2019 – Big Legal Mess Records
Release Date : March 1,2019
By Phillip Smith; Feb. 16, 2019
Willie Farmer, an auto mechanic from Duck Hill,
Mississippi, who’s owned his own shop for over forty years, scores huge with
his splendid new blues album, The Man From
the Hill. Recorded at Delta Sonic Sound in Memphis, Farmer
enlists top-tier talent to back him, like Jimbo Mathus (Squirrel Nut
Zippers), Will Sexton, Mark Edgar Stuart, and Al Gamble (
St.Paul and the Broken Bones).
I love that rolling rhythm embedded into Farmer’s
songs. On Junior Kimbrough’s “Feel
So Bad”, which leads the album off, the riff is unavoidably hypnotic and
alluring. He also rolls out a hearty cover
of “Shake It”, originally from Jessie Mae Hemphill. “I am the Lightning”, is also heavily soaked
in the North Mississippi hill country waters.
It just pulls me right on in.
This track in particular also appears on an upcoming release called Blue Muse, a various artist collection
from the Music Maker Relief Foundation.
An avid churchgoer who still plays every Friday,
Farmer also represents the sweet sounds of old-school gospel music with The
Sensational Nightengales’ “At the Meeting”. Farmer
has a special way of bringing the listener right into the songs he sings. When he sings “Daddy Was Right”, it’s an
absolute heart-breaker.
This is definitely an album to keep an eye out for. I can’t get enough of it.
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