Review of "Live: Volume 1' in Ikon (Sweden)

 

Good Covers and Great Original Songs
(Translated from Swedish)

By Roger Bengtsson

Ikon

After a self-titled debut in 2002, Delta Moon released another seven disks, of which Life's A Song is the second live album (as I write this actually another album has been released after this, also a live album and hence Volume Two).

This collection of fourteen songs are drawn from three different appearances in 2012: Papa Mojo's Roadhouse in North Carolina17/11, Eddie's Attic in Georgia 15/12 and Bradford Blues Club in Florida 12/21.

Essentially, the original material where nice swinging blues on the border with careful rock feels really nice as in "Lonely" and "Clear Blue Flame". A couple of cover songs, however, deserve to be highlighted: "You Got To Move" and "Shake Your Hips", in both cases sharp interpretations that both do the originals justice and assign a little custom touch. Wonderfully.

Review of "Live: Volumes 1 & 2" in Jambands.com

Delta Moon

Life's A Song Turn & Around When Possible
(Live: Volumes 1 & 2) 

By Brian Robbins

Jambands.com

One of the many – many – cool things about Delta Moon is their ability to turn any ol’ place they so choose into a funky-assed ribs ‘n’ whiskey juke joint with a 1 AM vibe (never ominous; just cool and horny). It doesn’t matter what the address is – the south-of-the-Mason-Dixon-line locales visited for the sets captured on Volume 1 of their live show series or the Meisenfrei Blues Club in Bremen, Germany (the setting for Volume 2) – the air is sweet and swampy and full of hoodoo and fine, fine grease.

What makes this so? Well, for one thing, when you play raw and real in the studio (witness last year’s Black Cat Oil for instance), then it makes that vibe all the more transportable to a live setting. The band’s sound – absolutely nailed on these recordings – is electric Delta blues boiled down to its pure essence: the drums ‘n’ bass rump sway of Darren Stanley and Franher Joseph; the nasty dual slide geetar weaves of Mark Johnson and Tom Gray; and Gray’s real-as-hell bluesman vocals (backed by Johnson and Joseph).

Burrow into those rhythms: Stanley’s straight-up drum work on tunes such as “Midnight Train” and “Shake ‘Em On Down” is bare-bones hotrod stuff, uncluttered and dead-nuts on, providing a titanium backbone for unlimited hip shaking by the rest of the band. And then there are times when Stanley whips out the gris-gris and a kerosene lantern, leading the way through the swampy, dark jams (dig the versions of “Goin’ Down South” on both of these albums, each one of them unique in the path it takes), a mix of hellhound-on-his-trail recklessness and groove perfection, working his kit hard but never showy. Right on his wingtip is Joseph, a master of finding the proper bass womp to power the beast along. Listen to his thick-and-gooey intro to “Stuck In Carolina”; the cool-jerk hesitation of “Lap Dog”; the highway rumble of “I’m A Witness”; the half-drunk midnight ramble of “Nightclubbing” – Joseph’s bass is always true to the tune’s setting.

And then there’s Tom Gray’s vocals: never a blues bellower, Gray delivers his testimonies in a bluesman-as-everyman manner, melding gruffness with soul; weary with cool; pain with a grin. When Gray tells you he “was drinking ‘Black Coffee’ just to stay alive,” you don’t doubt it for a minute; when he advises you that “‘Life’s A Song’, baby … sing it one time for me,” you’re gonna feel like trying your damnedest to do just that; and when he says it’s time to “just ‘Shake Your Hips’,” well, you’re gonna do that, too.

But the true deal-sealer on Delta Moon’s sound is the aforementioned six-string tag-team work between Gray’s lap steel and Johnson’s slide guitar. If you’re a picker yourself, you’ll love putting an ear to these tunes and separating Gray’s steel-and-nothing-but-the-steel tones from Johnson’s electric slide. And even if you’ve never held a guitar in your hands, it’s your ears and heart and soul that are going to be affected by Delta Moon’s double-barreled guitar attack. Gray is a master of swampy shimmer, while Johnson combines fingered passages of chugging rhythm figures with slippery leads. They circle around each other; they dance and bob; one tosses out an idea and the other flips it around and sends it roaring back; they team up to growl like a pair of angry gators; they soar off in opposite directions, circling back to meet mid-air in a wild-assed-but-beautiful display of formation flying. Think Duane and Dickey; think Derek and Warren; heck, you can even think Keith and Ronnie: Gray and Johnson have a little bit of all of them going on, plus a whole lot of their own sound.

You’ll notice I’ve been talking about these two albums as one – that’s on purpose, boys and girls. You think I can recommend one over the other? No way – what Delta Moon is offering up with the first two installments of their live series is one big pot of bluesy goodness.

You’ll want to eat the whole damn works.

Blues411 names "Live Vols. 1 & 2" one of Top 5 Live Recordings of 2013.

The 2013 Blues411 ‘Jimi’ Awards

Well another year under the belt, and without further ado we would like to present the 2013 Blues411 ‘Jimi’ Awards....

Best Live Recording:

Delta Moon: Life’s A Long Song – Live Vol. 1&2
Murali Coryell: LIVE
Little Bit A Blues: Little Bit A Blues Live at B.B. King’s Bluesville
Kirsten Thien: Solo Live from the Meisenfrei Blues Club
Phil Gates: Live at The Hermosa Saloon

The production level of live recordings has sky rocketed in the past few years. The five of these are equally superb....

[Note: Two of these five albums were recorded at Meisenfrei Blues Club in Bremen, Germany. Our thanks to Jörg Wrase of Computer Und Sound, who knows what he is doing.]

Review of "Turn Around When Possible - Live Volume 2" in FAME

A review written for the Folk & Acoustic Music Exchange

by Mark S. Tucker
(progdawg@hotmail.com)

Delta Moon's Turn Around When Possible is the second half of a two-part set (the review of the first, Life's a Song, can be found here), charting a concert they had in Germany. Vol. 1 was strictly U.S. bred. Weighing in at just under an hour, Turn features a slate of 10 cuts with one that's a bit of surprise: Nightclubbing by David Bowie and Iggy Pop. Never expected to find that one covered by these guys, but they turn in a righteous version much dug by the krautische crowd. Black Coffee makes a re-appearence from Vol. 1, of course with a completely different set of solos, the kind of thing we collectors hunger for, and Goin' Down South likewise, another jam cut also on Vol. 1, which gets the same treatment, deliciously so.

Tom Gray, the front man (guitars, vocals), sings with a gravelly voice intoning many years of weary travel through life, of wisdom via experiences hard won, and of a street existentialist's philosophizing. This of course brings on the blues, and that's what Delta Moon is 100% about, a Chicago / Texas version that sometimes seems as though it's poised to evolve into jump (Wrong Side of Town) but maintains its groove just short of that, much more swampy, very little of the Manhattan Uptown or Harlem scene. He also plays a slide that goes down quite easy and sometimes waxes eerie (Get Gone), Mark Johnson always catching his back on second lead and rhythm.

Darren Stanley keeps a rock steady beat through both volumes, and Franher Joseph plays bass just above him, filling in the spaces and coloring the mid-ground. The cover of Skip James' Hard Times Killing Floor Blues is like a cross between a mellowed-down Dire Straits and a section from a Sergio Leone spaghetti western, balladic and blue, a classic rough luck lament. It's the slowest tempo the group lays into and creates a hazy, smoky, dusty, late afternoon pool of reflection and somnolence. That's It, however, closes the set down by pounding the floorboards before turning into a J. Geils Band meets Mark Knopfler number. In Turn Around, as in Life's a Song and all their other releases, Delta Moon remains rock steady.

Track List:

Midnight Train (Chapman / Gray / Johnson) Black Coffee (Gray / Johnson / Joseph / Patton) The Wrong Side of Town (Tom Gray) Get Gone (Gray / Johnson) Shake 'Em On Down (Fred McDowell)

Hard Times Killing Floor Blues (Skip James) Goin' Down South (R. L. Burnside) True Love Lies (Gray / Johnson) Nightclubbing (Bowie / Pop) That's It (Tom Gray)

Edited by: David N. Pyles
(dnpyles@acousticmusic.com)

Copyright 2013, Peterborough Folk Music Society.

Review of "Life's a Song - Live Volume 1" in FAME

A review written for the Folk & Acoustic Music Exchange

by Mark S. Tucker
(progdawg@hotmail.com)

Okay, it's the holiday season, and you just might not be the type to give a damn about that, like us atheists and others pains in the asses. In fact, you may even be the kind who knocks back the hard cider, the rum balls, the amaretto-laced cookies, and all the wonderful alcohol doo-dads that come with Thanksgiving and Xmas…and that's 100% a-okay with me, y'all. In fact, I suggest you swozzle and gorp 'em all down and get in the mood for Delta Moon's two latest, both being live releases, this the first (you can catch the other critique here). Such ingestion will be especially helpful if you're a Boomer and wondering just what the fuck's going on and where all the old sounds went to.

Life's a Song lays it down straight-line and harks back to the time when Savoy Brown had moved from Chris Youlden to Dave Walker, when Foghat was rising, when John Kay was moving out of Steppenwolf and into his solo work, and when there were a bunch of cool-ass blues bands popping up all over the landscape, some psychedelic as all get-out, others laid back and into a straw-chawin' grassroots kind of hip hick. Delta Moon's more the latter in a laze-a-bones manner that isn't intent on setting the world on fire but instead passing the moonshine around as the sun sets and there are stories to be traded. That's not to say the boyz don't gits spunky, as in Black Coffee, but even when that's so, there's yet a cooled-back grinning center to everything. Coffee is one of their signature songs, and they take it to town whenever it comes up in the repertoire (you'll catch it again in Vol. 2 and be happy for the repeat).

Lead guitarist / singer / slide guitarst Tom Gray wrote and co-wrote all the non-standard cuts and then adopted several good'uns alongside: You Got To Move, Goin' Down South, Shake Your Hips. Like Coffee, Goin' Down South gives the boys plenty of room to expand and, as the groove sets down into quicksilver cement, Gray goes off on an extended solo, tasty and then some, Mark Johnson tossin' out very cool back-up on second lead. At 9:01, there's all kinds of space, so drummer Darren Stanley gets in his chops as well. The disc runs to 75 minutes and ends on the 10-minute Shake Your Hips, providing another jam track, which DM wastes no time laying into. When all's said and done, you'll know where at least some of the old sounds I mentioned in the first paragraph indeed have travelled: right to this very CD.

Track List:

Hell Bound Train (Tom Gray) Black Cat Oil (Tom Gray) Lonely (Gray / Johnson) Get Gone (Gray / Johnson) Black Coffee (Gray / Johnson / Joseph / Patton) You Got to Move (Fred McDowell) Goin' Down South (R.L. Burnside)

I'm a Witness (Gray / Johnson) Clear Blue Flame (Tom Gray) Stuck in Carolina (Gray / Johnson) Life's a Song (Gray / Johnson) Blind Spot (Gray / Johnson) Lap Dog (Gray / Johnson) Shake Your Hips (James Moore)

Edited by: David N. Pyles
(dnpyles@acousticmusic.com)

Copyright 2013, Peterborough Folk Music Society.

Mark Johnson Interview - Blues & Co (France)

Delta Moon, a group that has been plying its trade eleven years throughout the States and Europe, except of course in France ... Weird huh? … Who knows why we always have to catch up? Delta Moon has distilled profound blues from the South, flowering from the Mississippi mud but also the woods of the Appalachian mountains, music they call "blues infused American roots." A haunting music, rich in its simplicity, regal with slide guitar punctuated by a powerful and rhythmic throbbing. Winner of the IBC in Memphis in 2003, they now have made nine fabulous albums and thousands of concerts, each hotter than the last ...

So before inviting them to come to Terri'Thouars Blues Festival 2014, I wanted to know a little more and thus maybe interest fans in the program ....

B&Co: Delta Moon was born when you entered a music store near Atlanta … Eleven years later, how did this happen to you and why were you musically in tune since then?

Mark: I met Tom at Midtown Music, a great vintage instrument guitar store in Atlanta that is now closed. He had an old Dobro to sell and I thought I might want to buy it before he sold it to the store. I didn't buy the Dobro. It was a square neck, meant to be played lap-style, and I was a bottleneck player. But we talked about old resonator guitars for a while and exchanged phone numbers. We soon started getting together to play music, mostly old blues and traditionals, Blind Willie Johnson and Fred McDowell stuff. Then we wrote our first song together, “Poplar Grove”, which I was pretty thrilled about because Tom is a respected writer. We like the same kind of music and it has just grown from there.

B&Co: Between the album "Delta Moon" in 2002 and the last album "Black Cat Oil", in your opinion what was the most striking evolution in the sound of Delta Moon, in its musical approach?

Mark: Well, we have always had the vision of two guitars working together really well in the spirit of Jimmie Reed/Eddie Taylor, Peter Green/Danny Kirwan and Keith Richards/Ron Wood. Our approach is more focused on slide guitar, lap steel against bottleneck, which is a little unusual. I would say that we have just refined that vision along the way by simplifying parts and using more space in our music. We have also concentrated more on deepening the groove, getting more relaxed and behind the beat.

B&Co: Did these evolutions come about naturally or were they linked to particular events? 

Mark: Just a natural progression, trying to make each CD more musical than the last. 

B&Co: Besides, how would you define your own musical style ? Where would you situate yourself exactly in the Blues universe? 

Mark: My personal playing style is based on fingerpicking and incorporating both bottleneck and fretted notes, mostly in open tunings. That's not a unique approach but I have found my own distinct voice within those parameters. Early on, I learned from as many players as I could, the old blues and gospel masters like Blind Willie Johnson, Pop Staples, Earl Hooker, Tampa Red as well as contemporary guys. Then I kind of just played what I wanted to hear. Writing also really helped me find my own voice. In the Blues Universe? I am just another dedicated guitar player making my own journey along the highway of American roots and blues. 

B&Co: For a while you were concentrated on a formula in a quartet where the rhythm is more accentuated, can you tell us about the musicians who composed it? 

Mark: Our drummer, Darren Stanley and our bass player, Franher Joseph are both really great players. We are really blessed. These guys have played together since marching band in college in Athens, Georgia, and are really tight. We put these old blues and slide phrases over really funky, groovy rhythms. In the US, getting folks up dancing at the show leads to a big party. We aim for that. Juke joint music. 

B&Co: Tom Gray and yourself are Delta Moon, but during my research I found a lot of information about Tom and very little about you …. Therefore, I would like to know more about Mark Johnson? Who are you, where do you come from? What is your musical background? What kind of music do you listen to and which one in particular? 

Mark: I grew up in a lower middle class family, actually in a trailer park near Akron, Ohio, with three brothers.  My mom and dad were great, we always had music playing at home and they were very supportive of us playing music.  My uncle owned a record store in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and my dad would come home after working construction all week with boxes of demo records and we would just dive in, discovering all kinds of stuff. I have played guitar since around age 10 and have been in lots of local bands in Ohio and then in Atlanta. I listen to all kinds of music, mostly roots music: blues, gospel, rock and roll, country, reggae. But also world music, especially West African stuff.

B&Co: Did the Blues influence you immediately, or like for many others, did you start with Rock beforehand? What did you find in this music which convinced you that this was the music you preferred above all?

Mark: I listened to Rock and Roll first, but favored the bluesy stuff like the Stones.  However, living in Ohio, we had all these great FM stations coming out of Cleveland, Akron and Detroit, so I heard all the Stax, Motown, R&B stuff  and early funk as well. I was born in 1961, so it was a great musical time in a great area. Cleveland was the Rock and Roll capital of the US. I didn't dig into the old blues until college when I started to really study bottleneck guitar.

B&Co: What do you think of the Blues situation at the moment? Its evolution? Its public audience? 

Mark: I think it's thriving. I am amazed at how many players and fans all over the world are into RL Burnside and Hill Country Blues for instance. Lots of players and bands are doing their own interpretations of the blues, making it their own. I think it is important to be original. Look at how different the first generation blues guys were. Skip James didn't sound anything like Mississippi John Hurt!

B&Co: I know as well that you are a very great fan of Ry Cooder, did you meet him? Did you play with him? Who are any other musicians who may have inspired you? 

Mark: I briefly met him. I went to see Little Village at The Center Stage in Atlanta several years ago. The band I was playing in opened for Johnny Winter there the week before so I knew a way to sneak backstage. So, before the encore, my brother Kevin and I ducked backstage and found a room full of food and drinks. We helped ourselves to a few beers, hoping to fit in and join the party when it arrived.  However, when the show ended, Nick Lowe walked in and kindly asked us if he could have a moment alone in his dressing room!  We hurried out and I ran smack into Ry and briefly told him what a big influence he was on me.

Lowell George, Mick Taylor, Sonny Landreth, Jimmie Vaughn, RL Burnside and lately Rick Holmstrom, Marc Ribot and Daniel Lanois' guitar playing have been very inspiring to me.

B&Co: 2002 – 2013, eleven years on the road, nine albums, a career well filled and certainly lots of memories? Can you share with us some of your memories, good and bad? 

Mark: Once In Canada, I was driving the van on probably the most beautiful, scenic highway in North America called the Icefields Parkway from Banff to Jasper in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. We had just stopped to let a small herd of bighorn sheep cross the road, and it was starting to snow pretty heavy. Then, about 30 meters on the side of the road I see this pack of wolves! I stop the van. The leader of the pack, this big white wolf, comes down the hill and stops about 2 meters from my window. I rolled down the window and we just stared into each other’s eyes!  I don't know what it meant, but it was really cool. The locals told us that seeing even a single wolf in the wild is quite rare.

Once in Florida, we blew a tire on the trailer, spent the night on the turnpike, got into the hotel in Fort Lauderdale at 9:00 in the morning, woke up at 3:00 in the afternoon to go to soundcheck and our van, trailer, all our gear except guitars and merchandise was stolen. That was a real bummer. But the promoter called the local blues society, rounded up some gear, bought us an incredible meal and we played the gig that night. These are the folks that keeping the blues world turning!

B&Co: During your career, you have traveled many countries, where did you feel the best and where do you think your music was most appreciated? And why, in your opinion? 

Mark: I really can't say. Everywhere we go, people love our music and we have great fans in many countries. For me, the greatest part about playing in a traveling band is developing friendships in different places.

B&Co: What would you like to say to the French people, so that they would invite you to play in France? 

Mark: Well, we have played in every country in western Europe except France. I know the French have great taste so I think if we get the opportunity to perform, we will be well appreciated! The French have been long supporters of good Blues and Jazz.

B&Co: And last but not least, what are your present and upcoming projects? 

Mark: We just released a live CD entitled “Life's a Song, Live Volume 1”. We are beginning work on a new studio record and plan on recording more live shows and releasing those. We hopefully also have enough good footage from the last tour in Germany to have a live DVD.

B&Co: Thanks a lot, Mark, for taking the time to answer all my questions! 

Mark: Thank you!

"Live Volume One"/"Live Volume Two" Review in Rootstime (Belgium)

DELTA MOON -- LIFE'S A SONG/TURN AROUND WHEN POSSIBLE -- LIVE - VOLUMES 1 & 2

By Eric Schuurmans

www.rootstime.be

(Translated from Dutch)

Delta Moon is, by definition, the guitar tandem of Tom Gray and Mark Johnson. Tom Gray was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Virginia and Georgia, but his real home was always the family farm in the mountains of North Carolina. In the beginning of the '80s Gray was keyboardist and singer of a rock band called "The Brains" that made two albums (Mercury Records). Later Gray started to play steel guitar. In 2008 Gray was named “Blues Songwriter or the Year” by the American Roots Music Association. Gray’s songs have been recorded by Cyndi Lauper (including the hit "Money Changes Everything" ), Manfred Mann, Carlene Carter, Bonnie Bramlett and others. Mark Johnson grew up in a trailer park in Ravenna, Ohio. Mark learned a love of music from his uncle, who was the owner of a record store. While he was in school, Mark played guitar in different groups. In the early ‘90s Johnson moved to Atlanta, where he formed a group with the name The Rude Northerners. In that period he became obsessed with the bottleneck slide guitar.

Delta Moon as a group is a strong mix of characters and sounds. Tom Gray and Mark Johnson met for the first time by coincidence in a music store in Atlanta. Gray attempted at that meeting to sell Johnson a Dobro (resonator) guitar that was in his van. (Note: 'Dobro' stood for Dopyera Brothers, the Slovak-American founders of the company -- where “dobro” means “good” in the Slovak language). The sale didn’t go through but had a sequel, because they exchanged their phone numbers. The result was that they began regularly playing together in clubs and parties around Atlanta. Mark Johnson proposed the group name "Delta Moon” after visiting the birthplace of Muddy Waters in Clarksdale, Mississippi. The duo became a full blues band with the addition of a rhythm section and began playing larger clubs and festivals. In 2003 the band won the International Blues Challenge in Memphis. With a boost from this award, the band was able to tour in the US, Canada and Europe. In 2007, the bassist Franher Joseph came to the group and later drummer Marlon Patton. And now this is the line-up of the band.

In 2012, in different locations in the States, Delta Moon recorded a live album: Life's A Song - LIVE Volume One. Fourteen recordings are included from three performances in different locations, in November and December. Except for three covers, all the songs are original numbers from the duo. After this American tour and the release of this album, the band toured Europe in the spring of 2013. This resulted in a live album: Turn Around When Possible - LIVE Volume Two.

 

On this live album you hear a relaxed band, with obviously a lot of slide guitar and the necessary jams typical of these types of shows. What is unfortunate about this album is that there is little left of the spoken intros between numbers, which also display a part of the atmosphere of the band and the audience. An exception to the rule is track seven, "Goin ' Down South", a cover of a song by RL Burnside. Almost the longest track on the album, it is also the best track to represent the band and contains, for me, a great drum solo by Darren Stanley. Absolutely not to be missed! Of course there are many pluses. One of the major advantages is that the sound recordings (including the later mix) are well done. The individual instruments are very easy to hear and differentiate. As a result, the live character of the images is enhanced. Other song highlights include (the choice is difficult and certainly personal) "Hell Bound Train", "Clear Blue Flame" and "I'm A Witness". All the songs sound very authentic, coherent and unforced. The deep, gruff voice of Tom Gray reaches the level of heat of someone like Tony Joe White, and two (count them) slide guitars sound like one. In Durham, North Carolina, guest Mel Melton’s harmonica is a beautiful thing on "Black Coffee" and the great long cover of James Moore's "Shake Your Hips". Just for the intro of this song you have to buy this album. Class! Listen to this album as a whole, and enjoy the fourteen songs, or one hour and fifteen minutes of Delta grooves.

Delta Moon’s Live Volume 2 contains only three numbers that also appear on the U.S. live tracks: “Black Coffee”, “Get Gone” and “Goin’ Down South”. Fred McDowell is featured on both albums, but with different songs. Mississippi Fred McDowell (1904-1972) was a North Mississippi hill country blues singer and guitarist. He wrote great songs like “You Got To Move”, a popular song that has already been covered by many other musicians (such as Eric Bibb and the Rolling Stones). The surprise on this album is the cover of rockers Iggy Pop and David Bowie’s “Nightclubbing” (from the first solo album of Iggy Pop, The Idiot, 1977). The song is a slow blues with the rhythm section of Joseph and Stanley providing heavy nocturnal grooves with a psychedelic atmosphere and extra color. In itself, this is indeed not a usual choice for the band, because this song was written in the beginning of the period when Bowie lived in Berlin (“Berlin Trilogy”). And then to finish the album, Tom Gray sings “That’s It”, closing the fifty-five minutes of recordings. In short,Delta Moon is a quartet that sounds as authentic as the deep South of the U.S.A. Double recommended (even for those without GPS)!