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Seasick Steve - Dog House Music (2006)

Album details

Label: Bronzerat BR04   Ref#: blues-0081
Date: 2006   Category: blues
Length: 54:19    
Format: CD   Record Store Day:  
Audio: Stereo   Album Collection Title:  
Genre: Blues   Album Collection Disc Nbr:  

Notes/Reviews

Seasick Steve is Steve Wold, a moustachioed American bluesman who, on Dog House Music, plays American roots music with the tight-belt economy and authentic spirit of the genre's originators (there's a lineage here, too – Steve was taught his first chords by Delta bluesman KC Douglas). A long-term street-dweller, Wold's instrumentation is simplistic in the extreme: a three-stringed trance guitar, a slide instrument known as 'the one-stringed diddy-bo', and the Mississippi Drum Machine, a wooden box that provides the most rudimentary percussion. In the true blues spirit, Seasick Steve sings his life. For an autobiography of sorts, head for 'Dog House Boogie', a phlegmatic timeline that commences at the age of four with his parent's divorce, and rambles off through several decades of vagrant living and downhome manners. 'Hobo Low' is perhaps the sharpest, best distilled take on Steve's drifter philosophy, his voice raising to quivering, booming peaks over sparse stabs of blues guitar. 'Save Me', meanwhile, sees the diddy-bo make an appearance – a taut, trembling twang that resembles an amplified rubber band. If this review makes Dog House Music sound bare-bones, well, it is – but everyone from blues aficionados to White Stripes fans should find something to love here. --Louis Pattison

Songs/Tracks

1.   Yellow Dog  1:00
2.   Things Go Up  3:34
3.   Cut My Wings  3:23
4.   Fallen Off A Rock  4:36
5.   Dog House Boogie  3:31
6.   Save Me  2:15
7.   Hobo Low  3:49
8.   Shirly Lov  3:37
9.   My Donny  4:02
10.   The Dead Song  3:33
11.   Last Po' Man  4:08
12.   Salem Blues  3:25
13.   I'm Gone  13:21

Recording/Credits

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