Tony Joe White
Hoodoo
YepRoc Records
Tony Joe White has
been playing music for over fifty years. His songs have been covered by the
likes of Elvis and Waylon Jennings. He’s been there and done it and so has
nothing left to prove.
As such, Tony Joe,
now in his 70s, can do what he likes best – sitting in his studio, a beer close
at hand, waiting on a song. “I just gotta wait on ‘em, and when one comes by, I
take my guitar out and grab it,” he said to me last year. That’s just how he
rolls.
Latest cut, Hoodoo, is a collection of the most
recent songs he’s grabbed. A slew of lean, scuzzy blues grooves, his fuzzed out
old Strat laconically leading the way over a bedrock of drums and bass, the odd
Hammond stab, a little harmonica. His voice is hardly worth bottling, but it
doesn’t matter, it suits the mood. ‘The Gift’ is pure sweat-drenched road song,
the title track filth-encrusted blues boogie. Messy as hell, and all the better
off for it.
3.5/5
Samuel J. Fell
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