Chapel Hill-based Devil Down Records has thrown down the gauntlet again, challenging audiences to take a bite out of North Mississippi blues and daring them to see if that blues won’t bite back.
The compilation from last year’s Hill Country Picnic in Potts Camp, MS., has a smattering of this and a hefty helping of that — some boogie-woogie here, some hill stomping there, almost equal parts white and black. On the whole it’s electric and loud, though with one quiet, acoustic exception. Among all this diversity there is at least one unifying theme, and that is that all songs and artists show the indelible mark of the Mississippi hills.
The album’s standout tracks come from Alvin Youngblood Hart (“Big Mama’s Door), Hill Country Revue (“Georgia Women”) and Kenny Brown (“Shake Your Money Maker”).
The first two are heavy, hard-edged rock tunes whose blues chords betray the inner softness of men singing about their women -— which conveniently happens to be the subject of both songs. “Big Mama’s Door” is simultaneously seismic and anthemic, crashing like a wave of sound that demands to be put on repeat and left there for a day or two.
“Georgia Women” is further out there. It’s an eight-minute attempt to hammer home one single rhetorical point: the superiority of girls from the land of peaches. To that end, singer Daniel Coburn reminds us that “them Georgia women shake ’em down.” When guitarist Cody Dickinson electrifies a washboard, and then proceeds to shred it into the fourth dimension of redneck sophistication, the resulting sound is so groovy that you can’t help but accept the bands’ thesis.
Kenny Brown’s number is much closer to traditional hill country blues, with fewer distracting heavy rock riffs. It’s just good old fashioned foot-stomping, piano-rolling dance-inducing madness. Word is, Devil Down’s next release will be a double album featuring Brown. If this track is any indication, then you’d do best to keep your eyes peeled for that one.
For such a young label, and one run by a UNC student no less, this Picnic compilation is well-recorded, well-mastered and well-produced. It might be just the thing that the hill country sound needs.
