VARIOUS ARTISTS
Bar Room Blues: A 12-Track Program (Telarc)
Reviewed by Eric Steiner

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Country music's points of reference usually consist of pickup trucks, the open road, or women gone wrong at the local honky-tonk. The blues also has its own set of bases to touch, and they usually involve women, life (or love) gone bad, or the bottle. Muddy Waters and countless other bluesmen made (and sang about) moonshine, and it's no coincidence that the blues canon includes songs that either celebrate or decry the bottle. Bar Room Blues, Telarc's first release of 2004, is worth a toast. There's a dozen songs from Telarc's growing blues posse either touting or damning the demon alcohol. Whatever your beverage pleasure, these 12 songs from the likes of Tab Benoit, Junior Wells, Sam Lay and Charlie Musselwhite will quell your thirst for the blues.

Track List:

Rip This Joint (Tommy Castro) * I Got Loaded (Tab Benoit) * Cold Grey Light of Dawn (Charlie Musselwhite) * Whiskey Tears (Kenny Neal) * If the Sea Was Whiskey (Doug Wainoris) * Later than You Think (Troy Turner) * Last Hand of the Night (Junior Wells) * Pure Grain Alcohol Sam Lay) * My New Baby Owns a Whiskey Store (Bob Margolin) * Feelin' No Pain (Tinsley Ellis) Meet Me with Your Black Drawers On (Luther 'Guitar Jr.' Johnson) * Night Life (Kenny Neal, Debbie Davies, Tab Benoit)

© 2004 - Eric Steiner