JD Simo & Luther Dickinson – Do The Rump!
Forty Below Records – 2024
8 tracks; 42 minutes
JD Simo and Luther Dickinson have successful separate careers, but when they met playing with Phil Lesh, they discovered that they shared many influences and their guitar styles went well together. The result is this album that re-works tunes by some of their heroes, plus one original tune. The music is clearly heavily influenced by Hill Country blues but also brings in elements of Afrobeat, especially in the drumming of Adam Abrashoff, the third musician here; Simo and Dickinson share the vocals, guitar and bass.
The album opens with some weirdly distorted guitar that makes you want to check if the CD is damaged, but soon morphs into a slide-driven take on Bobby Charles’ “Street People” with plenty of trash-can drums and grungy guitars. JJ Cale’s “Right Down There” follows, the drums taking centre stage as the vocals sit quite low in the mix, slide again featured. There are two tunes from Mississippi Hill Country legend Junior Kimbrough: “Lonesome Road” and the title track “Do The Rump”: the former again features some rather ‘distant’ vocals over steady drums and keening slide, the latter including elements of “Louise”, the Howling Wolf tune, Dickinson’s slide work well to the fore, before Simo takes over on an extended take that runs over seven minutes.
John Lee Hooker also gets two numbers from the trio. “Serves Me Right To Suffer” is given a lively treatment, rather more upbeat than many covers of the song and the less well known “Come And Go With Me” combines a heavy vocal with a slower-paced rhythm, both guitars heard to advantage. Luther’s acoustic slide work leads into “Peaches”, from the ‘Godfather’ of Hill Country blues, RL Burnside, which closes the album in expansive style at close to ten minutes, allowing ample space for the guitarists to duel effectively. “Come On” is the sole original and also the shortest cut on the album, running to less than three minutes, still fitting in with the overall Hill Country style of the covers.
The almost hypnotic quality of the music here should appeal to those who enjoy Hill Country blues music.
