Booker T. this year has done what Bettye LaVette did a couple of years ago. He hired the best Southern rock band around known as the Drive-By Truckers, added Neil Young and cut a hard driving rock & roll, R & B album called Potato Hole. Best part is of course the signature Southern rock sound of three lead guitars. I first read about this album earlier in the year when Playboy profiled Booker T. and this new album. It is great stuff. The album is on ANTI records which is home to Bettye LaVette and Neko Case. Good company there.
A potato hole refers to a hole in the earthen floor of a cabin where food was kept when Booker T was growing up. The album has the new sounds of today's Southern rock but also that ancient feel, a deep and unyielding beat that must go back thousands of years. Primal but tempered. Modern yet it interprets the past. There is plenty of Hammond B-3, but don't expect any Green Onion organ fills here. Booker T. and his assembled group do a couple of cool covers. One is Outkast's Hey Ya. The second is a nice instrumental (the whole album is of course instrumental) version of Drive-By Trucker's Space City. Cool stuff, good modern R & B. Strongly recommend this to anyone dabbling in blues and R & B in general.
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