Bob Andrews "Shotgun" (4.5*)

As someone with a long term interest in The Rumour, Graham Parker’s one-time backing band (their three albums on their own, Max, Frogs Sprouts Clogs and Krauts and Purity Of Essence occupy a significant place in Hughesy’s list of criminally underrated albums) who also worked as the Stiff Records house band I really should have done a better job of following the individual members of a mighty fine outfit over the thirty years since they broke up in 1981.

Keyboard player Bob Andrews was the first to fly the coop, splitting in 1979 and subsequently absent from Purity Of Essence and has gone on to play on over a thousand recordings with engineering and production credits for more than fifty artists, facts I was totally unaware of until a review of this album on the Burning Wood blog had me rocking over to iTunes to grab a copy.

Twenty years ago he ended up settling in New Orleans, and has, by all accounts, become a fixture in the Crescent City music scene with a regular gig at Dos Jefes Uptown Cigar Bar at 5535 Tchoupitoulas Street, frequent appearances on the local community radio station (WWOZ)and at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. He has, along the way, acted as a side man for, among others, John Mooney, Jumpin' Johnny Sansone and Marva Wright and played several gigs with Allen Toussaint.

This album, inspired by a book of the same name about the unique shotgun architecture of New Orleans, Marigny and Bywater neighborhoods, isn’t quite the New Orleans extravaganza you might expect, although it does feature its share of New Orleans identities. Apart from Hughesy’s recent new favourite Alex McMurray on guitar, and Johnny Sansone on harmonica there’s one of Jon Cleary's Absolute Monster Gentlemen (Cornell Williams) on bass, the New Orleans Blues Department’s Red Priest on guitar, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band’ s Jermal Watson on drums and up and coming saxophonist Calvin Johnson. Andrews handles keyboard and vocal duties, and contributes some guitar for good measure.

So, what’s it all about?

You’re looking, believe it or not, at a musical rendering of the adventures of Guzzard and Mr. Poo, New Orleans lyricist/author and healthcare consultant Robin Hunn’s black Labradors. The illustrated book sets the song lyrics that recount two dogs’ antics beside photographs of the Marigny and Bywater neighbourhoods with additional graphic elements from Atom Davis.

Hunn, who formed a company (RKR-CB Productions) to promote New Orleans music and help musicians delivered the set of lyrics to Andrews, who came up with the tunes, and came up with the photographs. The saga of Guzzard and Mr. Poo will continue with another book/CD combo, Invisible Love, described as edgier and more adventurous

Musically, the eleven tracks deliver a tasty fusion of Andrews’ Brinsley Schwarz and The Rumour pub rock roots and New Orleans blues and funk, deliberately looking to put the musicians in places they don’t normally go.

The title track kicks things off nicely with a Brinsley Schwarz groove, which then falls comfortably into a bit of salacious funk on Man In The Man Position and additional raunch included on Put Out or Shut Up (no explanations necessary there, folks). That’s also the case with I Knew It Was Wrong But I Did It Anyway though it’s not immediately evident we’re talking canine rather than human misbehaviour. Black Alligators mines a a dirty little New Orleans groove with tasty harp from Johnny Sansone, while Local Lover, Doghouse, Entitled to Love and Hit Me With A Bus choogle along merrily. Around the Corner and Only Lovers Do wind things up nicely, and the whole exercise hangs together rather nicely even without the book which was, I must admit, a disappointment when it arrived.

While there are language advisory issues with some tracks the rest of them would have been getting high rotation if I was still presenting on the local airwaves which is, I think, about as high a recommendation as I’m able to deliver. There’s a raffish charm that runs through the album that sufficed to have the sequel Invisible Love downloaded as soon as it was sighted on the horizon.

Johnny Sansone "The Lord Is Waiting the Devil Is Too" (4*)

Here's one firmly in the less is more school of record production. Recorded live in the studio, with a very basic lineup (Sansone on chromatic and diatonic harmonicas and vocals, producer Anders Osborne on guitar with Galactic drummer Stanton Moore pounding the skins), The Lord Is Waiting the Devil Is Too apparently comes in the wake of a broken marriage and delivers some of the best overdriven blues I’ve heard in quite a while.

The pattern’s set from the start of Sinking Ship, four minutes of impassioned vocals, great globs of overamped harp and a guitar riff that probably doesn’t move out of the red zone on the old VU meters. The harp-dominant instrumental Corn Whiskey repeats the formula, though with the guitar dropped down in the mix, and gives a thematic intro to the gritty vocal on Down, with its meet me at the bottom because that’s where I’m gone chorus, and the issues related to homelessness that get done over in the darkly moody Invisible, with the backing dropped right back and Sansone’s voice and harp front and centre.

The casual listener isn’t, of course, going to know how much real life is reflected in the lyrical content, but there’s no doubt what we've got here is the sound of a man howling his anger, despair and frustration and blowing the hell out of the harp to vent just a little bit more. The side men are locked right into the same mode, Moore’s drums pounding away in the introduction to Johnny And Janie, a tale of betrayal and love gone down the gurgler with Osborne rumbling away down below.

Requests to Forget about You Know Who and questions like Where’s Your Heart? slot into that breakup scenario well, while The Lord Is Waiting the Devil Is Too comes across as a timely reminder that you need to make the right choice when decision time rolls around.

And since the protagonist has no intention of remaining in the vicinity Without Love, it seems fairly logical the final track should be titled Leavin’ and closes things out with a not quite slow drag instrumental. Last time around on my way out the door sort of territory.

In the wake of three and a half million well I woke up this mornings, the album serves as a reminder that heartache and inner turmoil were, after all, the wellsprings the blues came from. Sansone’s delivery, a gritty, stripped down, straight from the heart yowl of anguish, the stripped-down trio format producer Osborne apparently insisted on, and the live in the studio approach combine to deliver something that isn’t exactly easy listening but works just fine with the volume cranked and a therapeutic beverage at hand.

And the harp work, while it’s not quite Magic Dick on the lickin’ stick (the J. Geils Band’s harp man has long been Hughesy’s yardstick of harmonica virtuosity) is tasty enough to have me eyeing Sansone’s back catalogue, which definitely seems worth investigating.