Artist: Robert Connely Farr & The Rebeltone Boys
Album: Dirty South Blues
Label: Self-released
Release Date: 9.22.18
If dusted for fingerprints, Dirty South Blues would undoubtedly have those of the living Mississippi blues legend Jimmy “Duck” Holmes all over it. His impact on Robert Connely Farr, a native Southerner now based in Vancouver and the leader of Southern-rock powerhouse Mississippi Live & The Dirty Dirty, is immeasurable.
Acting as a wise, old mentor after meeting in 2017, Holmes schooled Farr in the ways and nuances of a dark, gritty blues known as Bentonia Style, distinctive for its minor tonality. Having learned it himself at the feet of Henry Stuckey, who taught it to Skip James and Jack Owens, Holmes passed his wealth of knowledge down to Farr, who farmed that rich, fertile soil for the slow-burning, completely authentic Dirty South Blues. Carefully pruned of unnecessary overgrowth in Farr’s capable hands, it is mean, nasty stuff that sinks its claws in deep.
The meticulously drawn out “Ode to the Lonesome,” with its steely, deliberate picking embroidered into a broad expanse of organ darkness, and “Blue Front Café” are intimate, haunting affairs that starkly crawl around dilapidated, bare-bones environs. Smoldering away, the grimy title track dramatically descends into a deep mine of gnarly riffs and searing electric-guitar leads, as it gruffly confronts racism in the South head on with Farr’s refreshing candor and tough determination.
As bleak and unforgiving as Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, a grumbling “Magnolia” finds Farr ruminating about the Confederate flag’s problematic symbolism. Just as topical, a sashaying, heavy-lidded “Lady Heroin” shuts its eyes and drifts away, before the lively, stomping honky-tonk of “Just Jive” lets in some light. Meanwhile, Dirty South Blues’ simmering version of James’ “Hard Time Killin’ Floor Blues” reveals a more soulful side of Farr and company, as Michael Ayotte, Tyson Maiko, Kyle Harmon and Evan Uschenko provide scenery—often sparse, but also occasionally dense—that shifts and moves with great subtlety and force. If the Drive-By Truckers were to ever pull off the road for good, Farr could get behind the wheel of that rig.
—Peter Lindblad
thanks yall!!!