Roots Music Report

New Wildcat O’Halloran  Album “Hot Pulldown” 

 

     Wildcat reports that people often come up to him saying “You can make that guitar do ANYTHING you want”….and that he tends to reply “Ironic, isn’t it?....since it’s shaped like a woman”…..well, misogynistic or not, that snapped him out of his near-2 year writers block, bringing on track 2 of the new CD, "Shaped Like A Woman"! And, you know, he CAN get that guitar to do whatever he wants, it’s not so much PLAYING the guitar, it’s often an out and out ASSAULT on the instrument, as on the first (title) track, on which he guitar battles between his normal wooly tone and a rotating speaker/ organ sounding Cat.   Not that he can’t calm things down for a Blues Ballad (track three, in which he “feels like Scotland Yard….after Sherlock Holmes gets called in”)….or throw in a few jazz licks, as he matches his fiery style against Emily Duff’s languid sax, all backed by B-52’s keyboardist Ken Maiuri on "Mr. Magic".   But watch the fur fly on the autobiographical 51 Right, 49 Wrong, where the band boogies just on the edge of chaos, before turning traditional with the Jimmy Reed classic Honest I Do.   There are also tributes to the late James Cotton (long a Wildcat friend  "Here I Am"), and Lightning Hopkins ("Prison Blues"...originally intended to be a duet with longtime WMASS bluesman Art Steele, who, like Cotton and a number of other Bluesmen, left us this winter).    If you're feelin' 'bout defeated as ol' Bernie Sanders, the Cat reminds that they “wouldn’t have separate words, if work was supposed to be fun”….and if your woman left with your brand new Cadillac, the Wildman suggests singing the blues backwards, turning the Smokestack Lightning type riff inside out on "Living Inside A Blues Song"…..told ya he can play the blues backwards and forwards! 

No disco this time!  The Wildcat’s locked in the Blues deep freeze!