Live From Chicago - Bayou Lightning Strikes
Louisiana-born Lonnie Brooks is an underrated blues great, capable of dishing out swamp-rock, bittersweet melodies, and fire- breathing rave-ups. The pyrotechnics won out in this 1987 live performance, recorded at B.L.U.E.S. Etcetera on his adopted home turf, Chicago. Brooks's "Two-Headed Man" and his take on Freddie King's "Hideaway"--which bookend the CD--find him plying slick, screaming string-bends and gutsy vocals that mix back-road gravel with down-home charm. It's the latter that makes numbers like "Got Me By the Tail" and "Eyeballin'" such colorful, appealing stories. They reveal Lonnie's still-vital country roots. At times the band plays with the velocity--and ferocity--of a guided missile. But Brooks is always at the controls.--Ted Drozdowski