Cheap Seasick Steve Artist

The mysterious {|Seasick Steve|} does indeed offer a brand of cheap {|juke joint blues|} on this album. Not that it's badly recorded at all; it's just rather skeletal and rough, {|Steve|} fronting a core trio of himself on electric guitar, {|Mr. Joe ... Read more

The mysterious {|Seasick Steve|} does indeed offer a brand of cheap {|juke joint blues|} on this album. Not that it's badly recorded at all; it's just rather skeletal and rough, {|Steve|} fronting a core trio of himself on electric guitar, {|Mr. Joe H.|} on stand-up bass, and {|Mr. Kai C.|} on drums. In the 1990s and early 21st century, this is the kind of raw {|juke joint|} stuff that underwent a revival, or at least was recorded far more often than it had been, both by oldsters and youngsters. {|Seasick Steve|}'s somewhere in the middle of that age range, and while what he devises is acceptable and certainly gritty, it would have been more ear-catching had it come out ten years or so earlier, before other people did similar stuff (and sometimes did it better). The songs are basic, repetitive, and slightly grungy, {|Steve|} singing in a lived-in, scratchy, at times mumbly voice that might slightly remind you of {|Tom Waits|} and {|Dr. John|} at times, though it's not really that close to either of them. The program's interrupted by a couple of rambling {|spoken|} monologues about the hard-living hobo life, and the songs tend to ramble on without saying much as well. The result is a record that's at once idiosyncratically down-home and kind of forgettable, somewhat akin to listening to the semi-improvised busking of a Mississippi {|electric blues|} trio, playing for passerby waiting on the platform for the next train out of town. ~ Richie Unterberger Less