Search - Dave Perkins :: Pistol City Holiness

. . . high-velocity, southern blues-rock . . . a seismic mixed-breed of tradition and post-mod . . .
Dave Perkins is an artist whose musical journey crisscrosses the map of American music. Perkins work as a guitarist includes playing bluegrass and swing with fiddle-great Vassar Clements, Texas renegade-country with Jerry Jeff Walker, singer-songwriter pop with Carole King, alternative rock with Chagall Guevara, Americana with Guy Clark, blues and jazz with violinist Papa John Creach, reggae with Mystic Meditations, alt-pop with Over the Rhine, and industrial hard-core with Passafist. Then, there were the occasional odd jobs, such as accompanying Ray Charles on his 3/4 Time video. If there is a style of American music that calls for guitar, chances are Dave Perkins has played it, and played it with passion and skill.
With Pistol City Holiness, Perkins comes full circle to his first love the blues. The blues was the first music to capture my imagination, says Perkins. It grabbed me because it was something other alien and, yet, at the same time, deeply familiar. I ve never gotten over it. I ve worked in a lot of different styles of music, but my approach to each one was and will always be shaped by the blues.
Reflecting on the creation of Pistol City Holiness, Perkins says, I wanted to make an album that brought back the excitement I felt when I first heard Muddy Waters, Cream, Fred McDowell, and Peter Green. And, I wanted to record with the musicians I shared the most history with. Featured on the album are three of his longest running musical relationships Richard Hombre Price, Reese Wynans, and Mel Watts. Their musical association is decades deep. Like Perkins, each of these players has a significant performance pedigree with ties to artists like Stevie Ray Vaughan and Lucinda Williams.
Pistol City Holiness builds on the model of the traditional Chicago blues band, where guitar, piano, and harmonica play important roles as solo instruments. Along with Perkins guitar and Wynans piano and organ, TJ Klay fills out the section on blues harp. Around those foundational elements, aspects of techno, southern and alternative rock are interwoven to create a bracing, muscular take on blues-inflected American music.
A brew of musical energies, Pistol City Holiness blurs boundary lines between styles, and makes an artistic statement that speaks to the variety and depth of Perkins experience musical and otherwise all while keeping the blues as the emotional, musical, and spiritual center.