Album Notes

“Bring the Boys Back Home,” the opening track on David Evans’ second solo CD, examines America’s current conflict in Iraq in astonishing, line by line clarity. It’s an acoustic blues masterpiece penned by a man whose life has been dedicated to blues music.
Scholar, performer, singer, guitarist, educator, David Evans may be many things to many people, but the common thread of his life has always been blues.
In 2003, he won a Grammy award for best album notes for Screamin’ & Hollerin’ the Blues: The Worlds of Charley Patton. He is revered throughout the world for his knowledge of blues and for his commitment to the genre’s survival.
With recording credits including The Fieldstones, Jessie Mae Hemphill, R.L. Burnside, Johnny Shines, Robert Belfour and others, Evans’ own career is matched only by what he has contributed to the careers of others.
For more than a decade, David Evans has been affiliated with Memphis indie label Inside Sounds. With The Last Chance Jug Band, he released Shake That Thing! in 1996 and his solo debut Match Box Blues in 2002. As founder of High Water Recording, he also produced R.L. Burnside’s Raw Electric 1979-1980 and Jessie Mae Hemphill’s Get Right Blues, both released through Inside Sounds in 2001 and 2003.
Most of Needy Time was recorded in 2007, although it includes three tracks recorded in France in 2006, a home recording session with Hammie Nixon in 1979, and two songs recorded in 1964 and 1967 with blues icon Alan Wilson. Evans and Wilson were musical partners during the years preceding the founding of Canned Heat, when Wilson was propelled into international stardom while Evans pursued a highly celebrated academic musical path.
Two tracks recorded with the legendary gospel group The Spirit of Memphis Quartet add another dynamic element to this outstanding fourteen song collection.