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Artist
Hambone
12+ albums
about
I remember thinking this when a music producer friend asked me to join him at a Hambone show the coming Friday night. “He’s this white kid that sounds like an old black dude,” my cohort continued trying to convince me to attend. I wouldn’t consider myself a strict rule following purist when it comes to real country blues because I do have a soft spot for Johnny Winter and you don’t get any whiter than that, but if you ain’t dead and black you ain’t blues by my standards. I slaughter my sacrificial goat at the alter of Muddy, McDowell, Hopkins, and House, and I’m listening to Scott Dunbar while writing this. I remember thinking if I go to this club and hear this snot nose white punk bastardize my afore mentioned religion somebody will get cut long and deep. As is my producer friend’s modus operandi he didn’t show for the gig so I introduced myself to Hambone over a few shots of bourbon then grabbed a seat so I could observe Hambone play “the blues”. What I witnessed was pure spastic musical exhibition. He perches behind a crappy pawnshop kick drum and hi-hat and begins pounding out neanderthal beats that most drummers are to sophisticated to bother with, and all of this rhythmic chaos is happening almost independently while he hammers mercilessly on a beat-down telecaster and howls vocals from someplace further down and much darker than the anatomical proximity of the human gut. What I hear is as rich as it is dangerous and unorganized; his telecaster rings like the proverbi
