Album Notes

OBEY THE HELLBUSTERS Debut Album “Guilty” Kicks Like Buckshot, Burns Like Gin The heavens opened, the thunder rolled and the lightning flashed when the Hellbusters went to Sun Studio to record their first album. Amid a biblical southern rain storm in Memphis, two men with a guitar, a harmonica and a wooden stomp box spent four hours blistering hours recording loud, raw, hard blues at the birthplace of rock n' roll. The result is “Guilty”. “The songs are all about the guilt and loneliness of living a certain lifestyle,” says Hellbuster guitarist and singer Todd Mauldin. “Living that way is fun, sometimes. But eventually, I guess, you come up empty and there’s only regret. That’s why we chose that caged heart for the cover. The guilty heart is something I believe everybody has to deal with, sooner or later. And a heart that’s guilty is like that heart on the cover… nothing gets into it or out of it without being hurt.” “The songs are stark and rough,” commented Jack D. Doyle, the Hellbusters’ harmonica player and stomp-box operator. “We’re about as subtle as a lead pipe. But we tried to be honest with stuff and get to the heart of the matter. You can dance to it. The songs are tough and fast but we ain’t bullshitting. If you’ve been where we’ve been, you’ll probably get it.” From the opening cut “Mine Camp Blues”, (“based on a true story,” says Jack) to up-tempo grooves like “Deadbolt Lock” and “I Live With A Spy” to the scaldingly confessional “Guilty Blues”, and from the sincere “Mama Always Loved Me” to the headlong charge of “Gun And Knife”, the Hellbusters rip through a set of original blues tracks with a powerful, stripped-down style rarely recorded or heard these days. “We ain’t for everybody,” says Mauldin. “If you like Son House, or John Lee Hooker, or Fred McDowell, or R.L. Burnside, or George Thorogood or Social Distortion or the Black Keys, you’ll probably like us all right.” The Hellbusters are Todd Mauldin on guitar and vocals, and Jack D. “Machine Gun” Doyle on harmonica and percussion. They’re from Reno, Nevada, where they were voted “Nevada’s Favorite Two Man Blues Band” in a recent poll. You can find out more about the Hellbusters and the record “Guilty” at www.hellbusters.net.