Johnny Bollow

More Stations Johnny Bollow

Johnny's big ice-cream truck has backed into the old CD Baby warehouse with yummy concoctions featuring Bob Babbitt of the Funk Bros. (bass player on 'Signed Sealed Delivered') and a mad cast from Chicago to Mississippi. Recorded in the basement of a cabin outside Nashville last year, 'More Stations' went down this way. 'A Little Understanding' stars a Jerry Jones six-string, sunshiney harmonies and a guitar solo that's a cure for what ails you. It's a love-me-baby pop song where the skies are not cloudy all day. Bob Babbitt played with Gladys Knight on 'Midnight Train to Georgia' and that Motown flavor comes through 'Feel Love Again.' Bob's best -- almost a bass solo, really -- is between the first chorus and the second verse. Hmm-mm. And while he also starts the 6/8 proceedings on 'Birdcage,' there's no getting over that this is Marc Kunkel's song. Nobody's blows the blues harp like this Woodstock veteran. Stick a beat up Shure into a Vox Cambridge, roll Johnny out of bed and tell him not to warm up: is that cackle and crackle me or the amp? 'Something Inside Me' is a tribute to the big, muscular electric blues that I only wish I woulda cut my teeth on; if you like Buddy Guy's electro-shocking style, take a listen to Big Mike Griffin riding the ribs of his Silvertone, Fish Michie whumpin' the Leslie and Johnny Bird calling the count. I ain't worthy. 'Fly Away' takes a page from Delta blues and sets our protagonist down in an existential backwater. Once again, Kunkel pressed a Green Bullet to his lips and blew his lungs across the room. We recorded this one live. 'Gravy Train' was live, too: imagine Mephistopholes reincarnated as a cabaret singer in mid-century Memphis and you might get it. All I know is that in 1939, a girl named Henrietta paid 75 cents for one accordian lesson and put it away forever. Sixty-five years later, it shows up in some Mississippi music shop and gets bought by my B3 player. 'Gravy Train' is one part railroad song, one part Rocky Horror, one part Screwtape and devlishly good. In 'What You Can't Have' an R&B ballad meets a moaning, weeping-for-mercy slide guitar in slow-time; don't sound like there's much hope. But the sweetest larynx God ever put in a woman comes to the rescue in the form of Miranda Louise. Miss M calls us to the revival tent where, if we choose, we shalll '...Go Free.' And after reading this much, this long, well shouldn't ya?