Struggle Buggy - Keep It Clean (2024)

I hope it’s not just me, but I’m pretty sure that we take a lot of excellent musicians for-granted, simply because they are ‘local’ and play somewhere close by most weeks; and sadly ‘for free.’

I’m pretty sure that’s the case with the legendary Geordie purveyors of Good-Time Blues, 30’s and 40’s urban blues alongside a hefty dose of Hokum, Ragtime, and Jug Band Blues with a little Jazz, Western Swing and even Calypso thrown in for good luck!
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Struggle Buggy!!
If you’re not already aux fait with the delights of Struggle Buggy, you are in for a rare treat starting with the lairy 4th Street Messaround, a song which I’m damned if I can describe; apart from saying it’s ‘a hoot and full of style and swagger!’

On track two Black Rat Swing we are treat to some stunning steel guitar and harmonica alongside some grizzly impassioned vocals as Lee Bates inhabits (as usual) the character in the song.
I think I’ve stumbled on why Struggle Buggy are so good; they actually ‘believe in the music’ they are playing, whereas their contempories simply ‘sing songs.’
That’s the key to the likes of Flyin’ Airplane Blues, Keep Your Hair Parted and the brooding Come On Back which sound as if we’ve been transported back to a sleazy Honky-Tonk somewhere in the rough part of Chicago or Arkansas pre WWII.

With over 50 years to choose from, the only band that I can compare Struggle Buggy too would be the Lovin’ Spoonful; but only if John B Sebastian etc. had been born 20 years before they were!
Don’t be fooled by the easy going and laid back sound here; it takes years of experience and a love of the music to make Custard Pie, Wonderful Time and Going Back To Arkansas sound so ‘simple’ when the construction and arrangements are nearly as complicated as anything Pink Floyd ever recorded IMHO.
While the whole album is an absolute blast from start to finish, not least the charming Walking Cane; but there are two songs that I keep being drawn too, which means it’s a tie between the desperately emotional Panic Is On, first written and recorded by Hezekiah Jenkins in 1931 but is sadly a tale of our times here in 2024 too …

T’other is the classic Crazy ‘Bout a Woman is obviously a lot more uptempo and as well as some fast and furious geetar pickin’ features some red hot harmonica wheezing and this is a first for RMHQ, Blues drenched Kazoo too!

I’m sure that the cognoscenti (I’m thinking of you Gary Grainger) can tell you who first recorded every song here and who was walking past the studio, but for me and everyone who has ever witnessed a full blooded Struggle Buggy gig … these songs were all left to the band and are now theirs and theirs alone.

*** If Struggle Buggy lived in that there London you’d never stop hearing about them in the music press, and I’m pretty sure they’ have been invited to play the other stage or at least a marquee at Glastonbury, but they don’t; and are actually the worst kept secret in North East England, and it’s likely to stay that way too.