The Mike Eldred
Trio Visits Baptist Town on Delta Blues Sojourn as Told on the Group’s
New CD, Releasing May 6 & Recorded at Historic Sun Studio in Memphis
Band’s 4th
Album Includes Special Guest Appearances by Grammy Winners John Mayer, Robert
Cray and David Hidalgo
LOS ANGELES, CA – Roots music “super-band” The Mike Eldred
Trio announces a May 6 release date for their fourth album, Baptist Town,
on the Great Western Recording Company label, distributed worldwide by
CEN/RED Distribution, a SONY-owned company. “We’re excited to be working with the
Mike Eldred Trio on the release of their new album, Baptist Town;
it’s an amazing recording and a welcome addition to the CEN/RED roster,” said
Adam Pollack of CEN/RED. The Mike Eldred Trio is offering fans a special
pre-order date of April 8th, which includes a bonus instant download
of the lead-off track, “Hunder Dollar Bill.”
Recorded at the iconic Sun Studio in Memphis, Baptist
Town paints a musical picture steeped in the rich history of the South
and the folklore that is so important to American culture. The trio’s members
are guitarist/vocalist Mike Eldred, a former member of Stray Cat Lee Rocker’s
Big Blue; and the potent rhythm section of bassist John Bazz and drummer Jerry
Angel, both from The Blasters. The album was engineered by 2016 Grammy Award-winner Matt
Ross-Spang, who recently engineered Jason Isbell’s latest
CD, Things That Can’t Be Undone.
Baptist Town is a monumental
achievement in roots and blues storytelling, presented as a multi-layered blues
journey through Mississippi juke joints, prisons, churches, and Baptist Town,
itself. For the recording sessions, the trio invited several friends to
lend a hand, and David Hidalgo, Robert Cray, and John Mayer all
joined in for the magic. To watch a documentary about the recording session
that features Robert Cray, see below:
The catalyst for the album is the small neighborhood outside
Greenwood, Mississippi, where legendary blues guitarist Robert Johnson was
murdered in 1938. The track “Somebody Been Runnin’” references the final
chapter of Johnson’s “deal with the devil” made at the crossroads, and some say
fulfilled in the tiny community of Baptist Town the night he died.
Baptist Town also focuses on the poverty and
racism of the past, which still exists to some parts in the Deep South today.
Baptist Town remains mostly as it did in Johnson's time and is a stark contrast
to the surrounding city of Greenwood, Mississippi. The dichotomy between love
and hate, rich and poor, sin and salvation, black and white, are apparent
throughout the record, and reflect many of society’s struggles that continue to
haunt us all.
“This is our
fourth album, and even before I wrote the songs for it, I knew I wanted to
record it at Sun Studio,” recalls Mike Eldred about the sessions. “I had taken
a trip down to Mississippi with my daughter because she wanted to do a road
trip with me through the South, and we found Baptist Town while searching for
Robert Johnson’s grave. I was immediately struck with the harsh poverty and the
contrast between the city of Greenwood, just across the railroad tracks, and
the tiny, mostly unchanged community of Baptist Town.
“It hit me hard,
and I have been back to Baptist Town at least four times now, getting to know
the people, interviewing them, etc. It was that first trip that turned out to
be the catalyst, though, to write about my experiences down there.”
All 13 tracks
on Baptist Town literally drip with authenticity and soul, like
Spanish moss hanging from a Mississippi hardwood tree. It’s all here: lowdown
blues, uplifting gospel, field hollers, ghostly chants and flat-out rockers,
plus a blistering cover of The Beatles’ “Can’t Buy Me Love” that is completely
turned inside out. “The songs are about traditions, folklore and culture, but
also about what we all see in America… poverty, racism, over-indulgence, hate,
and love. They poured out. Seeing that part of our heritage changed me
forever,” says Eldred about the songwriting process.
“These
contrasts are apparent throughout Baptist Town, and the thought
came to me to have Robert Cray play the solo on the title cut,” remembers
Eldred. “His guitar is so pure, and placed on a very dark canvas like “Baptist
Town” really sets the tone of the record.
“I was having
dinner with John Mayer the night before I was going to record with Robert, and
I told John about the recording, and he says, ‘I want to be on it!’ So, of
course we set it up and found a cool track to record with him on lap steel and
electric, and me on acoustic (his guitar) and vocal. John graciously offered to
have me come to his home in Montana and record it there with Chad Franscoviak
engineering that session.
“On ‘Bess,’ we asked David Hidalgo from Los Lobos to come in
and play accordion and sing background vocals on it. We brought him into El
Rancho Del Soul Studios in Arizona, and filled the room with tequila and
Carnitas, making this crazy blues-Tex-Mex-Ranchera tribute to Bessie Smith.”
With a wealth of history and legendary recordings made
within its walls, Sun Studio in Memphis seemed like a no-brainer to record the
majority of the tracks on Baptist Town.
“The room is
overwhelming sometimes, especially when you realize where you are and what you
are doing,” offers Eldred. “The last two songs we recorded were acoustic. Very
quiet. You could hear the room. It’s ‘The Ghosts of Sun’ as Jerry Angel
described it. Beautiful. There was a time during the recording and I was just
looking down at the floor, realizing that it’s the original tile floor… and I
thought, ‘Man, Howlin’ Wolf stood there…’ Crazy.
“Sun is a
magical place, and we were brought into that space by Grammy Award-winning
engineer Matt Ross-Spang, who ushered us through an amazing part of our lives.
We will never be the same for sure.”
Voted one of the best guitarists in Americana/Roots/Blues music, Mike Eldred formed the trio with John Bazz and Jerry Angel to make the kind of music they always wanted to make. Their first CD (The Mike Eldred Trio) sent shock waves throughout the Americana/roots blues community garnering rave reviews and extensive radio airplay. The band's second CD (61 and 49) was voted one of the Top Ten CD releases of 2011 by The Los Angeles Times. Besides their own headline touring, The Mike Eldred Trio has been opening tours for artists such as Buddy Guy, Jimmie Vaughan, Los Lobos and George Thorogood, among others.
Voted one of the best guitarists in Americana/Roots/Blues music, Mike Eldred formed the trio with John Bazz and Jerry Angel to make the kind of music they always wanted to make. Their first CD (The Mike Eldred Trio) sent shock waves throughout the Americana/roots blues community garnering rave reviews and extensive radio airplay. The band's second CD (61 and 49) was voted one of the Top Ten CD releases of 2011 by The Los Angeles Times. Besides their own headline touring, The Mike Eldred Trio has been opening tours for artists such as Buddy Guy, Jimmie Vaughan, Los Lobos and George Thorogood, among others.
The band
enlisted several key components to help tell the story of the concept and
recording of Baptist Town so that the listener could actually be
as close to the process as possible.
•
Photo documentation by
Associated Press photographer Matt York.
•
Video throughout the
recording process and historical background shots by Adam Genzink.
•
Shooting at Sun Studio
and in and around Memphis and Mississippi.
•
Film and photos of the
community of Baptist Town with interviews.
•
15 page blog outlining
the concept, writing, preparation, and recording of “Baptist Town” here: Baptist Town Blog
Along with the recordings, The
Mike Eldred Trio has been assembling a full-length documentary film to engage
the viewer with the creative process, the recording of the album, the history
and continuing issues with the South, and to enlist the Secretary Of Interior
to recognize the neighborhood of Baptist Town as a National Historic Landmark
as the place of death of one of America’s most significant and influential
musicians, Robert Johnson. The film will feature interviews by many artists
including Billy F. Gibbons, Robert Cray, David Hidalgo and Scotty Moore.
“We envisioned
this project and knew it would be interesting to see how it would unfold, but I
never realized it would unfold like this,” summarizes Eldred. “We wanted to
make a record that reflected the soul of the South, acknowledge the poverty and
racism that continues to exist, and celebrate the culture that has helped
define American music.”
