Album Notes

"I fell asleep listening to this CD and dreamed I was drunk in a whorehouse..."
-- from the liner notes by Jim Dickinson

The self-titled debut from the Memphis-based Bluff City Backsliders delivers high-powered, hip-shaking, barrelhouse hoodoo music that's as profane as it is glorious.

Finger-plucked guitar, high-dollar fiddle, vamping banjos, bottleneck and lap-style resonator guitar, dog-bite mandolin, sliding trombone, and stride and strut pianos produce a joyous cacophony of early jazz, jug band, old-time country, and proto-bluegrass sounds, reaching from Memphis to Appalachia and all the way down to New Orleans, often all at once.

Something archetypal in the band's music thrills music lovers of all kinds, old and young. Feet stomp. Throats howl. Grandparents dance with grandchildren. Joy abounds.


"A rootsy acoustic brew that evokes the city's sweet, lazy, jazzy past..."
--Chris Herrington, The Memphis Flyer

"In a town with more blues bands than you can shake a porkpie hat at, the Bluff City Backsliders truly stands out as something unique."
--Mark Jordan, The Commercial Appeal


CAST OF CHARACTERS
Jason Freeman: Throaty vocals & finger-plucked guitar
"Blind Dog" Clint Wagner: High-dollar fiddle & vamping banjo
Mark Lemhouse: Slide lap-style guitar that makes ex-convicts cry & sweet harmony
Memphis Graber: Dog-bite mandolin, barking kazoo & sweeter harmony
Mike "Trombone" Powers: Sliding sonorous metal mating calls
John C. Stubblefield: Extra large fiddle
Adam "Wigglehead" Woodard: Stride and strut keys
Steve Barnat: Snare and kick drums, gew gaws & cheap suit


WARNING! Side effects may include: spontaneous whooping, extended periods of euphoria, falling in love, uncontrollable foot stomping, elation and joy, boogie fever, and a temporary healing of all worldly ills.