Album Notes

The Blues had a baby and they called it rock and roll. At least that’s the way the saying goes according to old legends like Muddy and BB. But if the Blues had not just any old baby, but a nasty, cholicky rugrat of a kid that never shut up and drove his poor mommy and daddy through the roof, well, they’d probably call it “Whitey.”“

Andy Newman’s cranky, full-throttle heavy trance blues trio is just plain, in-your-face audacious. Treah Ruiz on bass and Brian the Drummer help Newman throw the kind of relentless tantrums that push weak-ass posers to the back of the house. Plus, his growling, fuzzed out licks and throat-burning screams tell us he’s not doing this to screw off. This, and he, is the real friggin’ deal.

The new disc, The Whitey Album, is saturated with the blues the way gas spreads through a puddle. But it’s also modern as hell, with deafening waves of distorted metal brutality. Style-wise, the band makes wide turns, from Jesus Lizard hypno-grunge to even sicker stuff that’ll remind you of the Melvins’. At its best, it’s mind-warping noise that borders on the extreme without sinking into an experimental quagmire. Whitey flat out rocks.

Recorded by Newman and all-around idea guy/major talent George Dussault, The Whitey Album brings with it a bunch of eye-poppers. There are covers of Jeff Buckley (“Nightmares By The Sea”) and John Lennon (“Well, Well, Well”) that hit the mark, and a bizarre banjo led version of “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Within the parameters of what you hear before it, this one is just plain scary. All of Whitey’s covers get the job done by rearranging the song in your brain. The record wraps with “The 7% Solution” which excerpts Gene Wilder as Young Frankenstein, another extreme dude that has somehow fired Whitey up with psychotic inspiration.

This is the kind of baby that the blues should have had before it was too late, before that pampered infant grew up and started listening to Bon Jovi and Nickelback. This is the kind of baby it’d be cool to have, once it got over that nasty cholic and started callin’ you Pop.

Newman, formerly of dicked-over major label act Glazed Baby, finally has the kind of band that’s ready; it’s coiled on its haunches, prepared to lunge viciously and unsympathetically at unsuspecting audiences. As Newman’s first real crack at getting back in the game, the savage The Whitey Album proves the time is finally right.