I love this album I found it after I read Adam Posnak whose one part of Uncle Cuckleburr's is playing the 2nd Deep Blues Festival in Minneapolis this coming summer (July 18-20) I'm looking forward to seeing him live & getting his new more Bluesey cd soon....this album is good in anyone's collection if you like a good raw hillbilly sound !

Playing Time – 58:44 -- With a moniker like “Uncle Cuckleburr's Champion Possum Carvers,” you can probably guess what kind of music this group plays. You betcha. It’s old-time and backwoodsy hillbilly music of the type that Missouri mountain dwellers played in the 1920s and 1930s. Blues, jug band, ragtime, and even early country influences are also found in their music. I found it curious that The Ozark Sheiks’ album jacket doesn’t identify the two specific musicians involved or list the instruments played. Based on the promotional material sent along with the disc, the Ozark Sheiks are Adam Posnak and Blaine Whisenhunt. I hear guitar, banjo, mandolin, kazoo, and harmonica in the mix. The yokelified and bluesy vocals are perfect for this kind of music. Adam Posnak and Blaine Whisenhunt apparently have a history in punk music, and I’d be curious to hear how they came to old-timey. Whisenhunt grew up in the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas. His father and grandfather were both musicians. From Georgia, Posnak’s father had an eclectic music collection. His great-grandfather picked banjo in a Missouri string band. For awhile, both Adam and Blaine played in a Louisiana-based trio called the “Jug-Or-Not String Band” with Canadian multi-instrumentalist Chris Murphy. Of the twenty songs present, the Possum Carvers serve up a number of traditional numbers like “Run Mollie Run,” “Old Mollie Hare,” and “Gonna Keep My Skillet Greasy.” Their other covers come from less common material from the likes of the Memphis Jug Band, Furry Lewis, Frank Blevins and Uncle Dave Macon. Five of the songs on UCCPC’s debut album are originals. “Bow-Legged Rooster” is sure to get you crowing along on the chorus. Their “Boll Weevil Blues” and its tale of destruction to the cotton could’ve easily been an old Robert Johnson song about 70 years ago. “Ozark Sheiks” is an original sung with a lot of jug band spirit and soul about themselves, and it’s unfortunate that some of the lyrics are not understandable on this live recording. “White Oak Tree” is a ballad about a rounder accused of murder. “Water and Seed” is sung a capella. Their off-beat and unique approach to their original music has been self-described as, “We'd like to make people nervous and squirmy by the raw stench of this stuff….when it's all said and done, we want to scare the crap out of people . . . and make ‘em dance." From the Ozark State, this band is doing an important service by keeping an authentic cornwhiskered musical sound alive. This album has a very rustic feeling, and that’s the way I like my old-timey tunes. An eccentric duo with attitude, I’m sure that The Possum Carvers would be well-received at folk festivals and other similar events. With their rowdiness, I could also see them as an opening act at a jamband concert. These two guys are good musicians in this genre, and they certainly can put out a lot of sound and energy too. (Joe Ross, Roseburg, OR.)

This is authentic stuff right here folks. If you are into roots music, you need this disk. Are these guys still playing? They don't have any dates listed since 2004.