Mississippi Heat is a blues band concept. Since its founding in 1991, through various permutations of musicians, celebration, joy, death, disagreement, the recording of four albums, and thousands of gigs throughout North and South America and Europe, Mississippi Heat has strived for artistic collaboration where everyone contributes songs, ideas, solos and voices, and everyone gets a chance to share the spotlight. Like the best bands, Mississippi Heat is a cohesive unit where individual personalities are subservient to the masterful whole. That having been said, this new Mississippi Heat album also is a show-case for bandleader Pierre Lacocque — both behind the scenes as songwriter and producer, and out in front as a powerful, melodic voice on harmonica. The constant in Mississippi Heat is Pierre (and even further behind the scenes, his brother Michel, the band's manager). The Chicago Reader said, "Lacocque is that rare younger generation harpist who's absorbed the lessons of subtlety, silence and solo construction from the masters... as well as their raucous, hawk-like tonal power" Having arrived in Chicago from Belgium in 1969, Pierre has emerged as a sensitive and creative songwriter, a bandleader with vision, and a budding harmonica legend. Handyman is Mississippi Heat's fourth album. Like the three previous CDs —Straight From The Heart (1992), Learned The Hard Way (1994), and Thunder In My Heart (1995) — it is chock full of original blues songs performed by a first rat