Sean Chambers (featuring The Savoy Brown Rhythm Section) – Live From Daryl’s House Club
Quarto Valley Records – 2025
12 tracks; 58.44 minutes
Sean Chambers and Savoy Brown became friends when they were on the same bill at a festival in 2019. When Kim Simmonds passed away in 2022 Sean and the Savoy Brown rhythm section started playing together, with Kim’s blessings before he passed. This album finds the power trio in live performance at a club in Pawling, NY, the material drawn from some of Sean’s past albums, a couple of Savoy Brown tunes and covers of bluesmen that Sean particularly admires. The band is Sean on guitar/vocals, Pat DeSalvo on bass and B/V’s and Garnet Grimm on drums and B/V’s, the album produced by Sean himself.
The album opens with a searing blues-rock instrumental entitled “Cobra”, a track that originally appeared on Savoy Brown’s 2014 album Goin’ To The Delta. The fast-paced tune gives guitar and drums a chance to shine as the bass holds things together, a great opening number. The trio goes all the way back to 1971 for the title track of Savoy Brown’s Street Corner Talking, Sean paying tribute to Kim in his intro before the band gives us an extended version of the tune that runs to nearly eight minutes, the longest track on the album. Muddy’s “Louisiana Blues” was also part of Savoy Brown’s repertoire and is given a fiery treatment here, opening with Sean’s powerful riff before the rhythm section comes in to add its heavy support.
One of Sean’s early gigs was with Hubert Sumlin with whom he played for several years before setting out on his solo career. In 2021 he released a tribute to Hubert entitled That’s What I’m Talking About and here he reprises Howling Wolf’s “Louise” from that album, playing some fine slide on one of the quieter tracks here.
The remaining tracks are all drawn from Sean’s discography. Three tracks come from 2009’s Ten Til Midnight. The title track is a good rocker with searing guitar while Sean puts his slide to good use on a great cover of Lightning Slim’s “You’re Gonna Miss Me”. The third track from that early album is “Brown Sugar”, not the Stones song but one by Billy Gibbons, a track that first appeared on ZZ Top’s first album, the song having that typical ZZ Top ‘chug’, making a great way to close the album.
Sean’s 2017 album Trouble & Whiskey is the source of four tunes. “I Need Your Loving” is a blues-rocker with a nagging core riff and steady rhythm over which Sean embellishes with some further riffs; “Sweeter Than A Honey Bee” races along, making it impossible not to tap your foot along and the title track, “Trouble & Whiskey”, is a classic slow blues with some great guitar work. The final track from Trouble & Whiskey is a fine cover of “Bullfrog Blues”, attributed by Sean to Rory Gallagher, another of Sean’s guitar heroes; plenty of slide work and amazingly fast drumming at times. “Red Hot Mama” comes from 2018’s Welcome To My Blues (though Sean introduces it as being from Trouble & Whiskey!), another slide-driven tune that works very well.
Sean and his Savoy Brown guys have given us a solid live album here. No new material for Sean’s fans to acquire, but the live versions are bound to differ from the studio versions, all of which precede the link with the Savoy Brown rhythm section, so existing fans will want to get hold of this one. Anyone new to Sean’s music will find this a good place to start.
