The Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir - Saint Hubert

Bitrate:320K/s
Year:2003
Time:38:26 
Size:88,5 MB 
Label:S.A.P. Recordings 
Styles:Blues/Delta Blues/Dirty Blues 
Art:Front 

Tracks Listing:
 1. Saint Hubert - 2:39
 2. Cool Drink of Water - 4:59
 3. Motherless Child - 2:55
 4. Don't We All - 3:53
 5. Stop and Listen - 3:27
 6. Neighbourhood Butcher - 3:22
 7. They Can Make It Rain Bombs - 4:36
 8. Heart's Not In It - 4:08
 9. One Sin - 2:25
10. Fourteen Faces - 2:44
11. Rolling Home - 3:12

Musicians:
Bob Keelaghan - guitars and vocals;
Judd Palmer - banjo, low slide guitar, harmonica, and vocals;
Vladimir Sobolewski - upright bass;
Peter Balkwill - drums.

They loved the blues, but hated its popular, generic practitioners. It was the motivating factor for the Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir. That, and Judd Palmer’s and drummer Pete Balkwill’s acceptance of an opening slot for Canadian bluesman Lester Quitzau despite not having a band. You see, Palmer played slide guitar in Calgary country-folk band Great Uncle Bull. They would have made a good opener, but they broke up. He talked bassist and fellow Bullsman Vladimir Sobolewski into doing the gig. Sobolewski, in turn, called hotshot guitarist Bob Keelaghan from punk-blues-unsane-abilly combo The Puritans, knowing he shared Palmer’s love for early blues and country. Keelaghan wasn’t busy because The Puritans just broke up, too. Sobolewski knew this because he also played in The Puritans. In one week with three rehearsals, they put together a set and played the gig in January of 2001. Then people kept asking them to play.
The Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir’s raucous, firebrand interpretations of pre-WW II acoustic blues and country struck a chord with Calgarian audiences. The roots crowd liked them for their reverence for the musical sources minus the obvious cliches of many modern interpreters. But rock audiences ate up their sets, too. The Agnostics managed to translate and amplify the energy of early Skip James and Son House, transcending the lo-fidelity of a scratchy 78, and reminding young listeners why this music mutated into rock’n’roll.
Balkwill left the band in the first year of its existence and was replaced by Jason Woolley. In 2003 that line-up recorded the Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir debut, St. Hubert, in a friend’s house in Canmore. It was cut, mostly, live off the floor. The ingredients were fierce and striking: Palmer’s gutteral vocals, vicious, downtuned, slide guitar, and ragged-but-right banjo; Keelaghan’s equally gravelly vocals, frenetic finger-picking, and cutting lead guitar; Sobolewski’s pounding upright bass; and Woolley’s clanging drum and scrap metal kit. The band was taken by surprise when the disc started getting airplay across Canada on campus radio stations and the first pressing sold out. Gig offers started coming in from festivals across Canada. The Agnostics were no longer Calgary’s secret.

Saint Hubert

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