Customer Reviews

Mojo Blues

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Will Ray returns to his roots to pays tribute to the likes of BB King, Eric Clapton, Danny Kalb, Mike Bloomfield, Dickie Betts, Duane Allman and many others that Ray attributes his early influences. The CD features 11 Ray originals that range from the slow blues number "Bad, Bad Day", to the uniquely arranged Reggae/Blues number "Oh Me, Oh My" to the Jazz/Swing "Holy Smokes" and ends with the hidden country flavored "Chicken Song" which was recorded in the 1980's. There are also guests a plenty on the recording from John "Luke" Logan to fellow Hellecasters Jerry Donahue and John Jorgenson. There is some great stuff on this recording and the guitar work is superb. Let's hope Ray has a sequel to this disc planned for the near future.

This is an interesting album. Either you get it or you don't. Some of the other people reviewing this CD obviously don't get what Will Ray is all about. They think his solo stuff should be more "Hellecaster-ish". I disagree. When I buy someone's solo album, I want to see another side of that person, not the same old stuff.

I've had the pleasure of seeing Will Ray perform live with the Hellecasters as well as at a G&L guitar clinic last year. His playing is downright scarey. You cannot figure out how he does some of the things he does, you just know that it sounds good.

You know what I like best about Will Ray playing the blues? It's not about sounding like all the other blues clones out there. And you know who I mean. He cannot sound like anyone else. It's impossible. The guy plays with left hand slides, he plays with right hand slides, he uses B-Benders, toys, kitchen appliances etc. He's one of the most creative dudes out there in guitarland. And he's "out there". But it all makes perfect musical sense.

Mojo Blues is cool because Ray takes a simple idiom like the blues and expounds on it, stretching it, bending it until it's played on his own terms. That's what BB King, Mike Bloomfield and Eric Clapton all did. It's a more personalized blues if you will. If you want to hear the same old SRV clones, this ain't the guy for you.

His version of Shennendoah will slay you. Roy Buchanan would have a hard time topping it. What's intriguing about this CD is that I always pictured Ray as simply a country player. After I bought this CD, he went up a couple of notches in my book. I also bought the backing tracks of this CD off their website and have to tell you that it's the best backing tracks CD I ever played along with, period. Shear fun.

This CD has changed the way I categorize music. Danny Gatton did the same thing for me. I only hope Mr. Ray gets together with the other Hellecasters soon and they can give us another CD soon. We need more "real" music out here.

I have been buying Jam Tracks for about 15 years now and Will Ray's CD is the best to date. I have gotten ripped off by so many bad Jam Tracks over the years that I almost didn't buy Mojo Blues. I am so glad I did because this CD, in my opinion, was well worth the money and a great product for any guitar player. Thanks Will!!

Will Ray - Mojo Blues

Never having heard the Hellecasters or any other Will Ray music, I gave this a spin to check it out and am damn glad I did. The guitar work is excellent with good variety and solid telecaster tone. Ray wrote 10 of the 11 tracks and I didn't find a bum track in the bunch. In addition to the great guitar featured on every track, Ray does a good job on lead vocals as well which is not mentioned by the other reviewers of this CD. Fine support from the band as well with appearances from musicians Ray has played with over the years. There is also a hidden track on the CD at the end - The Chicken Song about a chicken in a bar with some fine looking women all around him.

Summary - great guitar, good songs, strong vocals, good band. Entertaining CD with a blend of blues, soul and country rock. It all just sounds like good roots music to me. Nice CD! Thanks Will.

Didn't know the man from Adam, liked his guitar from an ad in a Music catalogue. Tell ya what, if you like Stevie Ray, you'll love this guy. Blues at it's best, if you like the old style storytellin'. A master at his axeworks too. I picked up an earlier album, more one the country side of things, fine by me though. Just keep it in mind if you're a blueshound. No problem as you can preview tracks on Amazon. Damn, the man makes me smile. Even my 19 son, Guitar playing Metal freak made a copy of this for his collection. No disappointments here.

This deserves 6 stars as it shows that another level of guitar playing is possible. Will Ray may be the first to have reached this level although others may lay claim to the throne. I was fortunate to see the HELLECASTERS live in OZ 2 years ago and this guy can do it live as well.He left me with goose bumps for the full 90 minute concert. No one plays better or more original blues than Will Ray. He also plays so many other styles that he incorporates seemlessly into HIS blues to turn the genre on it's ear.Can't wait for his next release.
p.s it must be said that the singing is not his strongest point and the songs are not all of the highest quality. BUT LISTEN TO THAT GUITAR

This guy is awesome as usual. A guitarist's guitarist.

Will Ray's band the Hellecasters were/are the most talented instrumental rock trio in America, hands down. Everybody else is a distant second to me. They put out 3 of the best albums you'll ever hear in the 90's, most of which are criminally out of print now. All 3 of these guys have done some great solo albums over the years. But none of them can top this latest effort by Will Ray. This cd is amazing! It said in the forward how players like Duane Allman, Mike Bloomfield, and Eric Clapton have been an influence on Ray. But to me, the guitar player that he comes closest to sounding like is the late great Danny Gatton, who had the label of worlds greatest unknown guitar player hung over his head for many years. I don't put many players in the category of Danny Gatton, but Will Ray proves to me here that he belongs. He not only shows that he can lay some string and mind bending guitar solos down, like on the wonderful "219 Orange Avenue", or "Bad Bad Day". But he also proves he can flat out write good music, as in the opener "Wait A Minute" that also features the great harp player John Juke Logan. And the equally wonderful, and my personal favorite "Oh Me Oh My" which is a Jamaican type Reggae/Blues song about being homeless, and features fellow Hellecaster Jerry Donahue chasing him on second guitar. And the other Hellecaster Jon Jorgenson on backing vocals. What makes this album so Gatton-like is it's many different styles of music. Gatton was never satisfied playing just one style of music. And it appears Will Ray isn't either. His first solo album was mainly a countryfied effort. But this one has a more rock oriented sound that mixes elements of blues, jazz, latin rhythms, and only a little country this time. All of the songs here were written by Ray except his version of the traditional "Shenendoah" which is so good it almost made me cry like the movie did. There is even a live hidden track at the end called "Chicken Song", which was a live country pickin' tune Ray did back in 1979 at Bubba's House Of Hamhocks. Like I said this cd has everything. I can't say enough about how memorable these songs are. Ray has really being saving up the last 5 years between his last solo album. He's set the bar very high for the best album of 2002. I don't think I'll hear a better cd this year though. Wonderful!

Like most aspiring tele-twangers, I'm amazed by the Hellecasters and I was anxious to hear one of them on his own in a less frenetic and overwhelming milieu. The 'Casters together have so much going on that, great as it is, it's almost too much to absorb. Unfortunately, Will Ray's solo effort doesn't quite measure up for me. The guitar work is impressive, but Ray's compositions are weak, hackneyed, and downright feeble efforts in some cases, particularly "Bad Bad Day" and "I Hate My Day Job." Songs like these are reconstituted redneck themes that singers like Ronnie Milsap, Johnny Paycheck and Dolly Parton (to name a few) have covered ad nauseum. In other cases, the performance elevates the weak material. "Holy Smokes" is a good example--the song just a drooling rumination about a babe walking into a bar, but the collaboration with chord theorist extraordinaire Ted Greene is entirely special. Another high point for me is the solo treatment of "Shenandoah," a tired old ditty to be sure, but eloquently interpreted through some nice tele-technique (the rock intro seems a little out of place to me, but that could be argued). Some of the other country blues, such as "Wait a Minute" and Santa-Cruzin'" are innocuous enough as songs to let the guitar shine. I think the answer here is that Will Ray should make another album concentrating on a dozen or so of his favorite compositions by other people. His instrumental mastery is unquestioned and he even demonstrates some artistry (not all shredders are capable of that), but the songs really shorten my attention span. Too bad.