Chris Vincent & The Raw Deals – Good Crook
This showcase comes from New Orleans-based singer/songwriter & slide guitarist Chris Vincent. Chris explores several genres, hard bop jazz, Delta blues, roots music & improvisation. Chris has a coal-burning vocal & plays a 1947 Gibson L7 guitar. Residing in the French Quarter, his song’s depth of expression emanates from the chaotic beauty & elegant decline (those words are hard to say out loud) of New Orleans.
Good Crook (Drops Aug 1/Chris Vincent Music/37:14) escapes with 12 excuses for being well produced & arranged by Chris & recorded in New Orleans, LA. The album features The Raw Deals — Johnny Vidacovich (drums), & Dean Zucchero (bass).
There’s a touch of the late blues guitarist/vocalist John Campbell’s deep graveyard voice, & dark themes especially on “Midnight After All.” Some songs have a stripped-back retro blues score that radiates from the guitar & Vincent’s steel-belted blues spin. Some tunes use cliché cleverly, the brief “three guesses, which one,” “do not pass go, baby,” “you should have come with a written warning,” “the elephant in the room,” & “all the tea in China,” generate smiles instead of winces. My point? Cliches in newer blues songs don’t always work because they can render a blues song into kitsch & a songwriter doesn’t want to do that.
Darker corners of Chris’s past create a sharp wit to some of these deeper explored titles. The retinue of blues is not always about love’s loss, hard times, or unrequited love. Struggles with the self would qualify, stitching wounds closed too & the showcase is warts & all as the PR states. There is no mainstream sugar sprinkled in these numbers. There’s a light scrape of Canada’s singer-songwriter Tom Wilson (“Shine”) & Tom Waits with Chris’s “Catherine the Great.”
The tunes contained in this set cover a relationship that should’ve ended long ago. Questionable relationships. Played in open G, “Come Clean” is the calling card of blues legend Son House & Keith Richards. This one’s about pulling truth from a liar. Now, why didn’t the Rolling Stones think of that? Not all the tunes are performed cut & dry. There are awkward spots, some have more jive narratives, but the arrangements are rhythmic, far from predictable & always entertaining. It’s also a nice break from blues singing.
The CD has a handsome, laminated die-cut 4-panel package with a lyric insert.
Highlights – “Good Crook,” “Midnight After All,” “Come Clean,” “Half Block Cadillac,” “Cows,” & “Catherine the Great.”
Image courtesy of Joshua Timmy & CD images courtesy of Joshua Bock. CD @ Bandcamp & https://chrisvincentneworleans.com/