Swamp Rock

I used to joke that the day the music died was not, per Don McLean's famous song, February 3, 1959, when The Big Bopper, Buddy Holly, and Ritchie Valens died in a plane crash, but rather December 31, 1989, for it was my contention that no good music had been released since then.  There has, of course, been much good music since then, although for my money most, if not all, has been by artists that got their start decades ago.  So, what do you do when you discover some truly original music recently released by a longstanding musical legend?  You buy Beau Weevils:  Songs In the Key of E and you listen to it over and over, stopping only to tell everyone you know to get it, too.

This is the latest album by Charlie Daniels, and if you want to see the talented lineup on it, head over to Charlie's website.  CD himself describes it as "Downhome, Swampy Rock meets Funk with a little taste of 'Delta' type of style."  Now, if that doesn't at least make you curious, something's wrong with your curiosity glands.  This album has me slapping the steering wheel in rhythm and singing along loud and proud as I drive to work.  Here's the track-by-track rundown.

1.  Geechi Geechi Ya Ya Blues...There is simply no way a song with this title could be anything other than great.  The first ten seconds grab your neck and start forcing your head to bop with the rhythm, and a huge "Awww, yeah!" rises up from your gut, and even if it isn't true that your "alimony payments are way past due and the Lake Charles cops are lookin' for" you, too, everyone knows what it means to have the geechi geechi ya ya blues.  You may not have known what to call that feeling, but now you do, and you have the perfect song for the occasion.

2.  Bad Blood...This is a story song, a true ballad, but not of the romantic variety.  It tells of the murderous lineage of one family that is passed along in the bad blood of its members.  The main character's brother is serving a life sentence in prison, his daddy kills a deputy sheriff who finds his still and is forced to go on the lam, and the main character himself commits murder in a crime of passion.  As the family patriarch tells his son before fleeing on a midnight train, "It's time you knew what's comin' to you like my daddy passed on to me.  Ain't no escape, it's like a copperhead snake crawlin' up the family tree."  And we learn that "all the while the devil smiled, feastin' on the risin' flood.  Bad blood."

This song has two effects on me.  First, it breaks my heart.  There are many people who feel cursed by their family heritage and see no hope.  It is just one generation after another of pain and dysfunction.  Second, it makes me want to cry out to the characters in the song, "It doesn't have to be this way!  There is redemption in Jesus Christ.  His blood can run through your veins and replace that bad blood."

3.  Mexico Again...This is another ballad set in Mexico and with a story and musical line that conjure memories of Marty Robbins.  This is one is just pure fun, and if you like a story with a place called "Hard Luck Sally's, just a little juke joint stuck way back up in the alley," then this is the song for you.

4.  Louisiana Blues...Mmm, mmm, mmm.  I do love the slow groove of a brush on drums, and this song's got it.  Be careful listening to this while driving.  It makes you want to close your eyes and swing your head back and forth.  Even listening to it as I write this, I have to take my hands off the keyboard to snap my fingers in time.

5.  Oh, Juanita..."I'm gonna keep on buzzin' around you, girl, like a king bee around a honeysuckle vine."  With a line like that, nothing more needs to be said.

6.  Smokey's Got Your Number...This song chronicles the misadventures of a variety of drivers who pay no attention to posted speed limits.  Again, this is a dangerous song to listen to while driving as it makes you want to mash that gas pedal yourself and pull your hands off the wheel for some serious air guitar.  And for those of you who grew up watching The Dukes of Hazzard on Friday nights, you can almost feel the General Lee catching air with this one.

7.  Mudcat...This is probably the standout track on the album.  It tells the story of Mudcat, an old man who plays the devil's blues on the front porch of his shack with "a half a gallon of homemade wine."  It seems old Mudcat learned his craft from Robert Johnson, with whom he played "every old funky kind of backwood juke."  When things turn spooky in the swamp and there's "big things bumpin', little things jumpin'," Mudcat hightails it out of there.  Great lyrics and great music combine to make this a top number.

8.  Everybody's Gotta Go Sometime...The brush on drums returns for another swingin' number that gets you snapping your fingers to the timeless truth that it doesn't matter who you are, everybody's gotta go sometime.  With its admonition to "live today like it's all you've got," the song reminds you not to take yourself or other things too seriously, a worthy reminder in our hectic world.

9.  We'll All Have Some...This is the one whose chorus line I find myself singing long after I've stopped listening to the song.  It's in the tradition of songs like "All My Rowdy Friends Are Comin' Over Tonight" by Hank Williams, Jr., and is a fun number about a party featuring barbecue, rum, and Brunswick stew, and if that doesn't kill you, then "we'll all have some."

10.  How We Roll...Southern rock the way the way it was meant to be!  "I'm as country as a bale of hay, and I don't care who knows it.  I'm as redneck as a rodeo, my disposition shows it.  I got a tricked out 4X4 that'll flat blow off your doors, and I like cornbread."  There it is, folks.  That's how the Beau Weevils roll, and it pretty much sums up the whole album.

If any of this intrigues you, makes you curious, or gets your bad blood a-boilin', then, as Charlie sings on the final song, "come on down and git ya some!"