Wrong Doers Respect Me
This Delta resident thinks of himself as a bulldozer driver rather than a blues singer and slide guitarist. He'd just as soon not make records at all. But, lucky for us, the folks at Fat Possum did manage to coax him into a local recording studio to perform highly individualized appraisals of traditional fare like "Death Letter," "It Hurts Me," "Lonely Road," and several more. Farmer is the genuine article, a bluesman who has truly feels the ache in the lyrics of the material. His middle-register voice may have lots of mileage on it, but its cadence is riveting for its warmth and believability. His rudimentary guitar playing is similarly free of any pretense at all. Like a seer who reads the future in the entrails of animals or a diviner who finds underground water with his forked stick, Farmer succeeds in capturing and holding one's attention as he goes about his business. No doubt he'd be the first to dismiss naive, unwarranted comparisons with the great Delta bluesmen of the past. --Frank-John Hadley