Previously unheard material recorded by The Stoop Down man himself, Chick Willis, recorded in 1997 and now released for the first time on Big Bear Records as an exclusive digital-only album.
Track Listing:
Lou’s Place
Please Don’t Go
Every Day Is A Good Day
Come Back Home
You Got The Devil In You
The Things I Used To Do
What You Got On Me
One Eyed Woman
Tin Pan Alley
Big Fat Woman
Four Wives Blues
Voodoo Woman
Doin’ The Yang Thang
Featuring
Chick Willis: vocals and guitar; Tony Ashton: piano and organ; Roger Inniss: bass guitar; Sticky Wicket: drums
The Whiskey Brothers’ journey has taken them from band to band, club to club, festival to festival, and now to the Big Bear himself for this recording. It’s live and unedited.
And it’s authentic. Not because it correctly evokes the style of Sonny and Brownie, or Fats, or Big Bill, though their echoes are there.
It’s authentic because it’s just two men playing the music they love, the only way they know how.
Look at this list of great British guitar players: Eric Clapton, Peter Green, Mick Taylor, Mark Knopfler. You can now add another name to this list – that name is Will Johns.
Will Johns is the complete package. Not only does he have a beautiful voice; he is also a greet songwriter and guitar player. Will Johns’ guitar playing has a lyrical sensibility and emotional depth that distinguishes all of the guitar players on that list. Will is the son of Andy Johns, the world-famous producer and engineer who worked on albums by Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones.
On this album Will Johns has done the production himself as well as all the arrangements. The sound of this album is a testimony to Will’s instinctive ability as a producer to hear and record the sound of a band in the studio.
As a charismatic performer, every Will John gig is unique unto itself. The man also has a sense of humour and never forgets that, when he’s on stage, he is there to entertain. I know you are going to enjoy this album and that you will also enjoy seeing Will perform live. If I didn’t know this, I wouldn’t be writing these notes.
A clearer demonstration of the power of live music to lift the human spirit would be hard to find. Bands that can do this are much rarer now than they used to be, but Tipitina are not entirely alone. What distinguishes them from the others is the amount of variety they manage to extract from a style firmly rooted in the New Orleans boogie/honky-tonk/rhythm & blues tradition.
So that’s Tipitina, 2011 version, more wide-ranging than before, but still firmly attached to its musical heartland where the Mississippi meets the Gulf of Mexico.
Dave Gelly
Track Listing
Hey Pocky Way
Brickyard Blues
Louisiana 1927
Fess Medley: Mardi Gras In New Orleans, Big Chief, Tipitina
The case against eclecticism and versatility is broadly speaking that if you get good at too many things you’ll fail in the creation of an individual voice, and so you’ll never establish a unique identity; in other words, you’ll be a jack-of-all-trades, master of none. After all, isn’t there good evidence throughout the world of entertainment – especially music? From Louis Armstrong to miles Davis, Charley Patton to Bob Dylan, T-Bone Walker to Jimi Hendrix, an instantly recognisable sound is the key to a successful career. If you wanna be big, everything must be subsumed by your own individuality; whatever you do, don’t go changing according to your context.
And yet, chameleons have a good life as well. And there’s definitely something of the chameleon about Tipitina. In fact, to go from Tom Waits to Nat King Cole to Chris Kenner to Doris Day/Mama Cass (oh, all right then, Louis Armstrong/Ella Fitzgerald) in the first four songs on an album is to take the listener on something of an aural roller-coaster. That’s one of the things I really enjoy about it.
Putting in the piano interludes is, I think, something of a masterstroke; partly because it softens the curves and swerves of the said rollercoaster, and partly because it creates a kind of frame for the sonic picture and thereby relates everything to everything else, unifying the disparate bits into a sort of suite.
I’ve had a really good time listening to this CD. From the homespun sophistication of the title-track all the way to Henry Glover’s great Breaking Up The House, Tipitina have convinced me that they’re definitely on to something. Don’t go changing, guys.
