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)

Vintage Review: Ken McMahan's That's Your Reality (1997)

The last time that Ken McMahan checked in here at the ConMedia world HQ, he was delivering a fine initial solo effort, Ken McMahan & Slumpy Boy on the French Dixie Frog label. Produced by ex-Georgia Satellite frontman Dan Baird and including the talents of folks like Stan Lynch, Terry Anderson, and Bill Lloyd, the disc was a steamy slab of blues-infused roots-rock. Needless to say, even with the fine pedigree the album brought along with it, Kenny couldn’t get in the back door at RecordCoAmerica, that one great major label whose A & R poseurs were too damn busy trying to find the next great alt.rock breakthrough to get their heads out of their collective behinds long enough to actually listen to some GREAT FUCKING ROCK ‘N’ ROLL rather than miring themselves in martinis and misanthropy.

Now McMahan – former axeman of the much-beloved Southeastern power blues trio the dusters – has put together a permanent touring version of Slumpy Boy, knocked out That’s Your Reality, his second disc for Dixie Frog, and is now poised to play live in your hometown. I recommend that you ring up your local neighborhood baby-sitter, draw a few dollars out of the ATM and roll on down to the club to catch Slumpy Boy ‘cause, if That’s Your Reality is any indication of what the band will be delivering live and on-stage, then we’re all in for an evening of good old-fashioned rock ‘n’ roll the way that it was meant to be, with lots of guitars and heavy amplification.

That’s Your Reality, you see, is no wimpy “my life sucks, think I’ll grow a beard” carbon-copy “alternative” crapola, no sir, this 12 song collections rocks relentlessly from start to finish. At the proper volume, it’ll peel the paint off your living room walls and blow the windows out of your neighbor’s house. Play it in your car stereo and it’ll super-charge your engine like a set of racing cams and a tank of Turbo Blue™, melting the tar on the highway behind you. McMahan has picked up a little more of the songwriting duties this time out, and by god, I think that the boy’s got it all figured out. As good as his first solo disc was, That’s Your Reality is even better, the material highlighting McMahan’s growing ability as a wordsmith. Cuts like the rollicking “Fredonia,” the introspective “Everything Turns To Dust,” or the piss-off, get lost good-bye of “Reality” showcase an artistic maturity above his previous efforts.

Musically, McMahan is a vastly underrated guitarist, bringing a freshness and vitality to his material, deriving strength from his influences without ever mimicking them. Every cut here is a fat, multi-layered, guitar-driven rocker, evoking the best of almost half a century of rock ‘n’ roll history, throwing in just enough elements of country and the blues to keep it honest and interesting. If you prefer your rock to be of the two-fisted, hairy-chested variety, if you worship at the alter of bands like Humble Pie, the Georgia Satellites, the Faces or Lynyrd Skynyrd, then That’s Your Reality is right up your alley. With That’s Your Reality, Ken McMahan & Slumpy Boy deliver a disc that burns like a four-alarm fire and hits like a drunken prize-fighter. (Dixie Frog Records, released 1997)

Review originally published by Thora-Zine (Austin TX), 1997

Vintage Review: Ken McMahan's Ball & Chain (1998)

Ken McMahan is a friend of mine. In the interest of honesty, I have to begin any review of his work with such a disclaimer. I’ve gotten drunk with Ken, broken bread with him (or, in our case, shared pizza), talked about music, his career, the universe in general. He’s a great guy…and with all that ethical bullshit out of the way, I can also honestly say that McMahan is one hell of a rocker as well.

Case in point: Ball & Chain, McMahan’s third album for the French Dixie Frog label. With each subsequent outing, Kenny’s songwriting gets tighter, more structured, and more interesting. His consistently invigorating six-string work improves with each album and on Ball & Chain he’s added some interesting flourishes, musical dimensions that are absent from his earlier work. Throw in a backing band that’s as tight as a fist and as scary as an I.R.S. audit and add the musical and intellectual contributions of McMahan’s partner-in-crime, Dan Baird, and you’ve got one helluva foot-stomping rock ‘n’ roll record.    

With his former band, the power-blues trio the dusters, McMahan earned a well-deserved reputation across the Southeast as a fine blues guitarist. His solo stuff tends to run more towards the rock end of the spectrum, however, Kenny cranking up Ball & Chain with “Way of the World,” a fiery little number that sets the tone for the rest of the set. The world-weary lyrics of “Something I’ll Never Know” are punctuated by constant swamp-rock guitar riff that is literally drenched in saltwater and cypress. McMahan’s traditional cover song this time out is Robert Johnson’s “Kindhearted Woman,” a song Kenny claims for his own with a fat, looping guitar line that creates an instrumental cadence for the vocals.

The title track is one of two McMahan co-wrote with fellow Nashville talent Tommy Womack. Opening with some nifty honky-tonk piano, the song becomes a rollicking working-class anthem, a sort of “why me, Lord?” plea for the everyman. My favorite cut on the album, however, is “Wicked World.” Written by Dan Baird, ex-Georgia Satellite, acclaimed solo artist and member of Nashville band Betty Rocker, Baird knows his way around a song, and “Wicked World” is no exception. A bad-ass slice of dark-hued rock, McMahan’s haunted vocals and the accompanying concertina-wire sharp guitar licks combine to make for a powerful musical moment. McMahan sounds like he’s got Robert Johnson’s fabled hell-hounds on his trail, his guitar howling while bassist Kyle Miller and former dusters’ drummer Jeff Perkins provide a steady heartbeat to fuel Baird’s tale of secular woe and spiritual despair.

Even though much of what McMahan sings about is, well, kind of depressing – stuff like lost and unrequited love, romantic betrayal, and a man’s burden to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders – he does so with such style and energy that you never realize the somber nature of the material. Unlike a lot of today’s wet-behind-the-ears “one hit wonders,” young musicians who have barely ventured outside their hometown, McMahan has experienced a bit of the world. He’s been following the dream longer than he’d probably care to admit, but what comes across in his music and on CD is the sheer, unadulterated joy of being able to play rock ‘n’ roll. It’s this element that’s missing from contemporary music and it’s something that McMahan has in abundance. Ball & Chain is a strong tonic, a fresh breath of life for a flaccid rock corpse in sore need of the stiff kick in the ass McMahan provides. Now, will somebody stateside please pick up this record before I have to come to your house and do something impolite? (Dixie Frog Records, 1998)   

Review originally published by Alt.Culture.Guide™, 1998