Memphis Sheiks

January 11 - 18, 1 9 9 6

*** Memphis Sheiks

SLOW-COOKED PIG MEAT

(Inside Sounds)

Your first impression of Delta Joe Saunders (the guitar and vocalist half of the Sheiks) is of a rough-edged, less presentable version of Providence's folk-bluesman Paul Geremia. But instead of the wailing accompaniment of Howard Armstrong's low and lovely violin on Geremia's latest CD, Saunders's collaborator is the shrill, urgent cry of Robert Nighthawk II's harmonica. A harp blower carrying on the name of the original guitar picker, Nighthawk II (formerly of the Wampus Cats) uses tube amps and Little Walter's taut, coasting notes to supply Saunders's lazy chords with the hollow, haunting background of an empty mansion in a Faulkner novel.

Songs like "Soda Water John" and "When I Hear My Old Used-To-Be's Name" reinvent the narratives of rural Southern lifestyles that were the pith of Big Bill Broonzy's traditional blues truisms. "Soda Water John" actually deviates from the rhyming 12-bar, taking on a stomp that hints at some kinship between rockabilly and Piedmont blues. Delta Joe's women don't last long ("Well, we were married on a Wednesday, was divorced by Friday noon"), and his drinking, like any good Southern man's, is well-logged -- all of which Joe spins into careless, laughable con man's fables.

-- Marc Levy