Farmhand – Long Hollow Blues
Self-produced as digital download
www.facebook.com/geoff.newhall
12 songs – 33 minutes
It’s always good advice not to judge a book by its cover, and the same holds true for this collection of tunes. Despite the pastoral image you see accompanying these words and despite being based in Nashville, Farmhand is a collection of a handful of the top talents in Music City, and the tunes they deliver are not laid-back country. They’re original, contemporary blues and blues-rock.
The unit consists of vocalist/harp player/rhythm guitarist Richard Fleming, a Blues Music Award-nominated tunesmith whose creations have been recorded by Buddy Guy, James Cotton, Tommy Castro and a host of others, drummer/vocalist Jimi Foglesong and bassist Geoff Newhall. They chose their name because the project came together on a farm in the Nashville suburbs.
An all-original set, it was engineered, mixed and mastered by Michael Saint-Leon at Switchyard Studio in the city. Lead shares lead guitar duties with Jamie Potterbaum and Dan Pearson. And Grammy winning drummer/producer Tom Hambridge adds his voice to one cut, too.
A driving guitar line from Potterbaum kicks off the boogie “I’m Not Complaining,” which celebrates the fact that “the way women dress these days shows a lot of skin.” The sight makes the unidentified singer’s “blood to rise.” And he’s not complaining about an interlude in an airport lounge, where a gal “made me join her mile-high club. The tempo slows to a slow shuffle for “Worthy.” It’s an interesting number in which the singer has doubts about his own worth to his lady while revealing doubts about her, too.
The mood brightens and sound intensifies with the two-four shuffle “I Still Have Dreams,” which describes reveries about the vocalist’s first girlfriend, including the way she walked with a pony tail and even the color of her toenails – along with memories of almost going to war with her GI dad. The dark “Fresh Out” uses bare-pantry images to describe the loss of a lady before “There’s Gonna Be Trouble” predicts problems because a lady’s coming on to the married vocalist. He fears that if he has one more drink, all will be lost.
The boogie “Tractor Woman” is up next, describing a girlfriend who lives “across the county line where moonshine is made” – and she’s “no powderpuff…she’s so tough” before the percussive “Clean” finds the singer “lead and mean” after cleansing himself of the bad habits that caused trouble in the past. The theme continues in the medium-slow but intense “Didn’t Mean to Do It” before yielding to the rapid-fire “Tried to Tell You,” which finds a lady having regrets about marrying her man.
The funk kicks in for “That Hit a Nerve” in which the singer reveals that “a trash-talking woman made a monkey out of me” before the band serves up a warning about drinking too much in “Underground” and finishing with “Can’t Live with Her” despite admitting he can’t live without her, too.
There’s a lot to love about this one. Every song hits home. Check it out on your favorite streaming service.
