Vintage Review: The Dusters’ Dang! (2002)

Known as the home of country music, Nashville had a thriving rock scene back during the mid-to-late 1980s, with bands like Jason & the Scorchers (country-punk), the Shakers (Goth-folk), Afrikan Dreamland (blu-reggae), and Practical Stylists (power pop), among many others, exploring various musical styles and stylistic fusions. One of the most popular outfits on the scene at the time was the Dusters, a no-frills blues-rock band whose hard-charging sound was fueled by frontman Ken McMahan’s raging fretwork and soul-twang vocals.

At the band’s early 1990s peak, the Dusters received airplay on college radio and toured steadily throughout the South, songs like “This Ain’t No Jukebox…We’re A Rock ‘n’ Roll Band” and an incendiary cover of Savoy Brown’s “Hellbound Train” thrilling audiences from one side of Dixie to the other. Signed to an independent label in the Music City, the band was unable to break out of the Nashville rock ghetto in spite of a touring sponsorship from Miller Beer, and by the mid-‘90s the Dusters, like so many indie rockers, were crushed by the murky sounds coming out of Seattle. McMahan launched a solo career that resulted in three acclaimed albums for the French Dixie Frog label (which had also released the Dusters’ 1992 album, Unlisted Number) before touring as part of Dan Baird’s (the Georgia Satellites) band.

The Dusters’ Dang!

In 2002, the best and brightest Dusters line-up – guitarist McMahan, bassist David Barnette, and drummer Jeff Perkins – reunited for some Nashville-area shows which, in turn, led to a return to the studio by the band to record Dang! with Baird producing. Although the CD went out of print nearly as rapidly as it was released, it’s well worth digging up for the dedicated fan of roots/blues-rock, and is currently available digitally. McMahan leads his classic power trio line-up through a baker’s dozen of red-hot blues-rock romps, about 90% of them original tunes, with only a sparse handful of covers thrown in for flavor.

Dang! cranks up the amps with the album-opening “Goin’ Up Easy,” a McMahan co-write with esteemed Music City scribe Tommy Womack, the song a steamy slab of locomotive piledriver rhythms and blistering fretwork. The menacing “Mexico,” co-written with Baird, who also adds rhythm guitar if I’m not mistaken, is the best ZZ Top song that that lil’ old band from Texas never recorded, full of muscular riffs, endless swagger, and a sordid storyline that would make the Senoritas blush. The song’s uber-cool false ending is complimented by a hot, brief bluesy outro. McMahan’s “Red Sun” is a funky little sucker, with a sly rhythmic undercurrent, a mind-bending recurring riff, and rolling guitar solos that are warmer than a runaway bonfire.  

Cadillac Blues

You’ll find more than a little Delta blues spirit in the dark-hued “Killin’ Time,” a malevolent tale of violence and retribution with a swamp-blues vibe, a slow-burning groove, and McMahan’s shimmy-shake rattletrap guitar. The discerning ear will pick up all sorts of influences here, overt and covert alike, from Robert Johnson to Savoy Brown, from John Lee Hooker to the aforementioned ZZ Top. “Night Is Gone” offers up some of McMahan’s best guitar tone, kind of a cross between Bluesbreakers-era Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan, the song evincing just a hint of boogie-rock within its emotional, lovestruck lyrics. McMahan’s six-string work here is taut and structured but still imaginative within the rhythmic framework

McMahan’s “Poison Love” is built on a classic Bo Diddley beat, but quickly beats it into submission with a revved-up rhythm that would sound positively punkish (think Black Keys or Immortal Lee County Killers) if not for McMahan’s soulful Southern workingman’s twang vox and the song’s femme fatale subject matter. “Barn Door” has a heart that is pure Chicago blues, the song itself mixing its metaphors with an urban soundtrack and a storyline that has one foot in roots-rock and the other in country-blues, while another McMahan original, “Cadillac Blues,” is a smoldering sample of barroom blues, wearing its heart on its sleeve with low-slung guitar licks and subtle rhythms. One of the album’s few covers, of the great Chuck Berry’s “Don’t You Lie To Me,” throws a little New Orleans barrelhouse flavor in with Neal Cappellino’s spirited piano-pounding running like the Mississippi beneath McMahan’s fluid vocals and a sturdy rhythmic framework.  
   

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

Blowing back onto the blues scene like a tornado, the Dusters have made major strides during the band’s ten or so years apart. Whereas the band had been enjoyable on record, if sometimes derivative in their approach, they were never anything less than devastating while on stage, and they could never capture their live performance dynamic on tape. As the three band members continued to grow and evolve while playing with other musicians during the ensuing years, however, they brought this maturity to the studio when making Dang!

McMahan’s guitarplay, always the band’s strong suite, has been honed to a dangerous edge through the years. The rhythm section of David Barnette and Jeffrey Perkins has developed into an explosive combination, unobtrusive when need be, a brick to your face when the situation calls for such. But the Dusters’ secret weapon may be McMahan’s skilled songwriting chops, seasoned by life and experience into an impressive bit of street poetry that combines a Southern rock heart with the soul of the blues. Dang! proves, without a doubt, that the Dusters are bad to the bone, with a black cat moan, and a lucky mojo hand. Can you dig it? (Lucky Hand Records, released October 21, 2002)