Yellow Dog Records sent a copy of "I Watched the Devil Die" last week. Chris Cotton requested that it be sent here to Mythical Tweed Towers so that I might review it for the site's readers and so that is what I will do. It is so much easier to accomplish these things when the material is good, and this entire cd gets the ExtryFine Stamp of Approval from me, for whatever that is worth.

If you like your music raw and with a purpose behind it, buy this record. If you enjoy a little Bakersfield C&W mixed in with some Elizabeth Cotton, Delta-style fiddles, banjos and drums, whiskey soaked vocals singing whiskey soaked lyrics then you go out and BUY this record cause you need to have it.

Cotton's done a sort of masterpiece here with this collection of songs and music. He paints a dreamland of characters and situations on a canvas of highly infectious background tunes. I've had his guitar part to "I Watched the Devil Die" running around in my head for the last three days and can't seem to shake it loose.

This ain't a Blues record. There's blues elements in it, but even Chris says it ain't a blues record. It's more a sort of new breed of what folks might call Americana music with bits of hokum and hillcountry mixed together with Memphis streetcorner jug band, Piedmont picking.....I don't know what to call it....mebbe it's the Devil's Music or mebbe Haunted Hokum.... but every song on there is damn good and will stand up to many listens. I know this because I've played it through probably twenty or thirty times since it arrived on my doorstep.

We did an online interview to get some background for this piece and it went like this:

Q. What was it like working on the oil rigs? Did you meet up with any colorful characters out there? I know you probably did cause I've worked with some real crazy fuckers who'd been down on those rigs.

A. The capt' was "coon-ass" NOT a racist term but anyone from Louisiana should know what that means...cajun muther that half-speaks French and English, grew up in the Bijou, bareley write his own name etc, but smart in his own ways.
Being a deckhand from Californ with a knowhow of a lot of common sense was not a qualification for this job. Being able to risk your life for the sake of drillin' oil/natural gas was more like it, and all of that for $55 a day.

A. Can you explain how a guy from Marin County is able to write, play and sing the way you do and make this exceptionally fine collection of songs come off sounding like you have lived every minute of the scenarios that pop into the listener's mind? What happened to you to make you go deep and pull out all this good stuff?

A. I'm actually from Santa Clara County, the 3rd most populous county in californ, 3rd to Los Angeles, and San Diego. Also the most Populous Bay Area County.
But to answer your question, I went to school in Maine, and Utah, during High school, and saw that the grass grows greener everywhere, depending upon what the hell your looking for, and the grass was greener for ragtime music in New Orleans, Louisiana. I hitched rides and rode frieghts cross country to get there and visited Robert Johnsons "officially sanctioned" grave site in Morgan City Mississippi which I have a story that portends the song.
The story was that My traveling partner and I visited the gravesite at the Mt. Zion church there in Morgan City, MS and we were done about dusk, and we figgered we could get a ride to Ida Bena, the next town down the road, and sat down on the roadside in proper hitching' fashion, and along comes a sheriff. He pulls over and asked us where we were from and where we were going and we told him Ida Bena and he told us he could take us out of town to the county line so we thought that that would be best, since we were getting strange looks sittin' there on the side of the road being white as day. So we took him up on the offer and got in back of the car and thought we were right as rain!
About three miles down the road the Sheriff gets leadfoot and next thing you know were travellin' down the 2 lane highway about 120 miles an hour. I said: "sir just out of curiosity, why are we going so quick" thinking he was just screwin' with us, to which he answered: "Boys, I'm about to run outa' gas, and so I'm goin' into Ida Bena, have to now, and I figure if I run out on the way, I'll just coast on in."
We were totally amazed by this and in proper tramp fashion, my partner pulls an oilcan of malt liquor out of his backpack and starts drinking it! In the back of the squad car. We got to Ida bena, shook off the buzz, and went on our way.

Q. Were your original songs written while you were down in Mississippi or have you been carrying them around with you for a while?

A. Both

Q. The Clarksdale Sessions...Give us a story from when you were in there making the recordings.

A. Well, I have known Jimbo for the last four years and I was elated to have a chance to go to his new studio and record, as I had not had a chance to really check out Clarksdale when I was there in 97' and we got there with the notion in mind to cut the record straight and quick which was exactly how Mathus wanted it, and it worked well all around.
A strange thing happened when we were there, staying at Jimbo's unc's place on Lynn St after we were done recording one night at about 3 or 4 in the morning, myself, Kristen(my girlfriend) Shelly(next door neighbor), and Jimbo, were shootin craps and drinking celebratory scotch from Buddy Guy after the gig Jimbo did in Ft. Lauderdale the previous day and these young cats were staying there at Guy's from Ohio that were checking out Jimbo's studio. They were in a Christian Punk band and one of the guys woke up to the sound of the devils dice and came into the living room and saw the stacks of (imagine money) on the floor and the booze and the kid began doing pushups on the floor right on top of the pile. He didn't say a word. Just did pushups. He was exorcising the demons through exercising! Didn't work though, I lost a grip of coin.

Q. How's Jack Johnson to work with? What's he like to hang around with? How about Jimbo Mathus?

A. I didn't get a chance to hang out with Big Jack for too long, he showed up right before the session, and left not long after, although he was the most amazing slide player that I have ever had the pleasure to work with, and if it wasn't my session he would have destroyed notions of blues singing with the timbre of his huge voice, but he did that anyways with his slide guitar. Amazing.
Mathus is like a man on a mission that you can't quite identify with because he's so much more qualified than anyone else to lead. Generally. Otherwise he's goin' to take your money with dice.

Q. Sounded like everybody in the studio was having a good time. Everything is so perfectly basic and natural.

A. Good. Naturally loose, but tight (know what I mean!)

Q. Where you going from here?

A. Hopefully to some festivals, I confirmed a couple with some coming back soon, but a good tour of the U.S. is in my lifetime. I can feel it.

Well, I give this one five stars out of a possible five. Go to YELLOW DOG RECORDS' website and find out how to get a copy for yourself. It's real music, and not even a whiff of bullshit anywhere. Cotton's "I Watched the Devil Die" is further proof that songs with substance are not yet extinct, and follow no known "formula" to kiss the collective asses of the masses for the quick buck. There are still exceptional writers, musicians and studios out there that know how to conjure up something worth listening at and that will stick to your ribs. Now, if I could just get that guitar riff outta my mind.