Devil In A Woodpile – In Your Lonesome Town

Ubiquitous in every other corner bar from Belmont Avenue to Roosevelt Road, this threesome — Rick Sherry on lead vocals, harmonica, clarinet, jug and washboard; ex-Bottle Rocket Tom Ray on doghouse bass; and newcomer Joel Paterson on slide guitar — comes on like Chicago’s answer to the Asylum Street Spankers. They like their blues straight-up and old-fashioned, a la the Geyer Street Sheiks sans fiddle and (more importantly) sans the rural America of the Great Depression. This isn’t to imply that these city boys haven’t the right to thump and jump the blues. Just don’t expect to hear anything you haven’t heard done better on a couple hundred Arhoolie records.

Settle, instead, for some serious toe-tapping ragtime rhythms and heaps of meat-and-potatoes blues (Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny Terry, Charlie Patton and Furry Lewis all get properly credited). The songs never stray from the old-time archetypes: drinking and train hopping, strutting and stomping, jelly rolls and good gals. Choices, in other words, are solid but unexceptional.

As it turns out, Ray’s dead-in-the-pocket bass runs and Patterson’s simultaneously trashy and poetic fingerstyle guitar work — especially on Sonny Boy Williamson’s “Until My Love Comes Down” — afford the greatest pleasures. Absent more surprising themes, and present Sherry’s blackface hamming, this admirably concise set could have gotten by, even thoroughly smoked, in a purely instrumental style.