| The self-titled debut from the Memphis-based Bluff City Backsliders delivers high-powered, hip-shaking, barrelhouse hoodoo music that's as profane as it is glorious.
Finger-plucked guitar, high-dollar fiddle, vamping banjos, bottleneck and lap-style resonator guitar, dog-bite mandolin, sliding trombone, and stride and strut pianos produce a joyous cacophony of early jazz, jug band, old-time country, and proto-bluegrass sounds, reaching from Memphis to Appalachia and all the way down to New Orleans, often all at once.
Something archetypal in the band’s music thrills music lovers of all kinds, old and young. Feet stomp. Throats howl. Grandparents dance with grandchildren. Joy abounds.
“I fell asleep listening to this CD and dreamed I was drunk in a whorehouse...”
—From the liner notes by Jim Dickinson
“In a town with more blues bands than you can shake a porkpie hat at, the Bluff City Backsliders truly stands out as something unique.”
—The Commercial Appeal
“A rootsy acoustic brew that evokes the city's sweet, lazy, jazzy past...”
—The Memphis Flyer |