We here at Indie Monkey were huge fans of the offbeat concept album ‘The further adventures of Reverend P.P Pettibone’s Traveling Tent Revival’. A raucous tale of drink, sex and religion wrapped around an album that borrowed liberally from blues, jazz, gospel and anything else it could lay its hands on. If you want to know more then check out our review here.
So when it was time for Limeygit to sit down and write a review for the first time in months, his hands felt into the pile of CDs awaiting review and drawn by some mystic sense pulled the second album from ‘Funky Blues Messiahs’ from the horde. Like its predecessor it features a sexy young thing on the cover. Also like its predecessor it features occasional verbal snippets to help continue the story along, and like its predecessor it is a damn fine album.
In the world of films it is rare for a sequel to be as good as, or even better than, the original. It does happen though - The Godfather 1 & 2 being the obvious example. ‘Funky Blues Messiahs’ bring that rare tradition into their ‘soundtracks to movies never made’. ‘Lost in Mississippi’ settles into a smoother groove than ‘The further adventures...’, there is less comedy, more soul and considerably stronger songwriting on display.
'Funky Blues Messiahs' are Doug Bare on vocals, keys and bass and Joe Skinner providing the drums and other percussions. Joining them are over a dozen musicians and vocalists. They combine to brink us sixteen tracks - twelve if you discount the vocal snippets. Each track is rock solid, drawing from the varying wells of American music, in particular African-American music, whether it be gospel, soul, jazz or of course Blues, swampy and otherwise.
The story, continued from the debut, follows the adventures in Southern America of a very unique religious man and his recently re-discovered brother. One is a man of God, with less than holy appetites while the other is a naïve criminal happy to follow his brother. You know if Hollywood was this interesting maybe this site would be ‘Film Monkey’ or something. It of course is not, so we just have to use albums like this to project interesting movies behind our own eyelids.
If you can’t find something to like on this album then you really need to start your musical education again from scratch, and this album would be as good as anyplace to begin. Also I would like to take a second to thank 'Funky Blues Messiahs' for giving this site a shout out in the liner notes of this CD. Other bands take notice; maybe if you thank us, your next album will be as damn enjoyable as this. I doubt it though.

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