Nashville’s All Them Witches return to their heavy blues roots on their new song “Blacksnake Blues,” part of a single-per-month project that’s been dubbed Baker’s Dozen and will feature — you guessed it — a song for each month in 2022 and one to grow on. The band last year announced they’d been rejoined by multi-instrumentalist/organist Allan Van Cleave, and though tour plans for 2020 and 2021 were largely scuttled, the four-piece apparently weren’t sitting still. “Blacksnake Blues” is the first new offering with Van Cleave alongside bassist/vocalist Charles Michael Parks, Jr., guitarist Ben McLeod and drummer/visual artist Robbie Staebler since 2017’s Sleeping Through the War (review here), and its 11-minute run demonstrates the spaciousness his work brought to the band in the first place, allowing the jam into fluid reaches it might not otherwise be able to find in quite the same way.

Van Cleave and McLeod both shine here, and Staebler‘s gentle shove of momentum is no less signature All Them Witches than Parks‘ willing-to-be-soulful-but-not-just-aping-a-blues-delivery verses. They proceed through the verses with due swagger for a veteran band doing what they do, but nothing here is overwrought, even as the jam takes hold and they make their way out, not to return. I don’t know if “Blacksnake Blues” is an indicator as to the mood or vibe of the rest of what will feature in Baker’s Dozen — given everything the band have done to-date in any incarnation, ever, I suspect not — but as a surprise and a heads up that there’s plenty more to come amid the long swath of tour dates they’ve announced for much of 2022, well, the news is welcome and I’ll take it as it comes. There are a lot of fans of earlier All Them Witches who are going to be very, very much on board with this.

And if it gets on Bandcamp, remember to grab it while you can because their digital stuff doesn’t always stay forever. Just saying.

Enjoy:

All Them Witches, “Blacksnake Blues”

All Them Witches – Blacksnake Blues
https://allthemwitches.lnk.to/blacksnake

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Blacksnake Blues is the first song from ATW’s upcoming project, “Baker’s Dozen.” Baker’s Dozen will feature 13 songs, one each month in 2022 plus an extra track.

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Tags: All Them Witches, All Them Witches Baker's Dozen, Baker's Dozen, Nashville, Tennessee

This entry was posted on Friday, January 28th, 2022 at 11:24 am and is filed under Whathaveyou. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.