John Schooley

Imported Texan John Schooley’s status as one of Austin’s most ubiquitous musical talents is enhanced by this 12-tracker on the always intriguing Voodoo Rhythm label from Switzerland. Raw and wild Chicago blues, with the occasional Delta blues reference point, makes for a scorching ride. Raw, rootsy blues with a fucked-up bent is one of the cause celebres of the so-called Garage Rock Revival.

What you should know is that Schooley has been ably championing that stuff for years, mixing roots and punk with a string of bands who’ve done their share of touring in the US and Europe. Here, however, the ex-Revelators and Hard Feelings (I think they’re still a going concern) guitarist plays all the instruments himself.

While some of his contemporaries concentrate on stripping things right back and selectively turning up the instrumental distortion, Schooley puts everything on 11 and lays down a dark, dense bed of slide and blues harp. Clattering, driving rhythms abound and a cut like “Tiger Man” is so dense you couldn’t penetrate it with a barbecue skewer (which is also a corny segue into a comment that the whole disc “cooks”).

There’s the occasional flat vocal to remind you that this is bluesy rock and roll, not a choir ensemble, and Schooley’s guitar playing is nicely, ahem, unschooled. There’s enough going on here to make you forget it’s one man playing everything. Pushing this sort of trashy blues, it was a matter of time that Schooley would end up on Voodoo Rhythm after stints with Sympathy, Crypt and Australia’s own Dropkick. Voodoo Rhythm’s head honcho, Beat-Man, has a personal history of one-man band mayhem and his roster is full of the raw, the rotsy and the outright weird. Beat-Man dipped a toe into the market with a Schooley single in 2004 and the results were encouraging enough to do a full album.

Bob Log III has done enough visits Down Under to make you think a Schooley tour is feasible. Presumably, with one mouth to feed the overheads are pretty low. Texas has a musically rich and little-known crop of raw rock bands (see the “Shaking In My Botos” compile on Licorice Tree ). John Schooley’s in solo band mode is another notable from those parts worth cocking an ear to. – The Barman