8646 - THE REVEREND PEYTON'S BIG DAMN BAND - SO DELICIOUS! (2015)

THE REVEREND PEYTON'S BIG DAMN BAND
''SO DELICIOUS!''
FEBRUARY 17 2015
43:03

1 Let's Jump A Train 03:08
2 Pot Roast And Kisses 05:01
3 Dirt 05:15
4 Raise A Little Hell 04:25
5 Scream At The Night 04:30
6 Hell Naw 02:29
7 Front Porch Trained 03:48
8 Pickin Pawpaws 02:57
9 We Live Dangerous 04:18
10 You're Not Rich 02:15
11 Music And Friends 04:50
All Tracks By The Band

John Bowyer/Vocals (Background)
Brown County All-Star Choir/Vocals (Background)
Ben "Birddog" Bussell/Drums, Percussion, Vocal Harmony
Michelle Damrell/Vocals (Background)
Adelynn Davis/Vocals (Background)
Marti Garvey/Vocals (Background)
Norb Garvey/Vocals (Background)
Jayme Hood/Vocals (Background)
Will Kersey/Vocals (Background)
Charlotte Miller/Vocals (Background)
Erin Miller/Vocals (Background)
Akina Minnich/Vocals (Background)
Lyla Minnich/Vocals (Background)
Agatha O'Brien/Vocals (Background)
Quinn O'Brien/Vocals (Background)
Irie O'Shea/Vocals (Background)
Breezy Peyton/Percussion, Vocal Harmony, Washboard
Mareana Piatt/Vocals (Background)
Zion Piatt/Vocals (Background)
Cari Rae/Harmony, Vocals (Background)
Ellie Rainwater/Vocals (Background)
Kenan Rainwater/Vocals (Background)
The Raise a Little Hell Children's Choir/Vocals (Background)
The Reverend Peyton/Guitar, Harmonica, Slide Guitar, Vocals
Maxwell Joseph Senteney/ercussion

REVIEW
by Stephen Thomas Erlewine/AMG
The Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band release their fifth album, So Delicious, on a revitalized Yazoo Records via Shanachie. Yazoo is a storied blues label and it's a good fit for the Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band, a trio from the backwoods of Indiana whose members desperately wish they hailed from the Delta. Such geographical displacement has a long history in American music -- in the back half of the 20th century, John Fogerty's swamp rock from San Francisco might be the best known -- so Peyton and his crew don't feel like charlatans: they're Americans who like to live in their ideal fantasy world. The funny thing about So Delicious is that for showing up on a blues label, it can rock pretty hard, something the clattering opening "Let's Jump a Train" makes plain, but the Big Damn Band aren't the Black Keys; they don't pump up and amplify their blues for arenas, but are happy to sit on a front porch during a hot Sunday afternoon. That's an intimate situation and, appropriately, the group slides some sweetness onto So Delicious, such as the gentle "Scream at the Night" and the ode to family "Pickin Pawpaws" (also quiet is the spectral solo slide guitar of "You're Not Rich," but that haunts instead of comforts). Still, the operative order of this record is a bit of full-tilt boogie and good times, an album that acknowledges there's nothing finer than pot roast and kisses from the one you love. In other words, this is big, burly blues whose heart belongs at home.

BIOGRAPHY
by Mark Deming/AMG
While they're only a trio, The Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band deliver a sound that lives up to their name, with thick, bass-heavy, blues-based guitar figures and growling vocals accompanied by muscular but minimal drumming and the metallic percussive scratch of a washboard (making them one of the first rock bands to regularly feature the latter instrument since Black Oak Arkansas). The group was formed by guitarist and singer Josh "Reverend" Peyton, who was born and raised in Indiana, and first exposed to music through his father's record collection, which was heavy on Neil Young, Jimi Hendrix, and Bob Dylan, all artists with their own take on the blues. When Josh was 12 years old, his dad gave him a Kay guitar, and once he grew to know his way around the instrument, he got an amp to go along with it. With his brother Jayme Peyton on drums and a mutual friend on bass, Josh formed his first band, Drive-Thru, and began playing parties and dances as Josh developed a greater passion for vintage blues, ranging from electric blues icons like Muddy Waters and B.B. King to country-blues artists such as Bukka White and Charley Patton. Not long after finishing high school, Josh broke up Drive-Thru after developing a severe case of tendonitis that made it extremely painful for him to play the guitar. However, after a year working as a hotel desk clerk, doctors at the Indiana Hand Center were able to perform surgery that allowed him to play the guitar again, and around the same time, he met a woman named Breezy, who shared his love of the blues. The two fell in love and eventually married; they decided to form a band, with Josh on guitar and vocals, and Breezy on vocals and washboard. Jayme Peyton rounded out the group on drums, and the Big Damn Band was born. The group hit the road hard -- they play up to 250 dates a year -- and in 2004 cut their first album, The Pork n' Beans Collection, which they self-released, selling thousands of copies at the merch table at their shows. After two more self-released albums (2006's Big Damn Nation and 2007's The Gospel Album), Peyton's Big Damn Band struck a deal with Side One Dummy, a punk label with a fondness for aggressive roots music, and 2008's The Whole Fam Damily was their first release for the label. In late 2009, Jayme Peyton left the Big Damn Band, and Aaron "Cuz" Persinger took over the group's makeshift drum kit (complete with a modified bucket). Two more albums for Side One Dummy followed (2011's Peyton on Patton, with the group covering the songs of blues legend Charley Patton, and 2012's Between the Ditches) before Persinger left the Big Damn Band and Ben "Bird Dog" Bussell signed on as drummer in 2013. In 2014, The Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band signed a new record deal with the relaunched blues label Yazoo Records; their first release for the company, So Delicious, dropped in January 2015.

OFFICIAL SITE

2187 - THE REVEREND PEYTON'S BIG DAMN BAND - Between The Ditches (2012)

THE REVEREND PEYTON'S BIG DAMN BAND
''BETWEEN THE DITCHES''
AUG 7 2012
SIDE ONE DUMMY RECORDS
48:13

1. Devils Look Like Angels/2:45
2. Something For Nothing/3:39
3. We'll Get Through/3:47
4. Big Blue Chevy '72/4:06
5. Shut The Screen/2:53
6. Shake 'em Off Like Fleas/3:44
7. Easy Come Easy Go/3:46
8. I Don't Know/3:54
9. Don't Grind It Down/3:19
10. The Money Goes/4:28
11. Move Along Mister/2:21
12. Between The Ditches/3:12
13. Brokedown Everywhere/3:22
14. Brown County Bound/2:57
All Tracks By The Reverend Peyton

Tim J.W. Baker /Vocals (Background)
Scott Currie /Vocals (Background)
Ryan Deasy /Vocals (Background)
Jennie Devoe /Vocals (Background)
Paul Mahern /Percussion, Producer, Vocals
Aaron Persinger /Drums, Hollers, Percussion
Breezy Peyton /Percussion, Vocals (Background), Washboard
The Reverend Peyton /Finger Picking, Guitar, Harmonica, Mandolin, Producer, Slide Guitar, Vocals
Christa Thompson /Vocals (Background)

REVIEW
by Steve Leggett
The Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band is a hillbilly country blues trio (Josh Peyton on guitar and roaring vocals, his wife Breezy on washboard, and cousin Aaron Persinger on percussion and drums) out of Indiana with a wonderfully ragged and swampy deep Delta sound that kicks like a mule, and the trio thankfully doesn't deviate much from that core sound on Between the Ditches, produced by Peyton and Paul Mahern and recorded at White Arc Studio in Bloomington, Indiana. Unlike the band's previous albums, though, Between the Ditches wasn't recorded whirlwind live in four or five hours, and represents a sort of refinement for the Big Damn Band in the studio. These guys are a hillbilly blues throwback ensemble, though, and no amount of refinement can really push them off their mark. Peyton's voice still croaks, shouts, and roars, and his unique, kinetic slide guitar playing, whether it's a '30s National guitar, a cigar-box guitar, a Gibson flattop 1929 L2, or an Airline Map electric guitar, still drives and churns like a runaway train. He just sounds clearer, but no less powerful. The songs are shambling, wise, and real, and often deceptively simple, sounding somehow like they come from the century before, even as they are very much a part of this one. Peyton has developed a direct but clever lyrical writing style, wearily proclaiming "It's hard to tell when devils look like angels and angels look like hell" in the fine opening track, "Devils Look Like Angels," and in "Shut the Screen," a breakneck slide guitar romp, he shouts "Shut the screen, it's too damn hot, and them bugs are too damn mean," as his slide lines bounce and blister over Breezy's washboard and Persinger's bucket drum rhythms. This is an American band in the truest sense, hailing from Indiana, singing about life driving and living on the everyday back roads of Indiana in the 21st century, but sounding like they came out of the bayous of Louisiana or the Mississippi Delta the century before. It's a potent and timeless sound, and thankfully studio refinement doesn't hinder it at all.

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