ALBUM REVIEW: Rick Estrin and the Nightcats Pack a Punch on ‘The Hits Keep Coming’

Muddy Waters once told a 19-year-old Rick Estrin he had that sound. “You playing like a man, boy!,” Waters said as Estrin sat in with his band in Chicago. “I know that sound when I hear it, that’s my sound!”

Estrin, a San Francisco native, had moved to Chicago to expand his blues education, and had been recommended by harpist Carey Bell to take his place in Muddy’s band. Muddy loved what he heard, and told Estrin not to leave town for three weeks and he’d be in touch. After waiting exactly three weeks with no contact from Waters, Estrin left to go back to San Francisco, and Waters hired another harpist. But he has no regrets. “The kind of nut I was back then, I don’t think it would have been a good thing for me to have Muddy Waters co-signing how cool I thought I was, because I was a pretty wild person and it’s possible I would have ended up dead or in the penitentiary,” Estrin told me in a 2008 interview. Estrin went on to co-found The Nightcats, named after Little Walter’s first band in 1976, with guitarist Charlie Baty, who was a harpist before switching to guitar as his main instrument.

Even though his name didn’t appear on the billing in those early years, Estrin has always been the frontman and chief composer for the band. He took over top billing in 2008 when Baty retired to play Django Reinhardt-inspired jazz as The Little Charlie Caravan. Estrin recruited Kid Andersen to take Baty’s guitar slot, changing up the band’s sound from Baty’s Charlie Christian-style jazz to a harder-edged blues outfit that allows diversity to creep in with surf, rockabilly, and whatever else wanders by and gets trapped under Andersen’s fingers.

On the band’s latest album, The Hits Keep Coming, Estrin’s vocals sound irreparably bonded to 1950s rock legends The Coasters’ lead singer Billy Guy on their classic “Shopping for Clothes” or “Young Blood.” He emulates Guy’s barely restrained excitement and awe at whatever he’s witnessing and relating.

Estrin’s compositions often mirror the work of The Coasters’ songwriting team of Leiber and Stoller, who Estrin has said were an early influence. “The Circus Is Still in Town (The Monkey Song)” could have fallen out of The Coasters songbook, its sly lyrics revealing that the monkey who used to be on his back may have been removed, but the temptation, the circus, is still in town.

“I Ain’t Worried About Nothin” also sounds Coasters-inspired, a laid-back ode to lackadaisicalness in a bubble where nobody gives a damn.

Estrin demonstrates a bit of what might have been with Muddy on a cover of Waters’ “Diamonds at Your Feet.” He blows up Little Walter’s solo on the original with a mix of James Cotton bluster and Charlie Musselwhite sophistication.

Leonard Cohen’s woeful assessment of current events, “Everybody Knows,” becomes a Ennio Morricone spaghetti western soundtrack in Estrin’s hands, loping along a seemingly endless trail of heartbreak and disappointment as the curtain is pulled back and all is revealed: “Everybody knows that you love me baby / Everybody knows that you’ve been faithful / Give or take a night or two / Everybody knows you’ve been discreet / But there were so many people you just had to meet / Without your clothes / And everybody knows.”

Estrin and crew — guitarist Andersen, keyboardist/bassist Lorenzo Farrell, and former Little Richard drummer/percussionist/gymnast Derrick D’Mar Martin — make all this stuff sound effortless, with an ease and tightness that feels like they’re siblings. Always a fun ride, The Nightcats stay fueled up and ready for a time-warpin’, good-rockin’ road trip.

Rick Estrin and the Nightcats (photo by Steve Jennings)

Rick Estrin and the Nightcats’ The Hits Keep Coming is out May 10 on Alligator Records.