Concert Review in BluesMagazine (Netherlands)

Concert Report: Delta Moon, Cafe de Amer, Amen, April 13, 2014

Text and photos by Herman Keverling Buisman. More photos

BluesMagazine (Follow this link for the original Dutch text.)



It is near the end of the concert year in Café de Amer, and it seems that the programmers have saved the finest for last. At a quarter past one on this memorable afternoon the Achterhoeker Serge Epskamp got on the small stage to do his act. Beautiful voice with ditto acoustic accompaniment. He was nominated by Ruud Fieten, who appeared a few weeks ago in the program with Meena. The set ended with a song with a Achterhoekse text.



There followed a break of fifteen minutes and then it was time for the main act: Delta Moon. Delta Moon? I had never heard of them, but they were praised by the manager of the program. It would be an afternoon of Blues Southern Swamp. The band was from Georgia and consisted of four members: the basis was formed by drummer Darren Stanley, who held all tightly in his hand and bassist Franher Joseph, an African-American who had a beautiful deep voice a la Barry White. Just for this the band was already worth it: he had so much to offer! And the front was formed by two slide guitarists: Mark Johnson (from whom I got goose bumps, delicious!), and another slide guitarist/singer, Tom Gray: beautiful slightly hoarse, raspy voice and excellent (again) slide work. He kept his guitar a la Dave Hole, Australian slide specialist: flat to his stomach and the left hand on the neck. They started with spherical, floating light music which the combination between the two slide guitars made very full. Later came more swinging songs.



For three sets I was greatly amazed at the beauty of their music, and the interaction between the musicians and the audience was wonderful to experience. People clapped along, and during the last encore song, "Wang Dang Doodle" by Willie Dixon, known to us from Livin' Blues, the instruments were left behind and the band grabbed other tools to create rhythm and walked the hall together with the audience to sing the chorus for several minutes. Judging by their reaction they had not often experienced such an audience.

And the audience? They fully enjoyed this fantastic band. All tribute to the perseverance of Harry Young to get this band to the Netherlands!

Review of Live Vols. 1 & 2 in BluesMagazine (Netherlands)

Delta Moon: Life's A Song - Live Volume 1 / Turn Around When Possible - Live Volume 2

By Eric Campfens 

BluesMagazine (Follow this link for the original Dutch text.)

 

Delta Moon, coming from Georgia, is built around the guitar duo Tom Gray and Mark Johnson. The band was formed in 2002, and after some early personnel changes the two guitarists have been for several years now supported by the bass and the drums of Franher Joseph and Darren Stanley. Recently, about the same time, two live albums appeared, namely Life's A Song - Live Volume 1 and Turn Around When Possible - Live Volume 2. No problem, because of the 24 songs there are only three repeats. In addition, in the recordings of various concerts the duplications are not identical.

The first album, Life's A Song - Live Volume 1, was recorded late in 2012 during three shows in North Carolina, Georgia and Florida. We hear fourteen songs spread over 75 minutes. The band is in good form, obviously relaxed and having fun. As you would expect from a blues/southern rock band from the southern states of the US, of course, we hear a lot of slide and it's just rough and unpolished. Three songs besides their own compositions. Highlights here for me "Hellbound Train," "I'm A Witness" and the great "Black Coffee", not to be confused with the old Peggy Lee/Sarah Vaughan number. 

Anyone who after this 75 minutes does not have enough can then purchase Turn Around When Possible - Live Volume 2, which in 2013 was recorded in Bremen. Here we find ten songs, of which only three can be heard on the first CD. Also, this CD is full of rough, unpolished blues/rock/southern rock. Striking is the choice of an old David Bowie/Iggy Pop song "Nightclubbing", which appears here. As slow blues. Class.

Two excellent live CDs from this great band. The recordings can be called perfect, but the live feel ensures that it is not too clinical. Twice recommended.

Life’s A Song – Live Volume 1
1 Hell Bound Train
2 Black Cat Oil
3 Lonely
4 Get Gone
5 Black Coffee
6 You Got To Move
7 Goin’ Down South
8 I’m A Witness
9 Clear Blue Flame
10 Stuck In Carolina
11 Life’s A Song
12 Blind Spot
13 Lap Dog
14 Shake Your Hips

Turn Around When Possible – Live Volume 2
1 Midnight Train
2 Black Coffee
3 The Wrong Side Of Town
4 Get Gone
5 Shake ‘Em On Down
6 Hard Time Killing Floor Blues
7 Goin’ Down South
8 True Love Lies
9 Nightclubbing
10 That’s It

Review of Live Vols. 1 & 2 in Keys and Chords (Netherlands)

Delta Moon: Life’s A Song - Live Volume One / Turn Around When Possible - Live Volume Two

By Philip Verhaege

Keys and Chords (Follow this link for the original Dutch text.)



Delta Moon presents in two live albums the best of contemporary exciting blues scene. Both volumes are a clever mix of original and remarkable covers. Great stuff!

In 2008 Tom Gray (vocals, lap steel guitar and keyboard) won the American Roots Music Association award for the best “Blues Songwriter of the Year". He was born in Washington DC, but grew up in Virginia and Georgia. Tom also had a home on a farm in the mountains of North Carolina. By chance, he met his friend Mark Johnson (guitar) in his uncle's record store in Atlanta. They soon formed the duo Delta Moon. The band name was made up by Mark after a pilgrimage to the shack of Muddy Waters near Clarksdale, Mississippi. After bassist Franher Joseph and drummer Darren Stanley were added to the band, they played many festivals around Atlanta and in the South of the United States. They soon gathered a lot of local awards, and after winning in 2003 the International Blues Challenge in Memphis they began touring as far as Canada and Europe.

Now the quartet presents Life's A Song - Live Volume One and Turn Around When Possible - Live Volume Two, a diptych of recent concert recordings. Volume Two was recorded during a European tour on May 7, 2013, at Meisenfrei in the German city of Bremen. Volume One, by contrast, comes from a US tour and was recorded at various locations in 2012. Naturally and inevitably some of the same songs appear on both set lists. Front man Tom Gray sings with a gravelly voice and blues runs rampant between Chicago and Texas. The songs evolve further into mature, handsome jump tunes and a marshy swamp sound.

In Volume Two is the clever cover “Nightclubbing” by David Bowie and Iggy Pop. The song was penned in the German period and featured on Iggy 's solo debut The Idiot from 1977. Furthermore, there are clever versions of RL Burnside’s "Goin ' Down South” and “Shake 'Em on Down” by Fred McDowell.

In Volume One, the American section, the band presents in more than 75 minutes no fewer than 14 songs. Again, the slide and lap steel guitar are the backbone and the common theme of the live performances. The rebellious Delta Blues sound is created in songs like "Hell Bound Train", the title track of their eponymous album in 2010, "You Got To Move" by Fred McDowell and the original songs “Clear Blue Flame" and the exciting "Lap Dog". The show ends with the great and passionate "Shake Your Hips” -- more than ten minutes long, the fans ecstatic. Delicious! Both performances are perfect examples of how contemporary Southern Blues and Roots music should sound live. Recommended!

Review of Live Vol. 2 in Ikon (Sweden)

Ikon (Follow this link for original Swedish text.)

By Roger Bengtsson 

Delta Moon "Turn Around When Possible - Live Volume 2” (2013)

The Concept is Unchanged

Not long ago I wrote about Delta Moon's last live album, Life's A Song - Live Volume One. No direct changes have occurred in the band since the last time. Why change a working concept?

Now here are ten songs recorded at a gig in Bremen, Germany on May 7, 2013. Essentially it is an album of original songs, but, as with last, a number of cover songs also made ​​their way into the mix. Actually the cover songs that I like the most -- "Nightclubbing" (David Bowie / Iggy Pop) does very well in a bluesy version, and "Goin 'Down South" (RL Burnside) was allowed to last for just over eight minutes -- I think work just brilliantly. Moreover, there is nothing whatsoever wrong with Delta Moon's own songs. Clearly something to check out if you like rocking blues that are not afraid to jam.

Review of Live Vols. 1 & 2 in Hittin' the Note (US)

Hittin' the Note

By Tom Clarke

Having first risen grandly in a slightly softer shade over Georgia some 15 years ago, Delta Moon continues to glint like burnished heirloom diamonds no matter where they twist and shout. Often these days, they set like a brilliant detonation overseas. They play direct, dirt-strewn blues, but the dual slide guitars of Tom Gray and Mark Johnson single them out.

Life’s a Song: Live Volume One was culled mostly from a hot night at Papa Mojo’s Roadhouse in North Carolina. Local harp legend Mel Melton owns the place, and helps wake the hell out of the jittery “Black Coffee.” At the end, Melton huffs puffs and shivers through their imposing take on Slim Harpo’s “Shake Your Hips.” A preview of Gray’s new “The Wrong Side of Town” rocks in the pocket, and is one of the many high points caught on Turn Around When Possible: Live Volume Two, from a rousing show in Bremen, Germany. A first-recorded slow burn through Skip James’ “Hard Times Killing Floor Blues” also makes a deep impression that night. The guitars twine as if snakes in the underbrush, with Gray’s voice their unnerving charmer. Any band that retains its individuality in a traditional blues demands attention. Delta Moon pulls tides of fans their way.

Review of Live Volume 2 in RockTimes (Germany)

Delta Moon/Turn Around When Possible: Live Volume 2

RockTimes (Follow this link for German text.)

By Marcus Kerren

It is scarcely one short year since Delta Moon released their last live album Life's a Song ... and also toured in Germany. Meanwhile, the next disc was recorded -- potzblitz -- almost a year ago in the Bremen blues club Meisenfrei. That it appeals to Southerners very well in good ole Germany, I was allowed to learn at the end of April 2013 in Freudenburger Ducsaal both live on stage, and later behind it. So now we have the result of this tour, with surprisingly two overlapping songs, "Black Coffee" and "Goin 'Down South", from the previous disk.

There is a paragraph from my last review, that I here -- albeit with a bit of regret -- (almost) find worth repeating: “Let’s get this straight right away: this CD has a lot of pluses and only a single small minus. To get this out of the way: unfortunately, the very genuine spoken introductions to the songs were cut out, which I personally find unfortunate. Okay, and then there is the ‘booklet' of only one sheet, but then all the useful information can be found on the back cover.”

Basically, the brand new disc from Delta Moon is a little quieter than its predecessor, therefore not quite as good. The full effect of the songs might not fully develop the very first spin, but once the wheel has rotated a couple of times in the player, there's a great Turn Around When Possible ... no chance to escape this magic groove, being deeply from the marshes of the Mississippi Delta. At the high top are the skills of the musicians and the relaxed cool vocals by Tom Gray, who also just happens to be a master of the steel guitar. 

What's going on here is presented meticulously -- relaxed and with tons of feeling , but never blatant . But this approach to the tracks is evidence of lots of self-confidence and trust in their own abilities. The first of the ten pieces is the horny "Midnight Train“, icing on the cake for the others that follow. As to the tempo of the pieces, the closing "That's It" is a significant upward outlier. The more upbeat "Shake 'Em On Down" just keeps up halfway. 

But -- without wishing to repeat myself -- the power, the depth and content of these songs lies in a groove that hits where the belly meets the soul and in the performance of each of the band members, who form as a whole a great unit that just works astonishingly well . Extremely cool is, for example, the David Bowie and Iggy Pop song "Nightclubbing" (from Iggy's album The Idiot, 1977) , in which you see yourself sitting at half past two in the morning at the bar in some obscure shed with an indefinable mixed drink.

Therefore, the music of Delta Moon goes unerringly into the gut and the soul because it is not only celebrated by very strong musicians, but on top of that is still very authentic. The quartet will be on tour in Germany from early April to early May, and RockTimes is looking forward to be able to report back from one gig or another.

Review of Live: Vols. 1 & 2 in Fatea (UK)

Fatea 

Delta Moon Album: Live Volumes 1 & 2 Label: Self Released Tracks: 24 Website: http://www.deltamoon.com 

By Dave Kidman

Delta Moon is an Atlanta (Georgia) based combo purveying straight-down-the-line, honest-to-goodness contemporary Southern blues-rock that derives its lineage from Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Allman Brothers and Mick-Taylor-period Rolling Stones, with a soupcon of Z.Z. Top thrown in too perhaps. The ideal kind of thing for a live barroom gig, then -- and this pair of well-filled discs (clocking in at 74 and 54 minutes respectively) does the trick nicely thanks, if at times a touch predictably.

Suitably gritty-voiced and authentic, much of their material is self-penned (albeit with a wry slant) by lead vocalist and lap steel guitarist Tom Gray (occasionally in tandem with fellow-band-members), with the rest of the sets taken up with time-honoured blues standards given a wakin' and a shakin' workout, if not exactly a makeover for our own times.

The personnel on these live albums (recorded in 2012 and 2013) seems to have settled at Tom Gray, Mark Johnson, Franher Joseph and Darren Stanley, and they work together commendably and in the approved fashion, rather beyond reproach as far as detailed criticism goes.

Maybe it's too much of a good thing for a repeated home-listening experience, and the duplication of three of the numbers (Black Coffee, Get Gone and Goin' Down South) -- and in performances that aren't radically different -- doesn't exactly help matters. In the end, enjoyable though the music of Delta Moon is, and notwithstanding the fact that the band sure deliver in the live situation, there's a suspicion of skilled-but-workmanlike rather than standing out from the crowd, and I admit I enjoyed their studio albums more. But then, live albums have to be something just a bit extra-special to cut it, don't they?….