A Day By The Bay
Gulf Coast, 2023
8/10
The St. Petersburg, Florida rooted outfit Backtrack Blues Band turn in a live record for their debut release on their new home, Gulf Coast Records, and it’s a great example of their unbounded energy and uncontainable excitement for their version of the blues.
The set gets started off with Kid Royal’s animated guitar and Joe Bencomo’s agile drumming complementing Sonny Charles’ smooth pipes amid much melody, and “Make My Home In Florida” follows with Charles’ spirited harmonica and Wayne Sharp’s well timed Hammond B3 making for a very powerful and cautious blues landscape.
Halfway through, “Dixie Grill” places Royal on lead vocals, as Little Johnny Walker’s rhythm guitar is quite meticulous, while “Natural Born Lover” benefits much from Stick Davis’ precise bass work and the soulful backing vocals thanks to Latonya Oliver and Dana Merriwether.
The final two tracks, “Times Is Hard” and “You’ll Come Back Someday”, are also excellent, where the former offers an intimate landscape of eloquent singing and emotive blues song craft, and the latter shakes and rattles with a lively pulse of harmonic and precisely textured, timeless blues rock.
One of the longest running blues bands that exists today, Backtrack Blues Band have been at it since 1980, and their Chicago style delivery and Texas influences sound better than ever across these superb 9 tracks.
Travels well with: Eric Demmer- So Fine; Albert Castiglia- I Got Love