ALBUM REVIEW: Simo and Dickinson Bring in the Whomp and Stomp
Pair up guitarists JD Simo and Luther Dickinson, and you can expect some sludge to get splashed around. The mix of Simo’s Chicago-by-way-of-Nashville licks and Dickinson’s hill country fuzz whip up a muddy cauldron of stickyfoot stomp. The selections reflect a who’s-who of whompers, stompers, and boogiemen, including John Lee Hooker, Junior Kimbrough, and R.L. Burnside.
The intro to swamp-pop king Bobby Charles’ “Street People,” the opener on their recent collab, Do The Rump!, is so dirty you wonder if the track was dragged through the mud after it was laid down. There’s a considerable pile of howlin’ and thumpin’ goin’ on, as the duo slither swampily on an unapologetic ode to the joys of unemployment: “Who’s gonna work and let the economy grow if we all hang out in the street/Well I don’t know and I don’t care just as long as it ain’t me.”
J. J. Cale’s “Right Down There” is sinister and funky, a snaky wriggle with hoodoo guitar licks, searching for lost souls to howl with.
Junior Kimbrough has the honor of being the album’s title rep. Despite the title, you’d have a hard time doing anything to this one on the dance floor unless shakin’ and quiverin’ is your specialty. Sounds like it was dredged out of some swampy graveyard at midnight and slapped around some, to get the splooge off long enough to put some electric fuzz on it.
The sole original, “Come On,” penned by Dickinson and Simo, is of the Hooker-endless-boogie persuasion, dark and sticky swamp sludge oozing around Hooker’s ghost, plucked and prodded with barbed-wire riffs. The duo heads for the hills with a cover of Burnside’s “Peaches,” climbing out of the sludge briefly but still leaving plenty of graveyard dirt dusting the proceedings.
Simo and Dickinson first played together as touring members of Phil Lesh and Friends, but the only Dead trappings here are the dust of the swamp boogie denizens whose decayed DNA makes up the footings. It’s a good prelude to Halloween celebrations, a swamp stomper’s paradise that can hang around all year and be trotted out for any down-and-dirty occasion.
Luther Dickinson and JD Simo’s Do the Rump! releases Sep. 20 on Forty Below Records.