Revisiting New York Jamband Legends at a Familiar Haunt

Hazmat Modine are one of the world’s edgiest and most enduring jambands. They got their start a couple of decades ago as a darkly oldtimey-flavored New Orleans blues unit which sometimes featured instruments as diverse as the Chinese sheng – a sort of hybrid harmonica/tuba – and the lowest of all low reed instruments, the contrabass clarinet. Charismatic belter and frontman Wade Schuman plays a mean chromatic harp, but he’s also a hell of an oldtime resonator blues guitarist. In the early days, the group’s signature sound was dueling blues harps; as the years went by, they went deeper into reggae, klezmer and more electric rock sounds. They also enjoyed a more-or-less biweekly residency at Terra Blues, which lasted from the early zeros until the 2020 plandemic. The good news is that they’re back, with a gig there at a little after 7 PM on March 18. Cover is $20.

Hazmat Modine had the misfortune to release their most recent album, Box of Breath – streaming at Bandcamp – barely a couple of months before the lockdown. The big new development for the band here was the detour they’d taken into African music: Balla Kouyate’s rippling balafon is a frequent, rippling presence.

On the first track, Crust of Bread, guitarist Erik Della Penna starts out on banjitar, playing a circling Malian riff and then switches to a tantalizingly brief, careening electric solo over tuba player Joseph Daley’s energetic riffage. At the end, saxophonist Steve Elson, trumpeter Pam Fleming and trombonist Reut Regev whip up a little dixieland over drummer Tim Keiper’s spare forward drive.

The album’s title track is an older concert favorite, Schuman making his way through a litany of period-perfect 1920s blues aphorisms that start out sly and allusive and grow more somber as the band move in a more brassy direction behind him. Then they make an oldtimey, brass-fueled sway out of a Memphis soul tune in Be There, Schuman and Della Penna getting into an animated duel midway through.

Hoarder, one of Schuman’s more colorful character studies, is a launching pad for some of the band’s more vivid Rube Goldberg exchanges: somewhere there’s a great silent cartoon that deserves this music. Della Penna moves to the mic for Lonely Man, a starkly swaying Charley Patton-flavored oldtime blues tune that would fit perfectly with his other band, Kill Henry Sugar: the brass and Schuman’s expressive wah-wah harp add a brighter edge.

They slink their way into hi-de-ho tango territory dotted with vintage soul horn riffs in Get Get Out. Once again, the band built a wry lattice of riffs, this time alongside guest on Mark Stewart on idiophone, Schuman running his harp through an octave pedal for extra surreal, squiggly textures.

From there they sway into Lazy Time, another oldschool soul tune taken back to its increasingly boisterous hot 20s roots. Della Penna returns to the mic for In Our Home, a metaphorically loaded, elegantly arranged blues cautionary tale, Charlie Burnham’s viola sailing amid the spiky mix of guitar, banjitar, tuba and the horns.

Ain´t Goin That Way is the closest thing to the band’s original sound, a chromatically bristling, reverb-iced Schuman harp solo over an icepick strut, and some terse, bluesy lines from Regev. Della Pena takes to the banjitar and the mic again in Dark River, a waltz that’s the darkest and most rustic track here.

Daley hits a reggae groove in Delivery Man, a cynical political broadside with some of the album’s most memorably snarling guitar and harp work. Schuman channels his inner Louis Jordan in Extra-Deluxe-Supreme, an innuendo-laden chronicle of a late-night trip to his local bodega. They wind up the album with the loosely vamping Sound Check in China, which could be exactly that. Good to see this familiar presence still at the top of their surreal, shapeshifting game after all these years.

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Ace Bandage Jam Like Nobody Else in Town

Ace Bandage are the best new jamband in New York. When they weren’t playing shows last year, they were improvising in their rehearsal room and putting that stuff up at Bandcamp. They recorded their latest short album, Ace Bandage’s Almost Halloween live at Hart Bar in Bushwick last October. You can hear the originals at the Bandcamp page; the whole concert, including Bowie and Pink Floyd covers, is available at archive.org.

They make their way up from a minor-key reggae groove to a brisk mid-80s Talking Heads pulse in the first of their tunes, Weirding. Guitarist Jake Pepper plays purposeful, bluesy lines over his sparring partner Kent Dunne’s incisive chords,. then they eventually take the song down into the vortex as bassist Zach Koeber and drummer Taylor Harvey back away, then pull everybody back on the rails in a split second.

They segue into Snuff the Torch, Dunne’s chicken-scratch wah-wah in contrast to Pepper’s unhinged slashes, slow-bake-in-the-sun leads and occasional pickslides. It’s like more focused mid-70s Can.

The last song is Burn. In almost seventeen minutes, the band slinking along on a darkly psychedelic funk pulse. Dunne takes the first couple of solos with a hammering, reverbtoned dark garage attack. When he goes flying over the edge and hands it over to Pepper to go further off the handle, it’s a clinic in spontaneous combustion. And yet, when Koeber goes bubbling up into the high frets, the two guitarists work their way down into a resonant simmer and a little robots-adrift-in-space interlude. The misterioso bass-led jam at the end is the best part, quiet as it is. It’s rare that you find a new band with this kind of chops or telepathy.

Ace Bandage are at Bar Freda on March 9 at 9 PM; cover is $10

A Solid Bargain Basement Rock Twinbill on the Lower East Tomorrow Night

Watching this city struggling to emerge from two years of a fascist lockdown and restrictions that devastated the arts and drove a substantial percentage of the population out of town has been eye-opening, to say the least. But there have been some positive developments lately. For one, we’re seeing a slow emergence of bands who were clearly good enough to be playing any dive in town in 2019, and weren’t – but they are now. Fault of venues who placed social media presence ahead of quality, most likely. Two of those bands – the eclectically catchy, occasionally 80s-tinged Sugar Pond and Stonesy jamband Hometown Unknown will be at the Delancey tomorrow night, Oct 8 at 7 PM; cover is $10.

It’s not an ideal segue, but both groups are worth checking out. Sugar Pond’s latest album, It Came From Sugar Pond, is up at Bandcamp as a name-your-price download. The first track, Missing the Point is an interesting take on a gritty late 90s Versus sound with a little 80s goth and a classic disco bassline from Andrew Megos. Frontman Nick Bernstein and his bandmate Jackson Cadenhead share guitar and drums duty on the record.

Track two, Mountain is a swirlier dreampop take on Tears for Fears. Artichoke is part catchy early 80s powerpop strut and part mid-80s Cure: “White room with a two-inch display, nothing there but nothing done today,” Bernstein reveals.

Die Wheel is a cheeky, very successful take on mid-60s Bacharach bossa pop with twinkling psychedelic touches. The last song is Let Me Squeem (Please Allow), a goofy folk-pop number.

The four guys in Hometown Unknown are first-class musicians. They love to jam; they love to emulate both the Stones and the Grateful Dead. They open their debut album – streaming at their music page – with a Stonesy rocker and then a beefed-up psychedelic funk tune with a sizzling guitar solo. Lester’s Lament, the third track, is a solid, tuneful take on Sticky Fingers-era Stones: it’s a bet the band play it tighter onstage than in this skittish home-studio recording.

Heavy Dreamer wouldn’t be out of place in the Blackberry Smoke tunebook, with a long jam at the end. The final song is a go-go soul shuffle.

The band also have a decent collection of Dead covers available as a free download. Here they’re shooting for what seems to be a peak-era mid-80s Dead vibe, as you can tell from the choice of songs. There’s a low-key, soul-tinged Althea, a Stones-ified Alabama Getaway, a thoughtfully vintage soul-style reinvention of Eyes of the World and a haphazard attempt at doing Going Down the Road Feeling Bad as a honkytonk tune.

The Dream Syndicate Return With a Haunting, Stomping Masterpiece

Much as the Dream Syndicate will always be best known for their volcanic jams, those unhinged duels wouldn’t mean much without frontman Steve Wynn‘s allusive, frequently menacing songs.

And just when it might have seemed that the Dream Syndicate had finally gone off on an odyssey to the far shores of jazz, they return with their most song-oriented album since their iconic 1982 release The Medicine Show. The resolutely shapeshifting jamband’s latest vinyl record, Ultraviolet Battle Hymns and True Confessions – streaming at Bandcamp – is basically a light side followed by a dark side, with a trippy coda to bring it full circle.

Wynn’s songwriting is as novelistic, deviously allusive and counterintuitive as it has been ever since the band busted out forty years ago: is there anyone alive who has written more good songs? Hearing one catchy verse and chorus after another is a real mindfuck, in contrast to the slowly unwinding, symphonic AACM-rock epics on the band’s previous album, The Universe Inside, which was a rare bright light amid the relentless gloom of 2020.

The opening track, Where I’ll Stand has the classic Dream Syndicate backbeat sound, but with more of the dreampop swirl that Wynn has explored in recent years – and maybe a little Bowie in the mix too. The gist is “don’t bullshit me” – in more reflective, articulate terms.

Track two is Damian, a lithe 70s Tom Petty-style bounce that suddenly winds into one of Wynn’s signature series of unpredictable changes. His conspiratorial narrator seems to be telling his beaten-down bud that all omens aren’t necessarily grim. Lead guitarist Jason Victor fires off a tantalizingly sinuous guitar solo as it fades out.

“I’m a scrapyard and a barking dog, everything must go,” Wynn intones in Beyond Control, the band rising over drummer Dennis Duck’s brisk spacerock drive as keyboardist Chris Cacavas throws in a quirky mbira-like setting. Hearing Victor playing a skittish, staccato chorus-box pattern is a trip.

The Chronicles of You is a gorgeously vindictive, enveloping number glistening with layer after layer of guitars along with wafting horn harmonies from Marcus Tenney, who doubles on sax and trumpet. Wynn has been one of the great voices in rock noir for years, and this is prime: “Was it really scripted in the sky by your own private plane? Was it the undertaker’s arms that laid you down in the grave?” As usual, there are infinitely more questions here than answers.

Victor’s lapsteel and the horns resonate uneasily throughout Hard to Say Goodbye, a slowly strolling requiem for someone who couldn’t resist the lure of shiny objects that flicker. It comes across as pastoral Pink Floyd done Steve Wynn style, The band shift to a cyclotron take on the Jesus & Mary Chain in Every Time You Come Around, bassist Mark Walton rising to pierce the veil. “Tell me what you think is inappropriate, I’ll tell you why you’re wrong,” Wynn cryptically avers.

A searing Victor riff kicks off Trying to Get Over, a stampeding Wynn study in conman doublespeak. With Victor’s searing, careening lead lines, the song looks back to Wynn’s volcanic 90s work: say, the Melting in the Dark album.

Wynn’s rapidfire lyrics deliver a grimly aphoristic payoff in Lesson Number One, a withering portrait of someone slithering to move his own goalposts as damage control gets more complicated. It could also be a portrait of somebody recently scheduled for an exit from the NIAID – and could be the best song of the year.

The sarcasm remains at redline for My Lazy Mind, one of those tango-flavored struts that Wynn does so well. It wouldn’t be out of place in the Ward White catalog, all the way through the “curtain call from Frankenstein.” The album’s final cut is Straight Lines, a breathlessly charging garage rock number, the Seeds as played by mid-70s Can maybe. You’ll see this on the best albums of 2022 page here if we’re all still around..

The Sun Ra Arkestra Make a Welcome Return to a Laid-Back Outdoor Williamsburg Space

As far back as the 90s, the Sun Ra Arkestra had become a fixture on the New York summer outdoor festival circuit. A Central Park twinbill with Sonic Youth earned the sprawlingly cinematic jazz ensemble a brand new audience with the indie rock crowd. In the years immediately leading up to the 2020 lockdown, they’d been scheduled to play a more intimate space than usual, the courtyard at Union Pool. As it turned out, it took a few cancellations and some rescheduling to get them there. That’s where they’ll be this August 28 at around 3 PM. Under ordinary circumstances, it would make sense to get there early. But the circumstances we face today are anything but ordinary, and in a city that by some estimates has lost a quarter of its population, there probably won’t be an overflow crowd (and if there is, you’ll be able to hear the missing link between P-Funk and the Art Ensemble of Chicago just fine from the sidewalk around the corner).

The Arkestra were DIY pioneers, releasing much of their legendarily voluminous output themselves. Today, most of those original recordings, along with limited-edition pressings on long-defunct European free jazz microlabels, command auction-level prices on the collector market. Serendipitously, the group have been digitizing and re-releasing select albums from throughout their career. The latest one to hit their regularly updated Bandcamp page is the 1983 recording The Sun Ra Arkestra Meets Salah Ragab In Egypt, a collaboration with the Cairo Jazz Band. It’s noteworthy for being a slinky, sometimes haphazard, utterly psychedelic collection of compositions by pioneering Egyptian jazz composer, percussionist and bandleader Salah Ragab.

The first track is Egypt Strut, a surreal mashup of a New Orleans second-line groove, a chromatic Middle Eastern-tinged theme and the blues. In Dawn, the second track, the groups combine to balance a blithe flute tune against galloping percussion, followed by a cantering, hypnotically circling theme echoing sounds from the southern end of the Sahara.

Ramadan begins with a muezzin-like call-and-response, then the ensemble flesh it out with darkly dramatic vocals, horns and tumbling drums followed by a biting solo from the bandleader – who went back to Saturn to stay in 1993 – and a spirited flute outro with a nod to Take Five.

Oriental Mood is the catchiest and hardest-hitting track here, with jajouka-like brass, animated sax solos and piano. The ten-minute Farewell Theme is a more robustly orchestral series of variations on that theme, and considering the length, about twice the fun. Throughout the album, Sun Ra switches between glimmering, echoey Fender Rhodes and organ, backed by punchy massed horns, and sailing and spiraling solos. How does all this sound compared to the group’s sound now? Much the same, if you leave out the distinctive Middle Eastern and North African references.

The last time this blog was in the house at a show by the Arkestra, it was at the Union Pool courtyard, over the Labor Day weekend in 2018. The crew onstage were a mix of veterans, some of whose time in the group went back to around the time of this album or before, along with some more recent additions. The yard was crowded but wasn’t completely sold out, and the group’s long, slowly crescendoing trajectories kept everyone on their feet.

Klezmer Music For a Chinatown Street Fair and the Horror Show in Canada

One of New York’s most unusual and enjoyable street festivals is happening today in Chinatown. That neighborhood doesn’t have many, because pretty much every day is a street fair down there. This one is on Eldridge between Division and Canal, outside the Eldridge Street Synagogue. The music starts at noon with iconic klezmer trumpeter  Frank London‘s Klezmer Brass All Stars, followed by the  Klezmographers with violinist Eleonore Biezunski and tsimbl player Pete Rushefsky, and then flutist Chen Tao and his Melody of the Dragon  Chinese traditional ensemble playing lively, verdant pentatonic folk songs. This blog was in the house (or more accurately. under the eaves across the street) to catch their set here four years ago and it was a lot of fun.

The Klezmographers, who specialize in obscure Ukrainian klezmer repertoire, are also fun. The last time anyone from this blog was at one of Rushefsky’s shows, it was at a gig at the now-discontinued Friday night concert series at the American Folk Art Museum back in 2014. Memory is a little hazy on whether it was an actual Klezmographers gig, or Rushefsky with his flutist wife: that night turned out to be a pretty wild one.

Rushefsky put out a handful of records back in the zeros with his Ternkova Ensemble. The most recent album he appears on is Toronto group KlezFactor‘s new Songs From a Pandemic Winter, streaming at Bandcamp.

The first song is Mardi Gras Fever Dream, with Mike Anklewicz’s soaring tenor sax, Jarek Dabrowski’s chicken-scratch guitar, Paul Georgiou’s clip-clop hand drum and Ali Berkok’s roller-rink organ fueling a playfully surreal mashup of Balkan cumbia, New Orleans second-line jazz and Eastern European Jewish folk music.

Rushefsky’s somberly rippling tsimbl opens Lake Michigan Klezmer Fantasy, Anklewicz switching to clarinet alongside Kousha Nakhaei’s violin for this wistful theme: Canadians have had an awful lot to mourn lately. Third Wave Lockdown opens with a twisted sample of Fidel Jr. reading from his World Economic Forum handler Chrystia Freedland’s script. Then Graham Smith’s snappy bass kicks in, Anklewicz launches into a peppy clarinet tune, and Jarek Dabrowski channels David Gilmour at his most majestic. Just like the truckers, these guys aren’t going to let fascism get them down!

Nakhaei plays what sounds like a stark chinese erhu in the polyrhythmic Winter’s Groove, as the band shift from cumbia to a bit of what sounds like a bulgar dance, to dub reggae. Singer Melanie Gall brings somberness but also a soaring, hopeful vibe to a final waltz, Oyfn Veg Shteyt a Boym, a spare, vivid arrangement of a chilling parable of exile and improbable escape. In 2022, this song couldn’t be more relevant. May we all fare better than that withered tree in the Yiddish lyrics.

Slashing Twin-Guitar Intensity on Jane Lee Hooker’s New Album

Jane Lee Hooker play a snarling, distinctive mix of gutter blues, retro soul music, psychedelia and 70s acid rock. Their latest album Rollin’ – streaming at Spotify – is their most ambitious, soul-oriented and strongest release yet.

They open with Lucky. a heavy soul anthem. Frontwoman Dana Athens’ raw, impassioned vocals ring out in between stomps from the guitars of Tracy Hightop and Tina T-Bone Gorin. As bassist Hail Mary Zadroga and drummer Lightnin’ Ron Salvo lay down a lithe, incisive 6/8 groove, the two guitarists diverge into separate channels, flinging bits of blues at each other and an exchange of solos from simmering to savage.

That slashing, conversational dynamic recurs memorably throughout the rest of the record. Athens punches in on both piano and organ on the second track, Drive, a seething retro 60s-style soul tune. They follow a twisting trajectory in Jericho, from a brisk anthem down to a lull, only to explode out at the end.

The band bring a restless, relentless energy to a well-worn gospel-tinged soul jamband sound in Weary Bones: if only the thousands of other groups who play this kind of stuff could steer clear of cliches as well as this crew do.

They hit a roaring, catchy early 80s-style powerpop drive in All Good Things, then slow down a little for the organ soul tune Mercy Mercy Mercy, a vehicle for Athens’ powerful pipes. Then the band’s two guitarslingers switch out their electrics for an acoustic and a National steel model in White Gold, a delta blues stomp.

The rampaging boogie Runaway Train comes across as a more jagged, female-fronted take on peak-era 70s Blue Oyster Cult. They close the album with Mean Town Blues, a deliciously unhinged, stampeding gutter blues tune with the album’s longest guitar duel.

Jane Lee Hooker are on European tour right now. Their next restriction-free show is on June 7 at 8 PM at Samlingsstuen, Andresens Købmandsgård 4 in Kerteminde, Denmark; cover is 250 kr.

Some Killer Rare and Unreleased Sonic Youth Rescued From the Archives

Other than field recordings, is there anything left in the Sonic Youth vault worth hearing that hasn’t already been released? As it turns out. yes, and some of it is prime! It’s a bit of a shock that several of the tracks on the new album In/Out/In – streaming at Bandcamp – haven’t surfaced until now. These rare and previously unreleased cuts date from the final decade of the most influential rock band of the past forty years.

One-chord jams, or close facsimiles, predominate here. In the case of one song, In & Out, a very late-period outtake, it’s amusing to watch SY turn into Yo La Tengo, a band they influenced so profoundly. Over Steve Shelley’s surprisingly muted, galloping rhythm, the guitarists assemble starry, chiming accents amid a warm drone laced with occasional flickers of feedback and Kim Gordon’s breathy, allusive, wordless vocals.

The opening instrumental is a false start: it could be your band, or anyone else’s, hesitatingly jamming out a two-chord Velvets vamp. Social Static, the theme from the Chris Habib/Spencer Tunick film, is a steady, one-note musique concrète mood piece that collapses into loops of feedback, oscillations, pulsing noise and R2D2 in hara-kiri mode: SY at their most industrially ugly but also subtly funny. No spoilers.

Machine, an outtake from The Eternal sessions, is a rare gem: a steady, midtempo stomp bristling with the band’s often-imitated-but-never-duplicated, dissociative close harmonies and layers of gritty textures that grow more assaultive. Why was this left off the album? Space considerations?

Out & In, an epic instrumental workout from 2000 is the real standout here. There’s a wry allusion to the moment The Wonder segues into Hyperstation (arguably the high point of the Daydream Nation album), with signature off-center Thurston Moore raga riffage, and just enough microtonality and clouds of overtones to let the ghosts in under the door. Everything falls away to buzz-and-clang midway through, then they start over with a squall that’s absolutely evil. The band take it out with a stampeding over-the-shoulder nod to Captain Beefheart. This is a must-own for fans and a surprisingly good overview for beginners.

An Energetic, Eternally Relevant New Live Album by a Jamband Icon

“One way or another, this darkness has got to give.”

Jerry Garcia led that singalong in concert for the first time in 1970. Working-class Americans were still coming home from Vietnam in body bags, napalm and Agent Orange were being dropped on civilians there, and the violence of the 1968 inner-city riots and the Altamont concert a year later were still fresh in the American consciousness. Garcia’s longtime sparring partner Bob Weir opens with that song on his new vinyl album Live In Colorado with his most recent post-Grateful Dead project, the Wolf Bros., streaming at Soundcloud.

More than half a century later, is there anything left in the tank? On the mic, Weir stretches grittily into a range that Garcia’s tenor reached easily. On the frets, Weir is every bit the magician than he was in the Dead. To call him a rhythm guitarist doesn’t do justice to his distinctive blend of sinewy leads, chordlets and basslines: remember, in the Dead, half of the time Phil Lesh was bounding around way up on his G string.

The band ease their way into the song, New Speedway Boogie. The idea of the Dead with a horn section might strike a lot of people as wretched excess, but the intriguingly assembled quintet of cellist Alex Kelly, trumpeter Brian Switzer, trombonist Adam Theis, violinist Mads Tolling and saxophonist Sheldon Brown supply tight harmonies as pedal steel player Greg Leisz sails overhead, sometimes playing through an icy chorus pedal. Jeff Chimenti shifts from terse, bluesy piano to organ and then back – he’s the Pigpen the Dead never had. Meanwhile, drummer Jay Lane and bassist Don Was maintain a low-key sway while Weir is at his flintiest and most incisive,

The second song is an extended take of Dylan’s A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall, another number with immense relevance to 2022. Chimenti and Leisz punch in and out, but the rest of the band chill and let Weir deliver one grim reality after another.

What is the next song, my blue-eyed son? If you dial up this album, try not to cheat and look at the tracklist: it’s impossible to tell. Is it going to be Minglewood, or Brown-Eyed Women? It’s the Dead’s favorite Johnny Cash cover, Big River, Weir taking spiky leads every bit as biting as the ones on hundreds of field recordings. Turning centerstage over to Leisz for some western swing is a perfectly obvious move.

With chorus full on, his chilly, tremoloing lines bring the menace in a slow, utterly noir version of West LA Fadeaway to a blue-neon intensity: this could be the Dream Syndicate. Weir updates a slow, slinky take of the (relatively) rare Dead tune My Brother Esau with a current-day environmentalist reference, then takes his time with the only one of his solo releases here, Only a River, a Shenandoah paraphrase.

The end of the album is where the test of time is most telling. Looks Like Rain was inevitably a high point whenever the Dead played it; this version is surprisingly fast and has neither stormy duel nor picturesque poignancy. The group wind up the album with an equally iconic interlude. Sailor/Saint, in Deadspeak, was the last in a long series of famous diptychs. Part one, Lost Sailor also seems on the fast, uptight side, but the orchestra – if you want to call them that – elevate this brooding tale into fullblown art-rock territory. They do the same, briefly, with Saint of Circumstance: afterward, we get Bobby telling the crowd that they’ll be back for the second set. But these were second-set tunes! Even if you think the Dead died with Jerry – and they did – this is as close to the real thing, in all their shambling glory, as the generation afterward will ever be able to see. Assuming concert restrictions go the way of the dinosaur, as they should, you’ll be able to see Weir on tour later this year.

The Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio Return With a Funky New Record

It was the dead of summer, 2018, the sunset blasting the lawn at Wagner Park just north of the Battery. On a makeshift stage under a canopy in the middle of the park, the Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio fired off plenty of solar flares on their own. The organist bandleader edged out from catchy riffs to roaring rivers of sound and some smoky funk. It was good to see guitarist Jimmy James getting the chance to take off and air out his bottomless bag of riffs more than he does on record, with a purist, 1960s blues intensity. If New Yorkers stay strong and continue to defy New Abnormal restrictions, maybe someday we can look forward to seeing this beast of a band play here again.

They’re one of the most purposeful, adrenalizing and hardworking groups on the jamband circuit. It’s heartwarming to see that they emerged intact after the crippling lockdowns of 2020, with a new album Cold As Weiss streaming at Bandcamp. The album title refers to their new drummer Dan Weiss, also of psychedelic soul band the Sextones

The new album opens with Pull Your Pants Up, a not-so-subtle reminder to James to quit half-mooning the rest of the band during shows. It’s a catchy, more amped-up take on the classic Booker T sound, Lamarr scrambling and cutting loose with washes of chords,

Track two, Don’t Worry ‘Bout What I Do is slower and slinkier, with James running an edgy, Freddie King-flavored hook, expanding upward to a big wailing peak and a savage collapse from there.

I Wanna Be Where You Are is an irresistibly catchy late 60s soul groove, Lamarr playing a part that most groups of that era would have given to a horn section. They slow down for Big TT’s Blues, a ba-bump roadhouse theme, Lamarr choosing his spots and then spiraling over James’ smackdown staccato reverb chords. James bends his way through a wry solo afterward.

Get Da Steppin’ has a bright, upbeat Meters feel, then the band slow down for Uncertainty, James spotting Lamarr’s big chords with spare staccato licks. The guitarist takes over the rhythm as Lamarr lubricates the melody in Keep On Keeping On, the album’s funkiest tune.

The best track is Slip N Slide, James’ tasty web of vintage soul chords mingling with Lamarr’s reggae-tinged organ. James breaks out his wah pedal for This Is Who I Is, the album’s most psychedelic jam.

The trio’s next show is March 10 at 8ish at Proud Larry‘s, 211 S Lamar Blvd. in Oxford, Mississippi. Cover is tba: shows there with national touring acts run in the $15-20 range.