‘Hambones & Trombones’ is the debut CD from the Long Island based duo BISCUIT KINGS who have been active for over twenty five years on their local music scene. The band consists of Jeff Goldstein on bass and Johnny Pierre on vocals, guitars, keyboards & percussion. They are ably supported by an array of special guests who bolster the sound on several tracks on this album.
There are twelve tracks on the album, mainly coming from a blues/Americana standpoint. The band list their influences as Howlin’ Wolf, Professor Longhair and Tom Waits, and some of these influences are instantly apparent, especially that of Waits, especially on the slower ballads that appear throughout.
Opening with ‘The Day I Met My Waterloo’, a good time piano based blues which fairly gallops away from the stable, has a nice bass solo, and features a gravelly vocal; this is the perfect start to the album. A song all about being smitten, the lyrics have some clever twists and rhymes: - “The day I met my Waterloo was the day I met you/ You were hanging by the Parish line, dressed in red and looking fine/ I was rolling them bones on the pork chop train; something in my life had changed/ And a big old storm was rolling through, the day I met my Waterloo.”
Following on from this is ‘Hot Barbecue’, with its chugga chugga rhythm, and based around guitar, keys and bass. This is a song all about having a good party and enjoying yourself. You can almost hear the eagerness in Johnny Pierre’s voice when he sings: - “Hey Charlene there’s no turning back, hand me the bourbon I’m having a heart attack/ I got the fever as a matter of fact, here comes Charlie with a six-pack/ There go the cops all night long. Hey man, we got a party goin’ on!”
‘When Love Turns To Gold’ is the first of four ballads on the album, and here the Tom Waits influence stands out a mile. This track, keyboard led is a song of love, loss and redemption: - “I spent my life spending money; sometimes I think money was spending me/ Now I’m just sitting here by the window/ Watching all those shadows in the rain dancing free.” Despite the obvious comparisons, I really liked this one, and thought that the lyrics showed depth and sensitivity without being maudlin.
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Other stand-out tracks are ‘God’s Favourite Son’, a guitar based song with country overtones which comes across as a stinging rebuke: - “You’re shining like a candle, burning at both ends,
You’ve pissed away your money just like you pissed off all your friends/ You’re living like a shadow, lost in the great unknown/ Your lights are always on, but nobody’s ever home.”
The magnificent ‘Whiskey Town, a fast honky tonk barrelhouse blues with a nice piano melody, this is uplifting, invigorating and will drive you to drink! “Goin’ down to whiskey town, gonna dance the mess around/ All the girls are dynamite; I can’t tell if it’s day or night.”
‘Mardi Gras is Over’ is the single taken from the album and is a New Orleans style blues which laments the fact that the party is over, but the singer vows to return next year for some more partying: “Mardi Gras is over; it feels just like a dream/ Our glasses are all empty baby; the streets are all washed clean/Now the music is all broken, our smiles have disappeared/ Mardi Gras is over, I’ll see you all next year.”
Overall, I thought that this was a good debut. Sometimes the Tom Waits influences are a little heavy-handed, and this tends to put the listener slightly off kilter so that the depth and feeling in the lyrics is overlooked. Notwithstanding, this is an album Biscuit Kings can be justifiably proud of, and I would love to see them in a live setting.
Buy Biscuit Kings at CD Baby
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