Full Tilt

Fourteen songs and just under an hour of Lil' Ed and his cohorts. Lil Ed Williams takes full advantage of all the songs and time to display some of his strongest singing to date, as well as his most in your face smoking slide guitar. It is apparent that this band has been together for a full 20 years; guitarist Mike Garrett, bassist James "Pookie" Young (half brother to Lil' Ed), and drummer Kelly Littleton comprise the Blues Imperials that play behind Ed Williams. They constitute one of those high-energy acts, a they are a full tilt, dead ahead blues band, that somehow manages to transpose a lot of their live act power to their discs. Whether it is the full speed ahead guitar boogie to the slowest low down dirty blues you can imagine, there is an authentic, joyous, feel to their playing. There is no hold back for next time, it is all let out, whether on the band stand or in the studio. This is the raucous blues that can trace its lineage to some of the royalty of the Chicago Blues scene, Lil' Ed's uncle and musical teacher and guide is J.B. Hutto. You can call the form of blues as played by this band, feral, untamed, undomesticated, or maybe uncultivated, but what ever you call it, it is going to make you rise up and move until the sweat runs rampant. His blues is the ferocious, lupine, savage sound that rises up from within, that knows no master but is only controlled when allowed to raise its head unfettered from time to time. One of the best discs in the blues field that reminds us of its beginnings and its roots; blues as it should be played not the tame drivel that sometimes passes.

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Edited by: David N. Pyles
(dnpyles@acousticmusic.com)