SS-021 :: FIVE HORSE JOHNSON – No. 6 Dance
TRACK LIST
1. Intro
2. Mississippi King
3. Spillin’ Fire
4. Silver
5. Gods of Demolition
6. Shine Around
7. It Ain’t Easy
8. Hollerin’
9. Lollipop
10. Swallow the World
11. Buzzard Luck
12. Odella
ALBUM INFO
They don’t make them like this too often anymore. No. 6 Dance is American rock & roll from the heartland with Five Horse Johnson hopping a freight train and riding the rails from rootsy blues to acid rock to ’70s guitar-band heaviness. The album takes Led Zeppelin’s brand of psychedelic stoner tunes and puts them in a stars-and-stripes T-shirt. “Mississippi King” is a catchy jam that would have suited Skynyrd just fine. “Spillin’ Fire” takes the old school harmonica blues and rocks out with them, and “It Ain’t Easy” makes for a sweet, Southern, sun-drenched cover. “Gods of Demolition,” the title that best befits Five Horse Johnson, showcases Brad Coffin’s demon guitar and Eric Oblander’s desert rocking, Kyuss-esque vocals. But the best song on the disc has got to be “Shine Around,” a groovy, circular, Black Crowes-style jam with a singalong chorus — a tune worthy of the smokiest middle-American teen bedrooms circa 1973. – ALL MUSIC
Credits
Five Horse Johnson is:
Eric Oblander: vox & harp
Brad Coffin: vox & guitar
Steve Smith: bass
Additional Musicians:
Chuck Mauk: drums on Tracks 2-7,9,10, & 12
Billy Reedy: lead guitar on tracks 7 & 12
Kenny Olson: lead guitar on tracks 2 & 6
Jimmy Bones: organ and backing vocals on Tracks 2 & 6
Mark Miers: piano on track 8
Sandman: other lead guitar on 7
Al Sutton: backing vocals on Track 7
Bob Ebeling: melotron on track 11
Phil Durr: guitar on track 5
Executive Producer: Scott Hamilton.
Fine Arts: Mark Dancey.
Produced by: Al Sutton, Scott Hamilton, & Bill Kozy.
Recorded at Rustbelt Studios, Royal Oak, MI.
Engineered by: Bill Kozy, Dan Winters, Bob Ebeling, and occasionally Al Sutton.
Mastered by: Chris Gooseman at Solid Sound, Ann Arbor, MI
SS-013 :: FIVE HORSE JOHNSON – Fat Black Pussycat
TRACK LIST
1. Lightning When I Need
2. Fly Back Home
3. So Low
4. She Don’t Know
5. Sermons in the Yard
6. Say We Can
7. Bleachin’ Bones
8. Climb Right Through
9. I Cried
10. Dead Language
ALBUM INFO
“Five Horse Johnson shoots straight down the middle with some super raw, ass-shakin’, blues boogie rock. These drunks have total ZZ Top damage (old ZZ, babies, the good stuff) and they just rock straight through the whole damn record! If you are into any kind of blues rock, you’ll dig on this album. It’s got that R.L.Burnside/ Junior Kimbrough sound to it but it packs a heavier punch. (Anyone remember Raging Slab?) This is music that you should drink an entire bottle of Yukon Jack to, before goin’ into town and openin’ up a can ‘o whup-ass on someone. (8)” METAL HAMMER
Credits
Five Horse Johnson is:
Brad Coffin: vox & guitars
Eric Oblander: vox & harp
Steve Smith: bass
Tim Gahagan.: drums
Additional Musicians:
Phil Durr: Guitar
Recorded at Rustbelt Studios – Royal Oak, MI.
Produced by Dave Piechura, Matt O’brien, and Al Sutton.
Mastered by Chris Goosman at Solid Sound – Ann Arbor, MI.
Artwork by Mark Dancey.
Executive Producer: Scott Hamilton
SS-006 :: FIVE HORSE JOHNSON – Double Down
TRACKLIST:
1. Downstone Blues 03:48
2. Shine Eyed 05:53
3. Double Down 05:11
4. Roll With You 05:22
5. Wash Your Hands 04:33
6. Beggin’ for Ball 04:03
7. High Time 04:23
8. Diamond 04:42
9. People’s Jam 08:31
10. Submission 09:23
ALBUM INFO:
Five Horse Johnson comes straight out of Toledo, OH, with big riff, get down, rootsy, middle American rock & roll that takes acid blues and Led Zeppelin and mixes in influences like the Black Crowes, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Aerosmith, and ZZ Top.
The band — made up of Eric Oblander on harps and vocals, Brad Coffin on guitar, Steve Smith on bass — got together in 1995 and began opening for acts like War, Southern Culture on the Skids, Atomic Bitchwax, the Queens of the Stone Age, and R.L. Burnside. In 1998, they released Double Down. The critically acclaimed Fat Black Pussycat followed in 1999 and The No. 6 Dance came out on Small Stone Records in 2001…
credits
released 30 September 1997
Eric Oblander: Vox & Harp
Brad Coffin: Guitar & Vox
Steve Smith: Bass
Jim Armstrong: Drums
Produced by Greg Strzempka.
Engineered by Dave Piechura, Al Sutton, Jeff Stredwyck, Earl Owens, Chris Stoll, John Smerek.
Recorded at 40 oz Sound, Super Duper Recording Studio, and Audiomatrix.
Banjo and Backup vox by Greg Strzempka.
Cover art by Romulus Trout.
SS-189 :: GIANT BRAIN – Grade A Gray Day
Track List
- Munich
- Terminator: (Where an astronaut dies in space)
- The Variac: (His consciousness reawakens)
- Fore: (Rage at the cruelty of forced transhumanism)
- Systems Failure: (Uprising, destruction, and the escape)
- Between Trains
Album Info
On January 11, 2019, guitarist Phil Dürr returned to the great Mothership up in the sky. Between his international familial bonds and his membership in such hard-touring bands as Big Chief and Five Horse Johnson, he was mourned by friends, fans, and family literally around the world. His loss was most keenly felt in Detroit, Michigan, his hometown since moving to the area from Mexico as a child, and where he was in the middle of recording the latest Giant Brain album.
After the pain and tears and toasts and reflection, bandmates Al Sutton, Andy Sutton and Eric Hoegemeyer endeavored to finish what they had started. Coming out four years after Phillip’s passing, Grade A Gray Day is Giant Brain’s last musical will and testament, serving as both a tribute to their departed bandmate and the final chapter in a collaboration that reaches back to the 1990s, when the band members laid the groundwork for the Detroit rock renaissance of the following century.
Long fixtures of the local scene, Giant Brain coalesced between sessions at Rustbelt Studios, Al Sutton’s recording facility in Royal Oak which has hosted regional and national rock royalty. One of the best guitarists in town, no small feat given the terrain, Dürr laid down 6-string ideas that rolled as much as rocked while the Sutton brothers supplied taut rhythmic support and technical expertise. Their mix of Krautrock grooves, Detroit attitude and ambient textures was first heard on 2007’s Plume. Producer and programmer Eric Hoegemeyer would join the band for 2009’s Thorn of Thrones, with both albums being released on Small Stone Records.
From its packaging to the songs therein, Grade A Gray Day is a family affair. Sue Lott and Scott Hamilton, who played with Dürr in fellow Small Stoners Luder, guest on different songs, Detroit music luminaries Kenny Tudrick, Billy Reedy, James Simonson, Bob Ebeling and Darrel Eubank sit in on others. UK transplant and Keeping The Blues Alive recording artist Joanne Shaw Taylor lays down searing guitar leads on two tracks and the album artwork was provided by underground art legend Mark Dancey, whose work has graced album covers by Soundgarden and who played guitar alongside Dürr in Big Chief.
Despite being a studio entity, Giant Brain have always sounded like a band. There’s no denying, however, much of their unique musical voice was centered around Phil Dürr’s guitar playing, his ability to change gears from gritty to dreamy in the course of a single verse, his love of blues rock gravity and post-punk atmospherics, always thinking in the back of his mind, “What would Eddie Hazel play here?” At times sad and at other points a celebration, Dürr’s presence pulses and reverberates throughout Grade A Gray Day, whether in his guitar interplay with Joanne Shaw Taylor on the opener “Munich,” or the plangent chords hovering underneath Sue Lott’s vocals on “Between Trains,” the album’s final track and a moving farewell.
• Benjamin H. Smith
For fans of: CAN, Queens of the Stone Age, All Them Witches, The Stooges, King Buffalo.
Credits
Giant Brain is:
Phil Durr: guitars, bass
Andy Sutton: bass, vocals
Eric Hoegemeyer: drums, keys, programming, synths
Al Sutton: percussion, programming, keys
Additional musicians:
Joanne Shaw Taylor: guitars on tracks 1 and 4.
Billy Reedy: guitar on tracks 2 and 5.
Jim Simonson: bass on track 2.
Bob Ebeling: wine glasses on track 3, drums on track 5.
Darrel Eubank: vocals on track 3.
Scott Hamilton: guitar on track 5.
Sue Lott: vocals on track 6.
Ken Tudrick: piano on track 6.
All songs written and produced by Giant Brain.
Recorded at Rustbelt Studio, Royal Oak, MI.
Engineered and mixed by Al Sutton and Eric Hoegemeyer.
Mastered by Chris Goosman at Baseline Audio Labs, Ann Arbor, MI.
Artwork by Mark Dancey.
“Between Trains” lyrics by Sue Lott.
Joanne Shaw Taylor appears courtesy of KTBA Records.
In Memoriam: Phil Durr, Billy Rivkin
For all our loved ones waiting for us.
Maximum volume only
BISON MACHINE Michigan Heavy Rockers Sign To Small Stone; New Album Coming Soon + Burnin’ Turf II Fest To Be Held June 3rd
Michigan heavy rockers BISON MACHINE have signed to American heavy rock institution Small Stone Records. The Hamtramck-based volume dealers have been on a this-time-it’s-personal quest to hand-deliver their riffs across the country since the 2015 release of their debut album, Hoarfrost, on Kozmik Artifactz, and with tours throughout the US under their belt, they’re ready to take their game to the proverbial next level.
BISON MACHINE is currently preparing a new album for release later this year as their Small Stone debut. They will enter Rustbelt Studios (Five Horse Johnson, Halfway to Gone, Novadriver) later this Summer to record.
“It’s amazing,” enthuses BISON MACHINE bassist Anthony Franchina about the signing. “Small Stone has released some of my favorite records, from Sasquatch to Greenleaf to Lo-Pan, and we couldn’t be more thrilled to work with Scott [Hamilton] on our next record, which is going to completely blow away everything we’ve done before. We’ll be hitting the road too, so keep an eye out!”
In addition to working on their next LP, the members of BISON MACHINE are involved in organizing the Burnin’ Turf festival, which is set for June 3rd at the Parisville Saloon in Ruth, Michigan with a lineup featuring BISON MACHINE, Wild Savages, Dead Feathers, BoneHawk, Red Stone Souls, Rip VanRipper, and Gear Jammer, as well as chopper games, raffle prizes, van and tank lettering by Zak Warmann of Detroit Sign Painters, camping, DJ Smoak (Loy Smoak Jr.) all the way from San Antonio, bonfires, and of course, plenty of beer. Ticket presales are available at THIS LOCATION.
“I can’t wait to hear what BISON MACHINE bring to this next record,” says Scott Hamilton of Small Stone Records. “They’ve been unstoppable on tour for the last couple years and I’m thrilled to welcome them into the Small Stone fold representing the next generation of great American heavy rock and roll.”
BISON MACHINE released their latest single, “Cloak And Bones,” last year. A video for the track is playing now at THIS LOCATION.
Stay tuned for more on BISON MACHINE, Burnin Turf II, and the new album in the months ahead. [Words by JJ Koczan/The Obelisk]
BISON MACHINE:
Casey O’Ryan – guitar
Breck Crandell – drums
Tom Stec – vocals
Anthony Franchina – bass
For BISON MACHINE coverage contact liz@earsplitcompound.com.
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