Easin' Back To Tennessee

After a few albums that dipped into Americana waters, Canadian Colin Linden strips down and releases a raw, acoustic, predominantly blues set. He also taps the songbooks of Delta blues legends Sleepy John Estes,Bo Carter, Blind Willie McTell, Tampa Red, Blind Willie Johnson, and Son House for material which, along with his own originals and one from T-Bone Burnett, round out the 13-track set. He gets occasional assistance from Tom Waits' rhythm section of Larry Taylor on bass and drummer Stephen Hodges, but this is primarily a solo performance with the focus on Linden's dusky vocals and expressive acoustic picking. A few upbeat, almost ragtime tunes such as Red's jaunty "You Can't Get the Stuff No More," Charley Jordan/Larry Johnson's "Keep It Clean," and his own "Nowhere to Go" pepper the predominantly ballads/slow blues set list and provide just enough variation to keep the album from sounding too similar. Hodges and Taylor bring an atmospheric quality to McTell's "Broke Down Engine," adding subtle and unique accompaniment to what would otherwise be a solo piece. Linden's "Champ" fits perfectly with the bluesy fare, sounding like another of the album's rather obscure covers. Linden produced and longtime cohort John Whynot helped record the disc. It's obviously a labor of love from both since this isn't going to get much, if any, airplay. But it's a classy, intensely personal project with clean yet not slick sound that highlights Linden's emotive voice and precise guitar work on both standard and bottleneck guitar. A closing "lagniappe" cover of Henry Townsend's "Tears Come Rolling Down" is one of the disc's standout performances as Linden channels the song's sadness and picks with an authenticity of someone born and raised on the Mississippi Delta. ~ Hal Horowitz|