FRESH NEW ARTIST FEATURE CONTINUED

For the second day of the fresh new artist feature, we are spotlighting Back Door Slam, John Hiatt & The Ageless Beauties, and Moreland & Arbuckle.

Back Door Slam

"I heard the spirit of Jimi Hendrix coming from the open, streetside windows of a joint called B.D. Riley's. It was ‘Red House,' executed superbly by a surprisingly young trio called Back Door Slam.” – Patrick MacDonald on Back Door Slam at SXSW in the Seattle Times Almost everyone, if pressed, can recall some key point in their life when a single event caused them to suddenly and dramatically alter course. To have had such a revelation at age 11 and to have made good on it—turning a spontaneous passion into a serious profession that demands lifelong commitment—now that's a little out of the ordinary. “I was in a car with my dad, and he put on Dire Straits' ‘Sultans of Swing,'” explains Davy Knowles, 20-year-old guitarist, singer and principal songwriter of the blues-rock trio Back Door Slam. “I just fell in love with the music then and there. That track changed my life, and I realized, ‘I really want to be able to do that.' ” The inspirational moment occurred on the Isle of Man, the tiny kingdom stuck in the middle of the Irish Sea (roughly equidistant from Belfast to the west and Liverpool to the east), where the teenaged trio coalesced—with this particular lineup in 2006. Knowles and drummer Ross Doyle, 20, had played together in a prior version; bassist Adam Jones, 19, was the most recent to join. Taking its name from a song popularized by early inspiration Robert Cray, Back Door Slam, has, however, acted rather swiftly on its intention to make good. Under the guidance of the same IOM-based management team that launched multi-platinum Grammy-nominated Corinne Bailey Rae last year, they have already issued a pair of EPs and a full concert DVD, wowed audiences at the U.S.'s taste-making South by Southwest conference, supported name acts as diverse as Don McLean and Elvin Bishop, and prepared an audaciously impressive debut album, ROLL AWAY, issued by independent Blix Street Records, best known for the catalogue of recordings by the late Eva Cassidy. That release was preceded by the band's first full American tour. If conventional wisdom has it that the most popular activity of the young is rebelling against everything that preceded them, it's wisdom that is in need of some reevaluation. Both the general tradition of the blues and the specific experience of Back Door Slam refute it, in ways that support the linkage of all good music across any expanse of time or space. “Sultans of Swing” got Knowles started on guitar (“I nicked my dad's acoustic and figured the song out by ear. I must've played it for a year.”) and led him to his father's record collection. “That's where I found people like John Mayall's Bluesbreakers,” Knowles recalls with obvious fondness, “and, from there, I got into Eric Clapton and Peter Green in the early Fleetwood Mac, and [late Irish axe-man] Rory Gallagher, who I just love. Then I began reading guitar-player magazines and started seeing who the people I was influenced by had listened to, which is how I learned about Blind Willie Johnson and Robert Johnson.” As much as the band enjoyed recording its debut long-player "Roll Away", playing live is “definitely where it's at,” says Knowles. “It's all I ever wanted to do: go on tour and keep playing.” Which is what Back Door Slam did throughout the spring and summer of 2007. On their Austin stop at SXSW, the musicians ran into a fellow artist with Isle of Man connections. “We got to meet Pete Townshend,” Knowles enthuses. “He was really nice and took time to speak with us. He went to school on the Isle of Man for a bit, and I think he's still got relatives there.” The hook-up with the Who man further underscores just how far the young trio has come in such a short time. At the end of May, Back Door Slam performed on the same bill with The Who, as featured guests at the Isle's first annual Peel Bay Festival. It's not at all unlikely that their performance on that stage, and on the 11 tracks that comprise the ROLL AWAY album, will wind up affecting music fans just as deeply as “Sultans of Swing” touched Davy Knowles. A tradition continues.

John Hiatt & The Ageless Beauties

John Hiatt's career has spanned more than 30 years and his songs have been covered by everyone from Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Bonnie Raitt, and BB King to Iggy Pop, Three Dog Night and The Neville Brothers. John Hiatt began his solo career with the 1974 album Hangin' Around the Observatory. Hiatt's landmark 1987 release Bring The Family received critical praise and was his first album to chart in the U.S. In 1993, Rhino Records released Love Gets Strange: The Songs of John Hiatt, which collected many of the cover versions of his songs that were recorded during the 80s and 90s. 2000's Crossing Muddy Waters was released on the independent imprint Vanguard Records to critical acclaim and called “The most natural and relaxed John Hiatt album in years…” by All Music Guide. On May 27, New West Records released John Hiatt's new full length album Same Old Man, his first album since 2005's critically acclaimed Master of Disaster, of which The Washington Post declared “Hiatt has written some of the best melodies of his career,” and Time Out New York proclaimed “...his most vibrant and soulful album in years.” Same Old Man will also be available as a Limited Edition 180 gram vinyl record. Same Old Man was recorded at Highway 61 Recordings and produced by John Hiatt. Appearing on the album are Kenneth Blevins on drums, Patrick O'Hearn on bass and Luther Dickinson on guitar, mandolin and national resonator. John's daughter, Lilly Hiatt, sings harmony on the songs “Love You Again” and “What Love Can Do.”

Moreland & Arbuckle

Myth-making and myth-busting is what the blues has always been about. For example: There are intersections where roads cross in the rural South, but there is no “crossroads.” The roots of the blues originate in Africa, but the music did not exist until the African and Anglo traditions met and commingled in post-Civil War America. The death of the blues gets predicted with numbing repetition, but then is regularly “reborn” for an audience hungry for spiritual nourishment. The great state of Kansas is best known for producing “Dorothy” and a bombastic rock band in the 1970s. Until now. Enter Moreland & Arbuckle fresh from the heartland with their hair-raising mix of stomping Mississippi Hill Country, Delta and rural blues. Reaching the finals at the 2005 International Blues Competition in Memphis allowed them to bust out of their regional confines after performing together for only three years, and since then the dynamic duo have taken their emotionally searing music around the world. Guitarist Aaron “Chainsaw” Moreland was born on December 16, 1974 in Emporia, Kansas. His father played and his son's earliest memories are of hearing 8-track tapes of Kiss and Led Zeppelin records. As he grew, Moreland felt compelled to become a musician as his only option and began playing guitar at 15, serving his apprenticeship in rock bands until hearing Son House seven years later. His total immersion in the rawest prewar blues even extends to his choice of instruments that include a fretless, four-string “cigar box” guitar that contains a bass string, a National Steel and a funky old parlor guitar. Singer and harp blower Dustin Arbuckle was born in Wichita, Kansas on December 25, 1981 and experienced a parallel upbringing with his musician father and singing from a very early age. He also followed his muse to play at 15 after hearing Elmore James and B.B. King, though the blues harp lessons would become his vocation. Prior to their current incarnation, Arbuckle and Moreland also had an electric quartet called the King Snakes that was reduced to an acoustic duo after shedding bassists once too often. Rare are the young contemporary blues cats that can convincingly evoke primal country blues without being mere dilettantes. Perhaps Aaron Moreland explains it best when he describes what he and Dustin Arbuckle express as, “Life experiences, emotive musical overtones and rhythms, honest and heartfelt music…raw, stripped down, primal and sincere.”