Brad Vickers & His Vestapolitans - That's What They Say (2015)

Tracklist

01. Seminole Blues
02. Don't You Love Your Daddy No More
03. If You Leave Me Now
04. Everything About You Is Blue
05. Another Lonesome Road
06. That's What They Say
07. Mountain Sparrow
08. Fightin'
09. Don't You Change a Thing
10. Wishing Well
11. Mama's Cookin'
12. Twenty-First Century Rag
13. The Secret
14. Having a Ball
15. In for a Penny



Brad Vickers & His Vestapolitans have always celebrated the roots of the music that we love and that has influenced us: blues, folk, rags, and “great American roots ’n’ roll”. For this album, “That’s What They Say”, we go even further back and mine this rich vein even deeper, with me developing one of my earliest-written songs, “Another Lonesome Road”, and Margey Peters writing a (very) short tribute, “Wishing Well”, in the style of folk singer Charity Bailey, who was a music teacher at her nursery school. The result is something we hope will resonate with you immediately and be familiarly pleasing. Again, we have collaborated with Dave Gross, and again we have called on good and talented friends to contribute to the proceedings. Master violinist Charles Burnham is on hand once more, as are the great horn players Jim Davis and Matt Cowan. The wonderful Bill Rankin takes the drum chair, and versatile Dave Gross jumps in to add color on a variety of instruments from banjo to percussion. Within our good-time sound, we enjoy a broad range of styles. There are new treatments of a couple of the songs we love best. We start the album with a driving version of Tampa Red (Hudson Whittaker)’s “Seminole Blues” and you’ll find the joy of an old-time sounding string and reed band on a traditional song I learned via Leadbelly, “Don’t You Love Your Daddy No More?” All the others are our originals. This diverse album offers an Appalachian-style ode to a bird, “Mountain Sparrow”, plus a broadly humorous paean to the world’s cuisine, “Mama’s Cookin’”, and the gospel-flavored “Fightin’”—both featuring Mikey Junior on background vocals—and also includes a Gypsy-tinged biography of a post-war couple (“In For A Penny”), where Margey is joined by vocalists Christine Santelli and Gina Sicilia. We’ve often been told that The Vestapolitans write new material that sounds like time-burnished songs. We hope that some of these will become your own personal favorites.

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