How can you not like a concept swamp-blues album about two giant-sized twins separated at birth, one of whom becomes a criminal, the other a traveling Preacher. When their paths cross again they recognize each other and start off on a debauched romp through Louisiana. Forget the album, where is the damn movie?
While we wait at least we have the soundtrack complete with several tracks that are just pieces of conversation designed to bridge the story between the various tracks, such as the encounter with a ghostly Elvis in a lavatory that leads in to ‘Visit from the King?’. I told you that you had to like this album.
The music is a mixture of laid-back blues with a hint of jazz, gospel, rock and punk. An intoxicating mixture that speaks to some pretty base instincts, and will make you want to wallow in, rather than merely listen to, this CD. Everything is played with a fairly broad sense of humour (I insist on that spelling), but there is also some genuine musical talent on display here. There are three musicians, Evan Waller on guitar, Joe Skinner on Drums and Doug Bare providing vocals, keyboards and programming. Between them they pull out a thick rich sound that will seem to slip out of your stereo’s speakers like raw honey.
The first song is ‘Crawdaddy-O’ a perfect piece of fake horn lead swamp-blues that sets an excellent example for the rest of the album to follow. Mr. Bare seems to have a huge voice that can slide easily between soulfully blues to over the top gospel preacher with ease. To be honest if you try to imagine the person behind the voice it would almost certainly not be a huge, white, bald guy who looks like he just escaped a hardcore wrestling match. What was that about ‘Books and Covers’ again?
Talking about image versus reality the front cover is an almost perfect creation; a tattooed, beautiful, lingered Asian American lies with cigar in hand removing the money from a wallet while in the background we see the sleeping hairy form of the not-so-reverend P.P Pettibone. Turn the CD booklet over and we get another seductive image of the lady of dubious virtue, only this time she is holding a cross whilst reading a Bible, having used the money as bookmarks. Oh and the insert identifies this lady as Mary Jane Parker, now I may be wrong but I am pretty sure that is the name of Mrs. Spiderman.
The cover like the conversation tracks help develop a real sense of place and concept for this album, the kind of attention to detail that pull it over the top from merely being a novel little piece of fluff into being a CD worthy of repeated listening. On top of the details are some pretty decent blues tracks as well. ‘Dine and Dash’, ‘Lost in Mississippi’, ‘Collection Plate Shuffle’ and ‘Tittie Bar’ are straightforward blues, each with a distinct personality fitted atop standard rhythms. ‘Carnal de Mardi Gras’, ‘2-Time Lover’ and the delightfully titled ‘Moshing for Jesus’ are more experimental plays on a theme. They are all excellent tracks though, tracks that play equally well as either as music you are concentrating on, or as evocative background music. A fact so apparent even MTV could appreciate it, having licensed the CD wholesale to use on ‘The Real World’.
So before everyone else finds out why don’t you treat yourself to a personal performance by Louisiana’s greatest living preacher, the great P.P Pettibones, by buying this CD. Oh and if anyone in Hollywood is interested in making the movie, have your people call my people.

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