Zebra Ranch Recording Studio in Coldwater, Mississippi for a shambolic, sometimes messy but undeniably heartfelt batch of live recordings with no overdubs and seemingly not a lot of rehearsal. The players sat in a circle on the studio floor trading songs, mostly covers with a few originals. The easy-going proceedings were caught on tape but never released….until now.
Part one (a second album from the same gathering is due in early 2021) finds the guys trading lead vocals on material that ranges from a ragged but fun run through of Hendrix’s “Stone Free’, to Jim Dickinson shuffling in the saucy, sassy traditional blues of “Come On Down to My House. Hart displays his guitar skills on a down and dirty version of Charlie Patton’s “Pony Blues” and the elder Dickinson chugs into a rollicking “Let’s Work Together.” Musselwhite checks in with two originals, swinging through “Blues Why You Worry Me?” and a rowdy nearly seven minute train-time closing “Strange Land” with Luther whipping off a raw Mike Bloomfield inspired guitar solo on one of the disc’s most electrifying moments.
The exuberance these veteran musicians felt while recording with their friends is baked into every one of the 47 minutes. You can almost see the grins on their faces as they motor through these untidy blues, folk and rock classics without worrying about chart positions or even if the tapes will be released. Hearing them now is truly like being the proverbial fly on the wall, watching magic happen without any pressure, overdubs or producer calling the shots. It’s a fun, raw and abundantly joyous meeting of the minds that any roots Americana loving listener will be thrilled to (finally) hear.
