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Artist
Ken McMahan
10+ albums
Southern Rockrockbluesblues rock
about
Ken McMahan Album: Ball And Chain (1998) With Ball & Chain, McMahan stands on the edge of a new Southern Rock revolution. McMahan's deep, booming voice is perfectly appropriate for the material he's performing, easily rising above the ringing mix of blazing guitars and manic percussion. Once again recording as a trio, with drummer Perkins and bassist Kyle Miller, McMahan has opted for a more stripped-down sound on Ball & Chain. His growth as a wordsmith is obvious, as well, in songs like the rollicking Way Of The World, the bluesy The Long Haul (sounding a lot like the Dusters of old) or the Stonesish title cut, Ball & Chain, a collaboration with fellow Nashville talent Tommy Womack. Ten Years Ago rips and roars out of your speakers like a raging bull while McMahan closes the album with some delicious six-string work on Just Another Memory. Another collaboration, this one with Dan Baird on the track Wicked World, is as dark and steamy a slab of rock & roll as the South has ever produced. With both feet in the same voodoo-infested swamps of Louisiana that produced Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Wicked World treats the listener to McMahan and Baird trading razor-sharp guitar riffs as McMahan's somber vocals announce the impending fate of mankind. Throughout Ball & Chain, strains of musical influences such as Skynyrd, Blackfoot and the Outlaws can be heard, with McMahan taking the classic Southern Rock formula, trimming away the excess and filtering it through his own unique creativ
