Delta By The Beach – The Single Of The Month
C Street Records – 2023
12 tracks; 41 minutes
Delta By The Beach, as the name suggests, play Delta-influenced blues from their base in California. The band is led by Doc Ventura who writes most of the material and handles vocals and baritone guitar, aided by Milo Sledge on guitar/harp and drummer Eddie Layman. Although a trio the instrumentation is varied with a number of guests also adding to the musical palette. The three guys got together for what was intended as a single event, but rehearsals showed that they enjoyed playing together, the problem being that there was nowhere to play at the time due to Covid. The concept of recording a track each month and streaming it was enormously successful and here we have the songs from that project united into one album, consisting of those twelve tracks, released monthly through 2021.
The album is in chronological order of the singles’ releases, so we start in February 2021 with the trio in Chicago mood, Doc’s gruff vocals adding to the Howling Wolf vibe of “You Did A Bad Deed”. The pace drops for “1000 Tears”, echoey guitar and vocals, Doc’s baritone guitar doing everything that a conventional bass would do and Milo adding some tough picking and a little harp too. Mandolin player James Schulfer joins in on “How Do You Treat Me Like You Do”, a stop-start rhythm with harp and mandolin featured, while “Tired Of My Luck” goes back to the trio format, Milo playing some varied stuff over a steady rhythm; Doc plays harp on this one, sounding rather distant and thin in the mix.
We reach the June single and alto sax is added to “Need Your Squeezin’” by Robert Kyle, Milo on slide over a slinky rhythm, a track that adds an element of funk to the proceedings. “Give Me Back My Tears” brings the distant-sounding harp back over a chugging blues in which Doc is clearly unhappy that his girl has left him and “Baby You Got What I Need” has the loping rhythms of a Jimmy Reed song with a noticeably clearer vocal from Doc, making you wonder if some of the earlier tracks employed some distortion on the vocals. “You Made A Mistake” has slide and acoustic guitar on an uptempo country blues.
The final tracks cover October – December. “Delta By The Beach” is a stripped-back tribute to the band’s coastal base with guest Flattop Tom on the harp, David Gorospe’s organ adds a gospel feel to the slow-boiling “Wanted Man” and “She Did It” builds up a good head of steam. The band clearly felt that the album would not be complete without a Christmas song and give us the cheerful, upbeat “Very Best Christmas This Year”.
The album presents a record of a laudable project over 2021 which was surely well appreciated by listeners and viewers in a year when everyone needed some cheer.
