Album Notes

Gripping vocals, funky recording methods, and a strangely distant hum are the meat and potatoes of Guitarist/Singer/Songwriter A.C. Myles’ junior effort, Up To The Neck With The Blues.

A modest, electric blues album capable of leaving roots fans shaking there heads, blues lovers with their foot tapping on the floor, housewives quivering, and young kids feeling lost for a second or two, Up To The Neck With The Blues is as pure and emotional as it gets.

With minimal layers of instrumentation fronted by Myles’ trademark worn, in-your-face voice and a tender ear for sophisticated old school poignancy, Myles is able to combine the feel of the rhythmic Southern U.S. with the boldness of Screaming Jay Hawkins recordings, all the while crafting a loosely produced, hook-laden blues album appealing to roots, blues, soul and jam fans alike.

To put it another way, Myles’ Up To The Neck With The Blues takes you to a time when the party has ended. The premises has been vacated, and you’re left to clean up the mess, wondering how you ended up in this altered state. Very few of the performers guitar heroics, a staple of his much improvised but highly structuralized live performances, are noticeable. Instead, many of the phrasings are hard and mean, but kept tame like a circus tiger for the albums atmosphere, heading way for a ‘close your eyes and listen’ type of risk in the production goal.

How is-in ever, even with a dark, moody atmosphere looming overhead in this recording, a bit of sunshine cracks through the clouds and relays within, that cheap and funky guitars, with shiny rims on shiny cars, is how Myles found the blues. Born in California, the only son of a Memphis born guitar playing father, and German immigrant mother, whom were both production workers, Myles grew up in the migrant worker rurals of the Central California town in which he was raised.

It’s obvious that with Up To The Neck With The Blues, the message to blues and roots communities from Myles is a simple one. No matter what bowling shirt or second hand store outfit you wear to your gig, no matter what job or car you have, no difference what guitar and amp you play…it is all in how you feel inside that makes it the blues.