Customer Reviews

Legend of Shorty Brown

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Southland Blues Magazine:

"One of the coolest bands you never heard of, the Bay Area's "The Blue Eyed Devils" have a couple of terrific CDs out on their own label ("Legend of Shorty Brown" & "Hard Luck" Town) and they'll be in SoCal soon on a series of dates. Playing "blues, boogies & rags" these conceptually brilliant young musicians have staked out a musical niche not too many of us have heard before. BED plays original music in the style of that being played over sixty years ago, but it's anything but quaint. Riveting, rollicking and unique is more like it. They're more than worth a listen."

Joseph Jordan [Southland Blues]

San Francisco Examiner:

"For their sophomore album, 2002's "The Legend of Shorty Brown" (Mountainview Records), the members of Bay Area classic blues quartet The Blue Eyed Devils holed themselves up in a backwoods studio somewhere in rural North Carolina with producer James Mathus of Squirrel Nut Zippers and whipped up a mean batch of swampy juke joint tunes about getting drunk and getting dissed, not necessarily in that order. Their music's as smooth as buttah with moonshine's bite and a serious kick. .... [Bill Picture, S.F. Examiner]

Atomic Magazine(Taken Verbatum):

The distinct immediacy in the southern blues tradition can strike even the most hardened Yankee like a slap in the face. The Blue Eyed Devils found an inroad to that tradition in producer Jimbo Mathus' Shorty Brown Studio deep in the wilds of North Carolina. Armed with peach brandy moonshine, the boys took just three days and produced a valiant tribute to the smoky downhome blues bands that have come before them.

For a bunch of white pickers from San Francisco, the Blue Eyed Devils have a remarkable feel for the mournful howl of the blues on these songs, recorded in the same purely live fashion as field recordings of the original blues legends. From the first delicate duet between Brendan Wheatley's sharp harmonica and Chris Cotton's rough-voiced wail on "Good Times," to the akimbo boogie of the album-ending "Trouble," the ghosts of long-dead bluesmen like Lightnin' Hopkins or Slim Harpo seem to have haunted Shorty Brown's place for the Devils. In between, Cotton and Wheatley trade off choruses on "I'm Movin' Blues," "Bare Bones Woman Blues," and "3am Blues." There's a lot of hurtin' to be had here.

Jimbo's production (surely learned from his own experience with the Squirrel Nut Zippers) also capitalizes on an atmosphere where you can almost feel the sweat coming off the walls and hear the scrape of fingernails on washboard and heavy boots coming down hard on beaten plank floors. Something has come out of the swamp and infected this disc. Beware, beware.

-S. Clayton Moore

Blues Revue June/July 2003(Taken Verbatum):

Even before the CD starts spinning, it's clear that The Blue Eyed Devils have an old-fashioned streak. There's the disc itself, for one thing, designed to look like a record (remember those?). There's the title, as though the band reached across a thousand miles and back several decades from their San Francisco Bay Area base for something older and grittier. And there's the fact that the album was recorded live over a five-day period at the studio of Jim Mathus of Squirrel Nut Zippers, no stranger to retro.

So what about the music? Well, it's solid, mostly acoustic stuff, starting innocuously enough with "Good Times," a mellow slice of harp-and-guitar with some nifty vocal duet work. "Buked and Scorned" has a high-rolling pace and cool harmonica courtesy of band member Brendan Wheatley, and "I'm Movin' Blues" sounds just a little like Mississippi John Hurt. From there, though, The Blue Eyed Devils swing wide of the traditional highway, betraying a bit of the West Coast in "Caliphono Blues" before heading for mountain-stomp territory with "Lone Mountain." While they swing right back again for "that Train," to which Mathus lend mandolin, it's evident that the Devils aren?t mere re-creationists. Actually, it's not always clear what they are; one gets the sense at times they could just as easily be playing rock-n-roll. Though this isn't their first album, being preceded by 2001's Hard Luck Town, sometimes it feels like it is.

On the other hand, they're endearingly indie, with a bit of the rawness that all blues bands mining this particular territory - music reminiscent of prewar country blues, but with just enough urban sheen to suggest the genre's transformation during its migration to Chicago, should possess. Perhaps that's not too surprising, since producer Mathus has played with Buddy Guy. There's a lot of potential here, and the band deserves a broader hearing.

GENEVIEVE WILLIAMS (Blues Revue June/July 2003)

Feb 5th, 2003

San Francisco Bay Guardian:

"They may reside on the peninsula, but the four young fellas who dub themselves the Blue Eyed Devils have their musical feet planted firmly on Chicago's South Side, circa 1939. That's where producer Lester Melrose once rounded up Big Bill Broonzy, Washboard Sam, and other blues hotshots recently arrived from the South for RCA Victor's Bluebird label and other record companies. Although it had a direct influence on the electrified post-World War II Chicago blues style fashioned by Muddy Waters, the "Bluebird sound" associated with Melrose has come to take a backseat among revivalists to the rawer country blues styles of the prewar period. "Too urban," "too commercial," the purists complained, dismissing it as hokum.

Born a generation too late to concern themselves with such arcane distinctions, the Devils dive headfirst into this upbeat style on The Legend of Shorty Brown as if they were playing for their rent and lay claim to a largely forgotten slice of Americana in the process. Chris Cotton's deep Delta drawl and expertly picked acoustic guitar lines, Brendan Wheatley's harmonica howls, Brett Klynn's two-beat slappin' bass, and the rural rhythms churned up by Justin Markovits on traps and washboard are true to tradition. Yet there's nothing academic about the 11 original tunes on their second CD, all rendered with the joyous ruckus of an old-time fish fry"

Lee Hildebrand, SFBG