The Bottoms Up Blues Gang - Handle It

Bitrate:320K/s
Year:2010
Time:47:46 
Size:110,3 MB 
Label:Self-Released 
Styles:Blues/St.Louis Blues/New Orleans Blues 
Art:Front 

Tracks Listing:
 1. South Broadway Blues - 3:15
 2. First of May - 3:37
 3. New World Blues - 5:28
 4. More I Get, The Less I Got - 4:02
 5. Lover Foe - 3:56
 6. If Only - 6:29
 7. Show Your Love - 3:41
 8. Quick Fix for Livin' - 6:13
 9. Stop Tellin' Me What to Do - 4:37
10. Drown in My Own Tears - 6:23

This is the third album for this St. Louis-based band. I really like the St. Louis-New Orleans styled music, with a good brass section and honky-tonk approach to their music. They tour heavily, about 225 shows a year, with 1/3 at home, 1/3 in the Big Easy and the last third across the country. The official “band” is just Kari Liston and Jeremy Segal-Moss. They share vocal duties while Kari does kazoo, whistle and percussion and Jeremy plays guitar. Fifteen other artists share the studio with them on bass, harp, piano, guitar, percussion, organ, and various horn section instruments. All the songs but one are original and show their skills in songwriting.Kari’s vocals are down home and authentic. She has a great, nasal drawl and vocal quality that makes her singing evocative and interesting. She is gritty and earthy, and can be sexy and sultry or just in your face and bold; I really enjoyed listening to her! Jeremy fills in here and there; it is mostly Kari’s “show” fronting the band vocally. “Lover Foe” is one cut where they share the vocals and the duet sounds like something you’d hear on a porch in Mississippi or Louisiana, with both of them trading off and singing together and then letting Adam Andrews do his dirty work on the harp. The three of them give us a very real and guttural performance that could be today or 100 years ago but good nonetheless.They open the discs with “South Broadway Blues”, and by the time the song is over you know you are in for an old time treat. Kari sings and whistles as Jeremy play guitar, Matt Murdick strokes the keys and Dawn Weber plays trumpet. It blends well and sets the stage for 9 more interesting cuts. Kari opens the next with her kazoo as Murdick bounces up and down the keyboard. “First of May” is another great cut, this time with Jak Jurzak on tuba, Charlie Halloran on trombone, and Aurora Nealand on soprano sax. It sounds complex, balanced and very cool in a New Orleans brassy sort of way; the sax really “sells” the overall sound of the song. They only use a bass (upright or electric) on half of the tracks, but Joey Glynn and Sharon Foehner/Tom Maloney respectively do a great job adding to the mix on songs like “New World Blues” and the cover, Ray Charles’ “Drown in My Own Tears”. The Hammond B3 on track 4 by Nathan Hershey along with the trumpet and added percussion and guitar (Joe Meyer and Tony Esterly) gives the cut a “bigness” the other tracks don’t have- it fills in and grabs you by the throat and says, “I’m here!” Very well done! The only person I did not mention was Eric McSpadden who adds his harp on one track, “New World Blues”; Andrews is featured on harp as noted and on 4 other cuts and both are excellent. Reviewer Steve Jones is secretary of the Crossroads Blues Society. 

Handle It
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