Biography
Fantastic Southern Rock with powerfull guitars and great vocals. Featuring DAN BAIRD (Georgia Satellites), Kelly Looney (Steve Earle & The Dukes), Stan Lynch (Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers)
(Below was translated from French to English using a translator app. The original source link is at the very bottom.)
Ken McMAHAN and Slumpy Boy - 1994
Album blow of heart. Everything that follows is totally subjective. I assume. But what is this record that can be good?
Yes, yes, we can find a redire in this disk (but be careful, put forward your arguments)
Discovered, once again, thanks to the Dixiefrog label, in 1994, and a small laudatory article by the late Guitar and Bass, this record, 18 years later, makes me vibrate again. He is timeless. For without rubbish, without any concessions to the fashions of the moment.
The music is like the cover: a tough guy, a little cool, who, despite a patibular and snoring air, has something nice, something nice. Sitting on the steps of a house with a fundamentally rural atmosphere, Stratocaster on your knees as others would show off a rifle to intimidate those who would not be welcome. The image seems to herald a burnt rock, well rooted in a certain tradition, where the search for new horizons is certainly not part of the program of the fellow. Certainly, Ken doesn't need an accursion to guess the kind of music he's playing.
Only Ken, in real passionate and falters of music (with a preference for the category "burrin"), cannot help but take his cockroachs out of the closet, from continuing to compose. Finally, he accumulates equipment whose good content cannot sleep forever on a few cassettes lost at the bottom of a drawer.
With the help of another desperado of a direct and frank rock, (Dan Baird who won his stripes aves les Giorgia Satellites), he entered the studio to etch his compostions raised during his forced rest. Ken and Dan previously played together in the short-lived "Slumpy Boy" formation (originally trained to skim the surrounding clubs). Jeffrey Perkins, the drummer of the late Dusters, and Kelley Looney, Steve Earle's bassist, were called to the rescue.
Result? A sustained and hard music, a heavy-rock franc of the necklace. The production is quite close to the bone, ignoring all scattering and multitracking of all kinds. A music whose breeding ground is the blues, with the blues-rock and the Hard-blues of the 70's, of the sincerely offensive style, as an additive. And in order not to break the momentum or the mood, the ballads were outlawed. Not too much guy's kind of man anyway.
The riffs are a mixture of chords, between Keith Richards and Malcom Young, and rhythms syncopated in the manner of Lynyrd Skynyrd as can be found on "Gimme back your bullets" or the first two Point Blank (especially); all with a sound closest to the Australian combos (Kings of the Sun, Jimmy Barnes of "Bodys"Freight Train HeartDubrovniksor even the Rose Tattoo of "Scarred for Life") that American (production by Dan Baird) and mid-tempo rhythms. In addition to these references, it is felt that the good man was fed Bob Seger, Mitch Ryder, Aerosmith's first period, Creedence, Humble Pie, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and Southern Rock muscular version (without the incessant guitar duel side). The voice is also a faithful reflection of the man. A little bit of morgue, sometimes snarling but never hateful. Few trunk but always fair and in line with the music, quite close to the tone of its rhythmic guitars. Ken McMahan exteriorizes 100%, and offers us a personal rock, from which his influences emerge happily, for a clever mix of the groups mentioned above, but also the blues-rock of the 70's. The riffs sound "Gibson Melody Maker", "SG" and "Fender Telecaster", sometimes even "Stratocaster" by which the micro-treet would have been removed.
Note, an excellent cover of Savoy-Brown's "Hellbound TrainSavoy-Brown," (apparently this title is close to his heart) played even more "LOUDz" than with the Dusters, and much better than the original. Like a heavily loaded freight train, it takes a heavy step for a while, and then takes a rapid acceleration (plays with Dan), without risking the derailment, but on its momentum, it gives the feel of a locomotive that is now impossible to stop.
Hard-Rock, then, but no longer in the sense that we now understand it. The structure is there: riffs, power-chords, solo springing in the pentatonic scale, drummer hammering its barrels with fervour.
Simply thick rock, drunk, which hardly cares about ringing this or that way, being part of this or that church. Only the pleasure of performing music that he feels and that looks like him.
This first album could be of the family – a more or less close cousin – of the Rio Grand Mud of '-Top, Savoy Brown's "Boogie Brothers," Chicken Shack's "Imagination Lady," "Full Frontal Attack" by Kings of The Sun, Blackfoot's "Marauder" and Gorgia Satelittes. Heavy, of course, but not of the kind of one that must be aromated with great saturation (sometimes even, to hide, we will not deceive, shortcomings).
At the time of the CD, the reviews had rightly been enthusiastic, and if Dixiefrog decided to release a remastering (with bonuses?).
Two other albums will be released, in the same vein, a little less bellicose, slightly less good but still very good, which will prove that Ken McMahan is not just a riff slayer but an authentic songwriter.
Track List:
What's Wrong With You - 3:07
Not Gonna Crawl - 3:49
Wind It Up - 4:13
Broken Glass - 4:29
Fightin' Words - 3:30
Hellbound Train - 5:56
Long Gone - 5:19
Loneliness - 5:03
Don't Want Your Love - 5:16
Outside Lookin': 4:54
Google Blogger Post: Ken McMAHAN & Slumpy Boy - 1994 - (by Bruno)
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