Mention Georgia's Statesboro and this writer's main reference point would be the Allman Brothers' 'Statesboro Blues', but it seems Duane, Gregg and their chums haven't exclusive rights to the town, for one BROOKS WILLIAMS deserves rather more kudos where the good ole Southern blues genre is concerned.
That Williams knows his Americana like a walking Smithsonian is not open to question. He's already committed a formidable back catalogue to the annals of history and - rather like Charlie Parr – he's already added his own twist to red-clay Piedmont hollers, Texan dustbowl ballads and muddy Mississippi Delta blues. However, our Brooks has another string to his bow. Regular UK gigging over the past 15 years or so has turned him into something of an Anglophile and these days he calls Cambridge home every bit as much as he does Boston.
Thus, Williams' 17th album is something of a pilgrimage. The first place he ever played a gig in the UK was in Bristol, so having rounded up a gang of skilled co-conspirators (Jethro Tull bassist David Goodier, Keith Warmington on harmonica and dobro/steel meister PJ Wright), he returned to the scene of the crime and the lively and accomplished 'Baby O!' is the end result.
The record's sound is mostly very live and semi-acoustic, with the band adding a super-tight combo sound and Williams' patented 'stomp box' removing the need for a regular drummer. Vocally, Williams has bags of presence and a commanding croon which serves him well whether he's tackling the poppier, self-penned narrative likes the exhilarating opener 'Frank Delandry' (an almost Springsteen-style tribute to a late N'Awlins guitarist) or bloodied, but unbowed confessionals like 'Last Chance Love' where Wright's steel drifts by like tumbleweed through a ghost town and the all too human lyrics (“are you afraid the walls will tumble down to dust/ if you open up your heart to trust?”) are related with vulnerability to spare.
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Elsewhere, Williams and co are happy to ramp up the Blues-y earthiness, but they do it with a remarkable versatility whether they're laying into a sparky and electric nomad's blues like 'Walk You Off Mind', settling into a low-riding groove like 'Moon on Down' or bringing it all back some courtesy of a sombre death blues like their resonant cover of Mississippi John Hurt's 'Louis Collins'.
There are a couple of wonderful surprises in store to add the icing on the cake. Poor 'Amazing Grace' has been a sacrificial sonic lamb far too many times in the past, but in Williams' safe hands, it's re-invented as a sublime, Mississippi delta blues instrumental, saturated in dobro and slide guitar. If that wasn't staggering enough, they even have the temerity to attack the Duke Ellington songbook and come up smelling of roses. If you don't believe me, cop a listen to their Sunday-morning-coming-down take of 'I Got it Bad (And That Ain't Good)' which adds the perfect full stop to an album crafted with love and played with skill and feeling.
'Baby O!', then, sounds remarkably fresh for a performer chalking up his seventeenth album. But then Brooks Williams just keeps on moving, soaking up the influences and reporting back in style. A self-confessed Anglophile he may be, but his nomadic urges keep him digging and bringing up the gold. Wherever he lays his stomp box, it seems, is Brooks Williams' home.
Brooks Williams official site
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