Black Diamond Heavies: Every Damn Time

It’s never wise to underestimate the effects of the blooooze on impressionable white teenage males. By now, I’m tempted to believe that it’s somehow encoded into our DNA; the catalyst these days might be a snatch of Led Zep on classic rock radio or our parents’ dusty old copy of Are You Experienced or the White Stripes on the Grammys, but the effects are always the same. Within months we’re discussing Howlin’ Wolf and Robert Johnson sides like grizzled old experts: studyin’ evil, dustin’ our brooms and fixin’ to die with the best of them. Some of us even start bluesy bands of our own – though the sad truth is that for every scraggly crew of Caucasian blues-rockers who actually walk it like they talk it, there’s a baker’s dozen of pretenders who think jamming on eight bars for twenty minutes and affecting Southern drawls is what the blues is all about. And that’s why coming across a band like Black Diamond Heavies is such a treat: like fellow-travelers the Black Lips and the Immortal Lee County Killers (and unlike those aforementioned Blueshammer types), these white boys have soul.

Listen to the choogling opener of the Heavies’ Alive Records debut, “Fever in My Blood,” and that soul, that (now here’s a charged word for you) authenticity becomes immediately obvious. With nothing but a Fender Rhodes piano, a voice like nicotine incarnate and some seriously busted-ass drums and amps, John Wesley Myers (keys/vox) and Van Campbell (drums) tear out of the gates like there really is a hellhound on their trail…and you believe ‘em, too. Sure, the religiously rock-oriented might bemoan the lack of guitars, but when keyboards are played this loud and this viscerally, trust me, you won’t miss ‘em. Instead, Every Damn Time might just be the best advertisement for rock’n'roll piano lessons since the days of Little Richard: the manic anti-cocaine rant “White Bitch” comes peppered with blasts of organ feedback that would put most six-string squealers to shame, and when Myers cranks up the Rhodes in “Poor Brown Sugar,” he digs a groove so deep you can sink to your waist in it.

Of course, the main way in which Black Diamond Heavies set themselves apart from the pack – other than the whole no-guitars thing, anyway – is with their slow numbers, which somehow manage to be even better than the boogie stuff while still remaining every bit as raw. “All to Hell,” a slow-burning soul ballad just over eight minutes in length, is one of the best heartbreak songs I’ve heard in some time, right down to the cathartic gospel organ build-up. And their cover of the aforementioned Lee County Killers’ Delta blues dead-ringer “Stitched in Sin” may even surpass the original, so suited is it to Myers’ Waitsian croak and churchy electric piano groove. In the end, while the prospect of more Heavies in general is enough to set my mouth a-waterin’, I for one wouldn’t mind hearing more of the pretty songs next time around; after all, in a world where any skinny kid from the suburbs can learn a few slide licks and think he’s Muddy Waters, we can never have enough bands who’ll put a shake in our hips and a tear in our beers, all in one glorious half hour.

- Zach Hoskins

Black Diamond Heavies’ Official Site
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