Tag: Big Legal Mess records

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Willie Farmer Brings the Duck Hill Blues to Memphis

Willie Farmer (Credit: Aaron Greenhood)

He may be one of the best kept secrets of the local blues scene, though he’s won some national recognition in the music press and made an appearance on Beale Street Caravan. It’s just that Willie Farmer doesn’t get to Memphis much. Of course, he had to come here to record his 2019 album, The Man From the Hill (Big Legal Mess), at Bruce Watson’s Delta-Sonic Sound, which made the Memphis Flyer‘s best-of list that year. But he’s too busy working as a mechanic in Mississippi to make regular trips here. That’s why the show at The Green Room at Crosstown Concourse this Thursday, June 15th, is a rare opportunity to see him live.

It was with good reason that The Man From the Hill was named one of 2019’s best LPs. As the Flyer noted at the time:

The first epiphany comes from the guitar tone. Farmer’s amp exudes a wonderful crud, a dirty squawk that seems to boil up out of the ground itself, like crude. After a few volleys on the strings to clear the air and put your mind in the zone, George Sluppick’s rock-solid drumming kicks in and we’re off, journeying through an album marked by the pitch-perfect, no-nonsense production we’ve come to expect from Big Legal Mess.

People talk about garage rock a lot (too much?) these days, but this is true garage blues. That’s not to suggest it’s especially frenetic. Rather, from the tone alone, you can feel in your bones the scene of Farmer’s auto repair shop in Duck Hill, Mississippi. And Farmer’s playing also conveys both the rough hewn strength and the sensitivity one develops from growing up on a farm.

It’s a style not often heard in these days of pop-crossover blues, made all the more powerful by Farmer’s soulful voice.

Opening the show will be two artists who’ve proven to be worthy acolytes of the blues. Shaun Marsh, a U.K. native, has mastered the finger-picking style of country and Delta blues from recordings of the forms’ early pioneers. It was that music that brought him to Memphis, where he continues to study these historical styles, with a repertoire ranging from Robert Johnson to Charley Patton, from Skip James to Big Bill Broonzy. He’ll have drummer Lynn Greer on Thursday, giving his set extra oomph.

In the night’s middle slot will be Ryan Lee Crosby from Medford, Massachusetts, who’s been turning heads for years with his blend of traditional music from Mississippi, Mali, and India, including what he calls “Hindustani slide guitar.”

As Mike Greenblatt writes in Goldmine magazine, “With a riveting singing style and the compositional chops to pull off such searing sagas ‘Institution Blues’ and ‘Down So Long’ plus add new lyrics to the 19th century ‘Was It The Devil,’ Ryan Lee is the real deal. Recorded in Memphis by Bruce Watson of Fat Possum — the label famous for RL Burnside and Junior Kimbrough — it sounds unique, proudly independent and like a relic from another time.”

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Music Music Features

Shake a Leg with Bruce Watson’s Just Leg It Compilation

“Just Leg It” sounds like slang somebody made up in the ’30s or ’40s.

It’s not. It’s the title of a new album produced, mixed, and recorded by Bruce Watson of Fat Possum and Big Legal Mess Records.

“It’s a term for dancing I made up,” says Watson. “When people hear the record, I hope they ‘just leg it.’”

The album includes 19 party instrumentals from Memphis and North Mississippi artists, including Matt Ross-Spang, Jimbo Mathus, Will Sexton, Jack Oblivian, and Memphis Flyer’s Alex Greene.

There was “really no idea” behind the album, which Watson began working on nine years ago. “It was an excuse for a bunch of friends and musicians to get together and hang out. And make up songs, basically.

 “I would come in with old records and say, ‘Okay. Let’s kind of build something inspired by this.’ Someone would come up with a riff and we could record it on one-inch eight-track tape.”

Watson began recording with a few musicians at Dial Back Sound, a recording studio he owned in Water Valley, Mississippi. 

He recorded nine tracks and then put the album away for a while. “I sold that studio and moved to Memphis five years ago,” he says. “I put a little studio in a building in Memphis and started working with guys like Matt Ross-Spang, Will Sexton, George Sluppick, Jack [Oblivian] Yarber, Mark Edgar Stuart. We would just kind of hang out and do the same thing. So, that’s how the whole thing came together. There wasn’t any big plan.”

Also, he says, “I had been in production for about 10 years and hadn’t been engineering. I used this as an excuse to get my engineering chops back. It was really to go back in the studio and twist some knobs and do the engineering thing.”

Why did it take nine years to complete? “We did two songs, and then we wouldn’t do anything for six months. There was no urgency. I was producing and recording a lot of other records, running Fat Possum Records.

“About two years ago I said, ‘Well, I’ve got all these songs. Why don’t I do something with it?’ So, I reached out to Kerri Mahoney, a graphic designer, and said, ‘Let’s come up with a concept. I’ve got this idea — Just Leg It. People dancing on the front. And just a fun party record.’ So she came up with the design.”

The cover and selections evoke the ’60s, Watson says. “And it also ties into a whole tradition of instrumental music. It was really inspired by the Hi Records catalog of instrumental records.”

Watson didn’t just make up the album title. “All the titles on the record I just made up. Man, when I would go on trips — especially driving around small towns — I would see stuff to give me inspiration for a name and I’d jot it down. When I was putting it all together, I had a list of about 100 names, and I’d pick one and assign it to a song.

 “I can’t remember if I was in the Arkansas Delta or Mississippi Delta, but I saw a pawn shop that said, ‘We have machine guns.’ I thought, ‘That’s a good name for a song: Delta Machine Gun.’”

Watson currently is involved in recording gospel music at his Bible & Tire Recording Co. in Memphis. “We are approaching sacred soul or gospel music kind of in the way it would have been recorded in the ’60s and sounded in the ’60s — pretty stripped down, pretty raw.”

 Meanwhile, Watson is pleased with Just Leg It. “There’s something about improvising a song on the spot, capturing it in one or two takes, and that’s it.” 

Then there’s “the party aspect,” he says. “Something you can put on and not really think too much about it. It’s fun. You don’t have to sit there and analyze lyrics. You don’t have to think about this. 

“The songs are happy. A couple are dark, but for the most part, it’s a pretty happy and upbeat record.”   

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Music Record Reviews

Willie Farmer Keeps the Blues Running Like a V8 Ford

From the first few notes of the lead track, “Feel So Bad,” you know everything you need to about Willie Farmer’s 2019 release, The Man From the Hill (Big Legal Mess). The first epiphany comes from the guitar tone. Farmer’s amp exudes a wonderful crud, a dirty squawk that seems to boil up out of the ground itself, like crude. After a few volleys of on the strings to clear the air and put your mind in the zone, George Sluppick’s rock-solid drumming kicks in and we’re off, journeying through an album marked by the pitch-perfect, no nonsense production we’ve come to expect from Big Legal Mess.

People talk about garage rock a lot (too much?) these days, but this is true garage blues. That’s not to suggest it’s especially frenetic. Rather, from the tone alone, you can feel in your bones the scene of Farmer’s auto repair shop in Duck Hill, Mississippi. And Farmer’s playing also conveys both the rough hewn strength and the sensitivity one develops from growing up on a farm.
Aaron Greenhood

Willie Farmer

And that same sensitivity comes through in Farmer’s singing. It has echoes of his heroes, whom he first heard playing on WLAC out of Nashville as a youngster.  “That’s how I listened to Lightnin’ Hopkins, Howlin’ Wolf,” he has said. “That’s how I got my first album by Lightnin’ [the Fire Records LP Mojo Hand]. I got the address off the radio and they sent it.”

And yet Farmer’s voice has a vulnerability to it that marks it as his own. Yes, he has the bold, declarative howls of the bluesman, but it’s tempered with a plaintive catch that lends layers of meaning to every word he sings. His playing, too, is distinctive, with stronger echoes of the North Mississippi hill country than his influences would suggest. And his lyrics have an extra bite that undercut any blues cliches you may feel you’ve heard by now. As the funky “Fist Full of Dollars” kicks in, truly sounding like garage rock indeed, he seems to brag, “I’ve got a fist full of dollars.” But then he adds. “It just won’t do. I need real money! To see my way through…” Any musician or crafts-person working a trade will know exactly what he’s talking about.

There are some sonic surprises as well. “Fist Full of Dollars” is rounded out with matching harmonies from Liz Brasher, and the gentle, loping shuffle of “At the Meeting” is fleshed out with the harmonies of the Sensational Barnes Brothers, who take you straight to church like some lost track from the early Staple Singers.

To give away any more surprises would verge on dropping spoilers. Suffice it to say that this album is the perfect foil to the overproduced tracks of every genre that seem to flood the airwaves today. Take a break from all that, get yourself in a jalopy, and drive it on down to Willie Farmer’s garage.

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Music Music Blog

Hunt Sales, Ray Wylie Hubbard, & Carson McHone: Austin Pays Memphis a Sunday Visit

Everyone knows what a music hub Austin is, and how diverse its scene(s) can be. But fewer are hip to the ties that bind Austin and Memphis together. They go way back, and only seem to be getting stronger in recent years. Will Sexton moved here some years ago, and we now host Dale Watson as well, but they are only the most visible signs of the long standing networks connecting Memphis musicians with our Texan friends, and vice versa.

This weekend, we can feel, see, and hear those connections, as three Austin-area artists appear on the same day.

Carson McHone
For an early start to your weekend’s end, get thee to the Memphis Music Mansion before 7:00 pm. The historical “music inn” offers a characteristically intimate show with rising star Carson McHone, who comes to Memphis with Tim Regan’s endorsement. Regan, as most Flyer readers know, is in the band Snowglobe, though he himself is now an Austinite. When he joined Spiral Stairs at Growlers a year ago, McHone opened with duet performances of her emotionally bare songwriting and captivating voice. Now’s a chance to hear her solo, with her singing now front and center. With echoes of Gillian Welch, she has a unique ability to convey loss and longing.

Here’s an episode of Texas Music Scene TV that focuses on McHone’s songwriting. Get your tickets to the Memphis Music Mansion show soon, as seating is limited and only advance sales are offered.

Hunt Sales, Ray Wylie Hubbard, & Carson McHone: Austin Pays Memphis a Sunday Visit (2)

Ray Wylie Hubbard

Also hailing from (near) Austin is an old favorite of Memphis music lovers, Ray Wylie Hubbard. Hubbard, by the way, is a Carson McHone fan, saying that she “writes songs like her life depends on it.” That could be said of Hubbard himself, and he’s garnered many fans in this area, especially as he’s nurtured a more down and dirty approach to songwriting in the past decade or so. While he still brings a strong folk troubadour game, his fondness for North Mississippi blues also rings true, especially on tunes like “Jesse Mae,” his ode to Jesse Mae Hemphill. You can hear his version of Austin/Memphis cross fertilization Sunday as well, at the Levitt Shell’s Orion Free Music Concert Series. 

Hunt Sales
And finally, representing perhaps the most fruitful cross-pollination of all, there will be a rare performance by Hunt Sales at Bar DKDC Sunday night at 10:00. Relatively rare, that is: Lately, Sales has been showing up more and more. After making a name for himself playing with Iggy Pop (drumming on “Lust for Life”) and David Bowie (Tin Machine), among others, Sales has approached music in a more personal way of late. As he recently told Beale Street Caravan, “All I’ve been doing for all these years is sitting in rooms and writing music. Playing a gig here and there. I’m not one of these people that’s totally driven. Whether anyone hears it or not, that’s not why I do it. It’s all about the work.”

It was his friend Will Sexton who brought him here. “I’ve been working out of Memphis quite a bit this last year,” says Sales. “And Memphis reminds me of being a child. It takes me back to a time in my life when I was developing. Memphis has been great. Seriously. It’s been a new chapter of my life.”

As Art Edmaiston, who has been playing sax with Sales, explains, “Hunt met Bruce Watson (Fat Possum Records/Big Legal Mess) through Will Sexton while tracking at Bruce’s Delta Sonic Studio downtown. Bruce was so impressed with Hunt’s drumming that he offered Hunt a chance to return with his band and record a couple singles for Big Legal Mess. Well, Hunt showed up a couple weeks later and had something like six or seven tunes that were all popping, and he cut them all in one afternoon with his trio.”

But Sales, who is deeply grounded in powerful jazz drumming and old school R&B, wanted more than just a trio with his Austin cohorts, so he called up Edmaiston, Jim Spake (sax), and Pat Fusco (keys) to fill out the record. Edmaiston explains, “After keys were added, me and Jim show up and begin to lay down some ‘straight pipes on a Harley’-sounding duel saxophone parts, that we layered a few times until you’d think the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were actually Junior Walker, Arnett Cobb, Lee Allen and Big Jay McNeely! I mean, this stuff sounds big and wet and nasty….And Hunt had all the ideas for the parts. He dictated them exactly to Spake and myself, and boom – here it is.”

Edmaiston is rather excited by the new record, “The rhythm tracks range from a Link Wray vibe to something Little Richard would lay down if he had two Marshall Stacks. It’s rock and roll from the hip and hits you in your heart while it’s kicking you in the ass. We had a ball! Bruce loved it so much, he invited Hunt back to cut some more tunes and make a full length record.”

Sales emphasized to Beale Street Caravan that his latest excursions to Memphis have been revelatory. “The music is great, I make great music there. I run into great musicians. The people there are sincere. The diversity of Memphis has got soul. Memphis has got soul, deep. Just send me to Memphis and put some of that rub on that chicken there, and put me in the studio or on a live gig with some of them great musicians. And I am in heaven.”

Austin comes to Memphis on June 24: Carson McHone plays the Memphis Music Mansion at 7:00. Ray Wylie Hubbard plays the Levitt Shell at 7:30. And Hunt Sales plays Bar DKDC, with soul-jazz openers L.A.P.D., starting at 10:00.