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WHICH WAY IS TEXAS?
(BULLSEYE BLUES/ROUNDER)
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Dallas-based guitarist Anson Funderburgh mines solid Chicago and Texas blues sounds as if rock and roll had never happened, and nothing changes on the disc that marks his 25th year in the recording business. Years ago he hooked up with Sam Myers, a fine singer and straightforward harp player from Mississippi who is a generation older, and it has proven a great musical match: with his rich, slightly phlegmatic vocals, Myers animates familiar-sounding tunes better and more believably than more famous singers on the circuit. Rockets’ discs usually mix some well-deserving chestnuts, in this case B.B. King’s "The Jungle" and a track by Sonny Boy Williamson, with originals from the same musical bag. As a result, there’s not much to distinguish one session from another, even if they were made 10 years apart. The only new wrinkle here is that Funderburgh takes his first, very acceptable, passes at vocals on two tunes. His finest contribution, though, is an economical style of playing: tasty, and hard-edged if decidedly not flashy, it ranks him up there with folks like Duke Robillard, Texan Jimmy Vaughan, and L.A.’s Kid Ramos as white boys who play the hell out of the old blues.
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