You Better Keep Still
Mississippi blues guitarist Ford's debut recording,Pee Wee Get My Gun, was warmly embraced by fans of blues and indie rock, and he has toured internationally with popular "hot jazz" revivalists the Squirrel Nut Zippers. What's caught everyone's interest, brought T-Model fame of sorts, is his quirky, down-home personality and the wild abandon of his slash-and-burn blues--both, of course, displayed here on his sophomore effort. Sorry to say, for at least half the album, Ford should have heeded the album title. The eccentric little talks of "If I Had Wings, Parts 1 & 2" and the amplified blues of "To the Left and the Right" (with Spam on drums) inhabit a wasteland. Happily, a couple of tracks do merit repeated listens: mixer Jim Waters (Sonic Youth, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion) forges snippets of Ford's fey jabber and boogaloo on "Pop Pop Pop," and Ford, playing solo guitar, provides a good, thoroughly lucid performance on "The Old Number," which appears to be a variant of Robert Petway's age-old "Catfish Blues." --Frank-John Hadley