Chickasaw Mudd Puppies (from the album Fall Line

Chickasaw Mudd Puppies (from the album Fall Line

Chickasaw Mudd Puppies (from the album Fall Line available on Strolling Bones Records) (by Lee Zimmerman)
 
Thirty plus-years is a long time to be away from the music biz. At a time when entertainment trends come and go, stardom can’t ever be considered simply a stationary thing. Public tastes are fickle, and, in turn, fame is fleeting at best, easily relegated to the back burner at a moment’s notice.
 
Consequently, when a band like Chickasaw Mudd Puppies opt for a comeback three decades after what was originally assumed to be their final opus, 8 Track Stomp, in 1991, the odds of regaining even that slight success they found early on would appear to be nothing less than a daunting challenge. After all, they were never big stars to begin with, although their roots in the Athens Georgia music scene — once a hotbed of independent music — and the fact that they were championed by R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe, certainly provided them with enough promise and potential to reap them greater glories. Still, as purveyors of brazen boogie and a certain hillbilly howl, their audience was destined to be limited even at the outset.
 
That said, the trio — vocalist, washboard player, and harpist Brant Slay, vocalist, guitarist, and percussionist Ben Reynolds, and new recruit, drummer Alan ‘Lumpy’ Coward — haven’t quite changed their tune. Fall Line packs the same sort of punch — all redneck, blue-collar revelry that packs the same solid stomp as the earlier efforts prior to their break-up. Songs such as “6 Volt”, “Roadkill”, “Hands”, “Flatcar”, and for that matter, all the rest of the set, deliver a sizzle and snarl, albeit at varying paces. It’s riveting, revealing and assuredly rock steady, all in the context of their frenzy and fury.
 
That, of course, is the sum of their strengths, one defined by a boogie beat and a swampy combination of bluster and blues. These Pupps still possess the same degree of sizzle and snarl as before, and that in itself, provides a perfect pretext for a revival. So, rock on, rowdy ones. The drive and determination is as unrelenting as ever.  (by Lee Zimmerman)
 
Listen and buy the music of Chickasaw Mudd Puppies from AMAZON
 
For more information head over to the Chickasaw Mudd Puppies website