John Schooley – The Man Who Rode the Mule Around the World

Austin-based bluesman and rocker John Schooley has composed and recorded a fresh 12-song album of one-man band brilliance and lunacy on Voodoo Rhythm Records. The Man Who Rode the Mule Around the World is Schooley’s first full-length release since 2007’s One Man Against the World. While he has kept his core sound of old dirty blues, Appalachian country, and raging rock and roll intact — and is still unmistakably the John Schooley many have come to know and appreciate since his debut self-titled one-man band album in 2005 — there are some differences between the two albums.

The main difference, really, is that he has dialed down the rock and roll a bit to embrace more of a bluegrass vibe. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t occasionally go musically wild on his foot drum setup and double-neck guitar.

The Man Who Rode the Mule Around the World opens with an instrumental piece, “Clawhammer Banjo Medley,” a reworking of a song whose origins are lodged in “June Apple,” “Kitchen Girl,” and “Boatman’s Dance,” with driving foot drums and skilled and steady banjo pickin’. Next up, we have the title track, which starts out rootsy and subdued, with a thin background of well-placed feedback, and then picks up into a blues punk frenzy before unraveling by stages into a wash of artistically arranged noise. From there, he gives us a mixture of originals and covers: “Doubleneck Stomp,” “It’s Git Down Time,” and “Doubleneck Rag” being some of the former, and “Boo Hoo” (Marvin Rainwater), “Snowdrop,” and “Look Out Mabel” being some of the latter.

John Schooley’s The Man Who Rode the Mule Around the World is available now in CD and 12″ vinyl formats from Voodoo Rhythm Records.