Wily Bo Walker TALES OF THE MESCAL CANYON TROUBADOURS

Wily Bo Walker
TALES OF THE MESCAL CANYON TROUBADOURS
Voodooville

Swish, Swagger and a Staggering Blend of Southern Fried Blues.

It’s really hard to keep up with Wily Bo Walker’s releases; with re-mixes and re-hashes mingling and supplementing brand new songs at will and that’s what we appear to have here; but I do like a challenge!
But; and it’s not even a very big ‘but’ even if you have heard some of the previous versions of his songs on earlier albums; the new ones are always as interesting as they are exciting, so yet again I’m treating this as a shiny new release in all its swish and swaggering glory.
Technically TALES OF THE MESCAL CANYON TROUBADOURS is a companion album to last year’s Ain’t No Man a Good Man with Danny Flam, but you don’t need to have heard that to understand and fall in love with this; but it wouldn’t do you any harm to own both albums.
While still eschewing his love for New Orleans and Tex-Mex inspired Blues, I swear Wily Bo has been listening to the same Surf albums as me recently; as opening track, Drive (Mescalito Mix) certainly has that ‘fuzzy’ Dick Dale feel as the bass and drums pump more adrenaline than a teenage boy on a promise!
This is obviously more ‘obvious’ on Jawbreaker (Surf-O-Rama) which sounds just perfect for a Tarantino remake of Point Break (or Aloha Hawaii?).
There must be someone that Wily Bo reminds me of; but I can’t for the life of me think of any singer that sounds this seductive, yet dirty at the same time (Zappa circa Hot Rats? A young Tom Waits? ) and he just oozes Rakishness on Walk in Chinese Footsteps (Bardo Thodol Mix) and even more so, later on the sleazy Who’s Lovin’ You Tonight which will send a shiver down the back of wives everywhere.
Wily Bo’s love of all things Mexicana stretches way beyond the artwork (which is rather wonderful in it’s own rite) but comes across rather subtly in the rather shady and inspired Time to Forget (Bourbon & Candlelight Mix) which is brimful of smoky atmosphere and superb guitar from the dirty end of the fretboard.
Two song title certainly ring bells for me; but I hardly recognised either Chattahoochee Coochee Man (Southern Slide) or album closer Moon Over Indigo in these guises; but that’s the beauty of having someone like Wily Bo Walker at the helm; there’s always something he can add or subtract to make a thing of beauty even better.
There’s always a cinematic or theatrical feel to the sequencing on Walker’s albums; it’s as if he’s trying to tell a story through music and words; but without the added weight of calling it a Rock Opera; which loosely brings me to the two songs I’m struggling to decide which is most worthy of the accolade, RMHQ Favourite Song.
Velvet Windows is a whole new direction with a staggering blending between electric and steel-guitar (a Resonator?) that sounds as if it’s been dug up by Music Archaeologists and given a new lease of life.
The other actually precedes it; and I think I’m now erring towards For The Children (When The Nightmares Call) whose title instantly attracted me when I first received the album; and actually lives up to such a bewildering title; with Walker slowing things down to a cracked croon on a song ‘with a message’; which I’m not going to spoil for you.
Wily Bo Walker is another one of those acts that baffles me as to why they aren’t filling Concert Halls across the world and headlining TV Shows too; but until justice is done; you and I both know he’s the real deal whatever guise he’s taking with his music.

Released February 12th 2021
https://wilybo.com/

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https://wilybo.bandcamp.com/album/tales-of-the-mescal-canyon-troubadours-2