Eddie 9V – Capricorn
Ruf Records RUF 1301
11 songs – 36 minutes
It’s not often that anyone fulfills a lifelong dream – let alone recording an album at one of the most important studios in the history of American music. But that’s exactly what Eddie 9V, one of the most distinctive voices in the world of soul-blues, achieved with this disc, which was captured at the former Capricorn Records and delivers a feel that will put a smile on the face of anyone old enough to have lived through that era.
Eddie – aka Brooks Mason – is truly an old soul in a young body, a melismatic tenor and multi-instrumentalist who’s held in the same light by critics as his fellow Atlanta native and his childhood idol, Sean Costello, the two-time Blues Blast Music Awards honoree and five-time BMA nominee who left us at age 28 more than a decade ago. And, like Eddie’s stage name suggests, his performances are electrifying.
Currently in his mid-20s, Eddie grew up adoring the music captured decades before his birth in Macon – albums by the Allman Brothers, Percy Sledge, Wet Willie, Delbert McClinton, Otis Redding, James Brown and many others. At the time, however, recording there was a fantasy because the studio had been abandoned since the label’s demise in 1983. Fortunately for music lovers everywhere, however, that changed in the early 2010s when the good folks at Mercer University took up the cause to revitalize it, a feat they along with a consortium of three different foundations finally accomplished in 2019.
Finally, Eddie got his chance – and this sensational CD is the result.
This disc was produced by Eddie’s brother, Lane Kelly, who co-wrote the nine originals with another sibling, Brooks Kelly. Eddie 9V handles vocals and guitar throughout and switches off on bass with Lane throughout and/or handles drums on six of the 11 tracks. Chad Mason and Spencer Pope provide keyboards in a lineup that also includes Noah Sills, Daniel Wytanis and Justin Golding on horns, Cody Matlock and Dusty McCook on six-string, Aaron Hambrick and Tony Erice on percussion and Leah Bell Faser and Chelsea Shag on backup vocals.
“Beg Borrow and Steal,” opens the action with Eddie vowing to do anything necessary to track down and win the hand of the woman who previously professed her love for him and he’d found himself incapable of expressing his adoration back. Deeply soulful and as blue as can be, it yields to the funky “Yella Alligator.” Delivered from the amphibian’s perspective, it praises the virtue of life in bayou instead of the city, where everyone’s living a lie.
The feel continues with a cover of “’Bout to Make Me Leave Home.” It’s a welcome reworking of a 1977 hit for Bonnie Raitt that was penned by Hi Records tunesmith-turned-minister Earl Randle, and problems in romance continue in the original, “Are We Through,” in which Eddie discovers his lady cheating with another man.
The tempo quickens and theme continues in “How Long” before “It’s Going Down” announces their relationship has finally come to an end. Four months later, the woman’s already hooked up with the new guy and Eddie’s still looking back in remorse and hanging on to the morsels of what she left behind in “Tryin’ to Get By.” The mood finally brightens with a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Down Along the Cove,” which celebrates meeting up with a true love at the waterside.
Built on the framework of an old gospel number, “Mary Don’t You Weep” adopts a thoroughly modern, improvised feel as it takes listeners to church before old feelings resurface in “Missouri” a plaintive request by the singer to return to the place he found his “used to be” – and a thousand miles away from his lady’s door and yelling to the heavens: “Let me in!” The disc closes with the aptly titled “I’m Lonely,” which expresses sorrow and regret but still looks forward to the time of a reunion because “I love you just as much as when I kissed you that first day.”
Sure, Capricorn’s a roller coaster with heartbreak at every dip of the ride, but for blues lovers, it’s definitely a trip you’ll take over and over again. Eddie 9V’s a treasure, and this CD is, too!
