American Back Roads roundup April 2021 The time's right for another roundup of cool new releases â mostly Americana with a range of reissues. Author: By Bruce Sylvester The time's right for another roundup of cool new releases – mostly Americana with a range of reissues.
Rev. Peyton's Big Damn Band's Dance Songs for Hard Times(Family Owned Records/Thirty Tigers). With frenzied vocals and backwoods juke joint guitar, “No Tellin' When,” a Covid-era song of separation, comes across like a “Poor Boy a Long Way from Home” blues lament. The Rev.'s intensity and urgency convey a trace of comedy when “I'll Pick You Up” hopes a broken-down car holds up all through a hot date. Slide guitar notes practically scream. For a secularized gospel touch, his woo-woos stretch back from Paul McCartney to Little Richard to Marion Williams. The press notes say the disc “was written by candlelight and then recorded using the best technology available … in the 1950s.” Well, yes. He wrote amid a power outage at his and wife/washboard player Breezy's 150-year-old log cabin in Indiana, and then the recording studio used a max of eight tracks on analog tape. His Big Damn trio gets along well without modernity.