Band of Heysek feat. RL Boyce & Kenny Brown -Juke My Joint (2020)

> The album

Czech it out  !

I'm not going to paraphrase what's perfectly explained in the double presentation featured on Blue Dragon. I will just add that since the collapse of the Soviet Empire and the subsequent tearing down of the Iron curtain, East European people could freely open their ears to western musics, and more particularly American ones, be it jazz, rock, R'n'B, hip hop, folk, country, and of course blues. Western albums became commercially accessible to anybody, instead of being illegally smuggled in by a few risk-taking connoisseurs.
The young Czechs, those born between let's say 1975 and 1980, who were in their teens when their country got full independence, are no exception. So it is for the three members of Band of Heysek. Not only could they get blues albums, but blues artists started to come for live concerts and festivals.
That's what happened in 2018 when they toured some Eastern European countries with vintage Mississippi bluesmen R.L. Boyce, Kenny Brown and Robert Kimbrough. These probably enjoyed their musical company enough to invite them to perform at the legendary unique "North Mississippi Hill Country Picnic" festival the following year. On this occasion they did an impromptu recording session with Boyce and Brown that gave the present album.

If you like R.L. Boyce, you'll like this album because, to be frank, it is a R.L. Boyce album. Incidentally it's often listed as "R.L. Boyce & Band of Heysek feat. Kenny Brown", which I find more representative of the album's content. Personally I would even dare : "R.L. Boyce & Kenny Brown feat. Band of Heysek", but that wouldn't be very fair.
"Juke My Joint" is 100% R.L. Boyce's music style and sound, and singing. He and his accomplice Kenny Brown enjoyed a good time jam with a band of talented Czech youngsters who appreciate their music, admire them and were totally subjugated by the two Mississippi veterans. (Also, such a meeting brings a light of hope in a time of nationalist and xenophobic, not to say racist, rejection of all that is "foreign", something only music can do. But that's a different topic that doesn't quite fit here. Or does it...)

Kenny Brown (left) & R.L. Boyce.

It's a very enjoyable electric Hill Country blues album featuring eight raw, heavy and greasy Hill Country slow boogies that will cling to your ears like a leech  for some 42 minutes. The opening "Angry Man", a sorrowful mid-tempo lament, sets the tone for the whole album : repetitive hypnotic songs, Boyce's vintage stormy sound, crackled by lightnings of guitar by Kenny Brown and Jan Švihálek, and tormented lyrics co-written by Boyce and Švihálek. It sounds as natural and spontaneous as a juke joint improvised jam (hence the title of the album). Special mention to the final "No more boogie" for its humorous title considering it is precisely a boogie. "No mo'… no mo'… no mo'…" laughs Boyce at the end. As far as I'm concerned, I wouldn't mind getting mo' !

Videos

Band Of Heysek recording sessions
> Band Of Heysek, R.L. Boyce & Kenny Brownin "Let Me Take You To My Place" (2019 recording session of "Juke my Joint") : https://youtu.be/BCcVQVAETa0
> Recording session for the 2019-issued album "I'm Glad I Met You": https://youtu.be/IXJNtMIo24Q

Band of Heysek live
> In  2017 (90mn) : https://youtu.be/uGgdl7YKzdw
> In 2018 : https://youtu.be/oXfxvet4SWc
> In 2021 (65mn) : https://youtu.be/0FrUBIMU-u0
> In Sarajevo (Bosnia) in 2017 : https://youtu.be/3YQsmy2egjo

R.L. Boyce
> With Lady Jama at the R.L.Boyce Picnic 2021 in Como : https://youtu.be/78ItWcFGueM
> At the R.L. Boyce Picnic 2020 in Como : https://youtu.be/obssFL_afqw
> At the Montreal Jazz Festival in 2018 : https://youtu.be/UGqoCdCM154

[Click on pics to enlarge]

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