Lamont Cranston Blues Band - Roll With Me (1997)

A longtime Midwest club favorite, the Lamont Cranston Blues Band comes up to the plate with 12 strong original tracks showing that modern blues has some other agenda than merely replicating one's record collection. Guitarist/vocalist/harmonica man Pat Hayes is the heart and soul of the band, equally adept at burning up the fretboard (as he does on "West Side Woman") or blowing the walls down as he does on the title track. The genres are all familiar — as are many of the lyrics — but what Hayes creates out of these simple tools is something new and different enough to warrant a second look. On "Hip Cat Bounce," he proves that modern blues guitar can be lowdown and dirty without a lot of note flurries or extraneous rock additions to get the point across, while on "Country Farm," he weds Little Walter-like swoops from his harp to the most Excello-like of backgrounds. He gets jazzy on "I Couldn't Put You Down" and utterly soulful on "Don't Take Me Down Again." A record so deceptively original and simple, it may take a couple of listens for it all to sink in, but one that's well worth the time put in to do it.