Shawn Pittman and Jay Moeller - Straight Blues From Crooked Fools

Bitrate: 320K/s
Year: 2020
Time: 40:41 
Size: 93,4 MB 
Label: 2517164 Records DK
Styles: Blues/Blues Rock
Art: Front 

Tracks Listing:
 1. Rattlesnakes - 2:03
 2. Everybody Wants to Know - 4:02
 3. Smarten Up Baby - 3:29
 4. The Set Up - 3:35
 5. Can't Get Along with You - 2:59
 6. It Don't Take Too Much - 3:41
 7. Hit the Road Jack - 1:02
 8. Dangerous Woman - 3:05
 9. Stroll Out West - 3:31
10. Blue Diamond - 1:15
11. Talk Didn't Do No Good - 2:38
12. Things You Stole - 2:40
13. Forget About You - 2:05
14. Woman Don't Lie - 4:27

Shawn Pittman and Jay Moeller’s friendship stretches back more than two decades. While still in his teens, Pittman moved from Norman, Oklahoma to Texas, to immerse himself in the thriving blues scene in Dallas, where he would work with Sam Myers, Hash Brown, Mike Morgan, and others. Around 1995, Paul Size (The Red Devils) introduced him to Moeller, a native of the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Pittman recalls the first time he heard Jay, at Schooner’s, in Dallas: “Jay throws down a shuffle in a way that spoils you. I had never heard anyone play with that intensity and power. It dang near scared the heck out of me!” The two formed a band in which they played together briefly before Jay moved to Austin. Moeller recalls, “We hit it off well. We’ve spent some of the funniest, and worst, moments in life together. We’re brothers in that! Shawn’s great. He’s way more real and convincing than most folks.” Johnny, who also appears on Everybody Wants to Know, is the other Moeller brother. Pittman met him on the day he arrived in Austin. “I showed up on his doorstep about 7 a.m., and he was just as nice to me then as he is now. We have had some great adventures! I love Johnny’s guitar playing – his tone, timing, and chordal knowledge separate him from most players. He and Jay have been doing this, and doing it well, since they were kids.”  In the years following those early days, Jay has performed or recorded with seemingly every musician in Austin and many from elsewhere, including Lou Ann Barton, Lazy Lester, Charlie Crockett, and Gary Clark Jr., in addition to his work in The Moeller Brothers, and was a member of The Fabulous Thunderbirds for roughly a decade (approximately 2005-2015). Pittman, who has worked with Susan Tedeschi and Stevie Ray Vaughan’s rhythm section Double Trouble, has recorded 11 acclaimed solo albums, most recently Backslidin’ Again in 2015. Shawn and Jay have continued to play together off and on, in live performances and on recordings, most visibly on the Shawn Pittman – Moeller Brothers collaboration, Triple Troubles, released in 2010. In many respects, then, Everybody Wants to Know is the latest in a long and fruitful working relationship between two friends. In other meaningful ways, however, Everybody Wants to Know is a new beginning for both men. Pittman’s career has been marked by several self-imposed breaks from the music business. During the most recent, which lasted about five years, he returned to Oklahoma, completed a degree, and found through experience that he isn’t well-suited for a career in long-distance trucking, customer service, or IT. His heart is in making music, and he determined to get back to it in 2017. Moeller was taking steps to begin a career as a front man, by writing, singing, and recording an album of originals, when Shawn contacted him to let him know he was ready to play again. Jay had also been working on some cover tunes, so splitting the vocals on a new record seemed like a good idea to both men. Johnny was enlisted to add a second guitar, and the project moved forward. Recording took place in Austin’s Alnico Studio, with owner Nico Leophonte (a former Pittman bandmate) at the controls. Shawn says, “The session was easy. When we were finally all there in the studio, I kept thinking how grateful I was to be playing with these fellas. I felt like I had gotten out of prison or something!” Jay: “We wanted to make a somewhat straight-up blues record. We can play that and be us. Shawn and I have great chemistry. It sparked right back up. Add Johnny, with whom we have the same thing, and POW!” “Somewhat straight-up” is an apt description of the music, which ranges from crisp shuffles to rumbas, funk, R&B, and apocalyptically heavy grooves. Moeller makes a convincing debut at the microphone, applying his fervent, edgy vocals to his own imaginative, gritty “Things You Stole,” and to songs from Juke Boy Bonner, Junior Parker, and J.B. Lenoir. Pittman taps Frankie Lee Sims, Luther “Snake Boy” Johnson, and his own frequent collaborators, Bracken Hale and Lewis Dickson, to present an authentic but certainly stylized take on Texas and Louisiana blues and rock and roll. Anyone who has heard Triple Troubles will have an idea of what to expect: raw blues, informed by tradition but subject to sonic explorations, performed with telepathically tight interplay and barely-contained wildness. Several instrumentals, ranging from the familiar to the unpredictable, really demonstrate this aspect of the Pittman-Moeller collaboration. Everybody Wants to Know makes a bold statement, and announces that Jay Moeller and Shawn Pittman belong in the first rank of contemporary blues artists. TOM HYSLOP Contributing Editor, Blues Music Magazine/ 

Straight Blues From Crooked Fools