Rocking Out The Blues

Bruce Von Stiers

Papa Juke is a blues band based in the Denver , Colorado area. They have a unique sound that mixes some classic hard rock sounds with slick blues. The band has an album out that is almost too cool for words.

The members of Papa Juke are Mad Dog Friedman, Christine Webb, Dave “Doc” Daugherty and Dan Crecco. Mad Dog does vocals and plays harmonica. Christine is on vocals and bass. Doc plays guitar and provides vocals. Dan does backing vocals, plays drums and provides the percussion.

The album that the band recorded is called Out Of The Blues. The album has ten songs and a play time of forty nine minutes.

Never Lost Love has some Led Zepplin like guitar mixed in with saucy blues for a cool sound. There's some damn fine harmonica in the song along with pretty decent vocals.

Sizzle is a kind of cool head bopping blues piece. Christine takes the lead on vocals for this one.

Well Babe is a smile effecting bass piece that reminded me of Elvin Bishop.

A little bit of the spirit of Stevie Ray Vaughn might have slid into the music of Love Ladder. Christine is the lead vocalist for this song.

Chugging along with a more traditional blues tone, the harmonica laden song Grocery Store is a nice throwback tune.

Hot harmonica opens the aching blues tune called Delivery Man. There is great rock blues guitar that possibly had a sliver of Black Oak Arkansas in it.

Too cool guitar and harmonica back some fluid yet harsh vocals by Christine in the song Never Enough.

Dipping down into the nitty gritty of blues is the music and vocals in Blused And Confused. Christine provides the vocals and there is great guitar and harmonica.

Mojo Queen starts out like it might be sampling War's Low Rider. Then it hangs a hard right and does a rough sideways Dr. John kind of rap in front of too slick music.

The last song on the album is a rocking, smoking blues song called Weak And Weary Blues. Mix Elvin Bishop, the Rolling Stones and possibly some Aerosmith together and you might get the idea of the song.

Papa Juke is a pretty cool blues band that doesn't necessarily fit the standard mold. Their music is a mix of rock and blues that can't be fit into a box. The vocals are pretty decent, especially Christine's. But where the band really shines is the music itself. The music kicks some major ass.

Out Of The Blues is at CD Baby, on iTunes and other online and physical musical outlets.

Check out tracks from the album at the band's official site at www.papajuke.com .

Back


© 2012 Bruce E Von Stiers