DOYLE BRAMHALL

Is It News

(YEP ROC)
www.yeproc.com

Doyle Bramhall has been a mighty figure on the Texas blues scene for almost four decades; his teenage band The Chessmen supported Hendrix back in 1968. A songwriter, producer, and drummer who has always worked with the cream of guitarists; in bands successively with Jimmie and Stevie Ray Vaughan.

These songs cut over the last few years feature a plethora of the Lone Star State’s finest players; son Doyle II, Dylan’s current axeman Denny Freeman and, of course,Jimmie Vaughan. They come from different ages but allow Bramhall and co-producer C.C. Adcock plentiful opportunity to demonstrate ceaseless curiosity and invention.

They also show the fine drummer Bramhall is; witness his meticulous, percussion on the brief but tender ‘You Left Me This Mornin’ and the perfectly chunky intro to opener ‘Lost In The Congo’. And a singer too, as on the soulful ‘I'll Take You Away’. There the younger Doyle provides the solo. It’s one of the many highlights here, along with ‘Little Star (The Moon Is Shining)’, marked with the quintessential imprimatur of Jimmie Vaughan, and Freeman’s marvellous playing on the heart-felt lament for Stevie, ‘This Day’, written on the day he died in 1990.