VELVET THUNDER

If you like the Outlaw end of country, if you love the way the Allman Brothers Band could just kick back and rock for a 25 minute jam without leaving third gear, if you get your rocks off on The Outlaws kicking out Green Grass And High Tides – if you tick any or all of these boxes, this album is waiting on the jukebox for you in your favourite bar with a cold one and a whiskey chaser…

Sometimes, when something lands on your listening pile which you’re unfamiliar with, the first thing to do is to have a go at working out what it’s going to sound like before you slip it into the player. Sometimes, of course, you can be completely blind-sided – whereas other times you’re right on the money. Let’s take a look at the evidence concerning Jacob Bryant here. First, the album is called Bar Stool Preacher. The front cover shows a guy with a full beard, a work-shirt and a baseball cap sitting at a table with an open beer and an open book on it. Looking further, we see him in a T-shirt reading ‘Whiskey Helps’, sporting a large metal belt buckle standing in front of a beaten-up old Ford, while another photo has him in a field with a horse. His arms are heavily tattooed. Now, right away I’m thinking that ‘avant-garde jazz fusion’ is likely to be off the table. I’d be right. Let’s just say that if I’d put my house on ‘Southern Rock with a touch of country’, I’d be writing this in a bigger house right now. Sometimes you do get what it says on the tin, which in a way is strangely reassuring. Fortunately, I’m quite partial both to a dose of Southern Rock and also a portion of Country Rock on the side – so let’s sit down and pile in…

I’m going to cut to the chase here, before looking at the individual tracks and lay my cards on the table (poker, of course) – this is a fine album. That’s a given right from the get-go, and nearly every track here reinforces it. It has to be right for you of course – if you were after that avant-garde jazz fusion we were speaking off, then take your sax and your immaculately trimmed goatee and polo-neck and get out, because there’s nothing here for you. If, however, you love a bit of Skynyrd, Outlaws, Allmans and .38 Special, then come on in and listen to the preacher.

The first track, Well Whiskey (Discount Cigarettes) is pure, unalloyed country-rock, and it’s a gem. With a chorus so catchy it could set off another pandemic, this rip-roaring tale of a guy having to drown his sorrows on a budget is an absolute joy. facing down his demons with a menu of ‘well whiskey, two-for-one draft beer and discount cigarettes’, because he ‘can’t afford a main-brand heartache’ is cast-iron guaranteed to put a smile on your face (in stark contrast to our hapless discount hero). If there’s been a better line this year than ‘You’re gonna have to pay up front if you’re drinking to forget’, then I haven’t heard it. Well, or forgotten it. If ever a song absolutely screamed to be a hit, this is the one. Kenny Rogers would kill and hide the bodies to get a song like this – but thank the lord he didn’t…

If that opener makes you think you’re in for a diet of Outlaw Country, that idea is quickly quashed as a string of rocking southern stormers follow it up. Good Ol’ Boy (yes, there is actually a song called that) is an almost perfect marriage of old-fashioned Southern values and bruising rock riffs, which actually manages to namecheck not only Lynyrd Skynyrd and the bar he used to drink in, but also the jukebox – and that’s only the first verse. This guy doesn’t need tattoos, the words to Sweet Home Alabama are clearly engraved directly onto his liver. Irresistible.

Elsewhere, Baptized By The River is brooding swamp-rock of a kind which would send the reanimated corpse of John Fogerty lurching across the cornfields, if he wasn’t still alive and ruining the image. Devil & An Old Six-String is about precisely what you think it is, with a lyric which could launch a thousand Southern Rock drinking games, but there are changes of pace here as well, such as the moving, Gospel-influenced closer Amen, which really could have gone on for ten minutes without overstaying its welcome. Perhaps the only slight mis-step here is Heartbeat, which is a little too much of a stab at the pop end of things to ring true, but when you have crackers waiting in the wings like Things That Hurt, Can’t Take An Angel To Hell, Buzzards and Wash It Down, that isn’t going to upset things overmuch.

There are many things to love about this album, but one of the most satisfying for me is the sense one gets of Jacob Bryant simply wearing his heart on his sleeve and damn the consequences. He sounds so utterly at home with himself and his traditions and beliefs that if this were a character he was inhabiting as an image, he’d be up for a Best Actor Oscar quicker than you can say ‘play it pretty for Atlanta’. He doesn’t mince his words or his music. Of the thirteen tracks here, by my count eight directly mention whiskey, three namecheck beer with a further couple of shout-outs to bars of his acquaintance. They overlap in case you do your maths, but even so – this album is so soaked in bourbon and beer that it should credit Jack Daniels and Jim Beam for inspiration. You get plunged into a world of cigarette butts, hard liquor and red meat as soon as you fire up the CD player, and it’s almost literally intoxicating.

If you like the Outlaw end of country, if you love the way the Allman Brothers Band could just kick back and rock for a 25 minute jam without leaving third gear, if you get your rocks off on The Outlaws kicking out Green Grass And High Tides – if you tick any or all of these boxes, this album is waiting on the jukebox for you in your favourite bar with a cold one and a whiskey chaser. It’ll taste good, and it’ll sound even better. Now, where are those discount cigarettes again…