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Anthony \u201cBig A\u201d Sherrod is a Clarksdale, Mississippi native and lives there to this very day; he teaches blues to young students at the Delta Blues Museum\u2019s Blues & Education program. Gritty, powerful and heartfelt, his approach to the blues \u2013 backed by his band The Cornlickers \u2013 helps keep the juke joint tradition alive.<\/p>\n
Notwithstanding live recordings made at Red\u2019s Lounge in Clarksdale, Right On Time<\/i> was the debut CD release from Sherrod and his band. Enthusiastically reviewed in Living Blues<\/i>\u2019 October 2016 issue, that album won LB<\/i>\u2019s Best Debut Blues Album in 2016, and would be included on Jim DeKoster\u2019s list of the best blues albums of that decade.<\/p>\n
Sherrod recently signed to Nola Blue Records and has plans for sessions for a new album. But in the meantime, Nola Blue is reissuing Right On Time<\/i>. Remastered by fellow guitarist Bobby Gentilo (who produced the original sessions) the album sounds as impressive as ever.<\/p>\n
That debut studio release has all of the fire of a live performance. The set opens with the rousing guitar workout \u201cRumblin\u2019 Stumblin\u2019.\u201d \u201cFind Me Another Woman\u201d demonstrates the vitality of the shuffling I-IV-V blues structure; like a sturdy canvas, it provides a taut backdrop for Sherrod\u2019s swaggering vocals and incendiary lead guitar work. The title track wastes no time in getting to the musical point: it opens with a brief Sherrod solo that sets the tone for the piece. Sherrod packs a lot of feeling into the notes, and he alternates effortlessly between spirited vocal phrases and stinging lead licks.<\/p>\n
The best comes four tracks in. With its lumbering pace and simmering, sinister vibe, \u201cCold Feeling\u201d provides Sherrod with plenty of space to stretch out. He demonstrates a keen sense of dynamics, letting notes hang in the air, initially peppering the arrangement with the sparest of fills. It\u2019s more than two minutes in before he lets loose the solo, spitting out soulful, string-bending and stuttering riffs. But even then, he holds back, ratcheting up the tension to near the breaking point. Only as the song nears the five-minute mark does Sherrod relieve that tension by peeling off a solo that\u2019s a model of subtlety and quiet confidence. As that solo unfolds, he showcases the many tone colors of which he is capable.<\/p>\n
From there, it\u2019s back to uptempo, swinging blues. Sherrod\u2019s melodic sense is strong enough that he and the band can carry the music even without vocals. The instrumental \u201cShuffle in Big A\u201d is a case in point: over the course of nearly seven minutes, Sherrod spins out a seemingly endless variety of lead guitar runs. With the support of Gentilo and the rock-solid rhythm section of bassist Tony Ryder and drummer Dale Wise, he\u2019s unstoppable.<\/p>\n
Sherrod blurs the lines between rock and blues (and serves up the best of both) with the slashing \u201cGet Your Money.\u201d \u201cTried and Tried\u201d is a yearning, contemplative and smoky blues ballad. The loping \u201cTrain\u201d is a nod to the deep history of the blues tradition. And Sherrod shows that there\u2019s romance to be found in his playing, with the r&b-flavored slow and hypnotic blues of \u201cSomeday.\u201d The set concludes with the jaunty, uptempo \u201cTalk to Your Daughter,\u201d bringing the album full circle, back to the structural simplicity of the opening track.<\/p>\n
While Sherrod and his band ready their new record, time spent with the remastered Right on Time<\/i> is time well spent indeed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Anthony \u201cBig A\u201d Sherrod is a Clarksdale, Mississippi native and lives there to this very day; he teaches blues to young students at the Delta Blues Museum\u2019s Blues & Education […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23494,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,64,65],"tags":[4903,4902],"class_list":["post-23493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blues","category-reissue","category-review","tag-anthony-big-a-sherrod","tag-anthony-sherrod","cat-9-id","cat-64-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23493"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23493\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23495,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23493\/revisions\/23495"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}