Los Angeles, California: Pat Travers and Bob Dylan. It’s a marriage made… if not in heaven, then at least in a place where dreams come true and the blues keep rolling. On March 20, 2004, early a tour that would keep them on the road across North America and Europe until July, the Pat Travers Band headed to Houston, Texas, to record what would become one of the most exhilarating live albums of his career, Snortin' Whiskley..
Accompanied by southern rock maestro Greg T. Walker (Lynyrd Skynyrd/Blackfoot) on bass and former AC/DC skin basher Simon Wright on drums, Travers would lead this ruthlessly stripped back trio deep into their roots.
The result, releasing on June 26, is a Texas-sized slab of electrified blues packed with epic versions of fan favorites "Boom Boom Out Go The Lights” and “Snortin' Whiskey”; barnstorming work-outs… including a colossal 13-minute version of "Born Under A Bad Sign”; and well-chosen covers - the Allman Brothers’ “Statesboro Blues,” Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Chile (Slight Return); and - released as a single today - Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited,”
SINGLE: https://orcd.co/pattravers_highway61revisited
Not that their rendition of the title track from the bard’s second album of 1965, has much in common with Dylan’s original - as Travers warns at the outset of the song, “we’re gonna kick your ass.” And then this leanest, meanest line-up of them all slams into a Mach 2 firestorm, percussion and bass setting up an irresistible pace and rhythm, while Travers. Plays like a man possessed, his guitar spilling liquid fire over all around.
Hungry and raw, the energy never dips. If anything, it gets even more intense as the show rolls on, until that closing salvo of ”Born Under A Bad Sign” and “Statesboro Blues” makes it clear that no-one on earth could have followed it, and that includes the band.
Cleopatra Records and Pat Travers go back a long way, with close to two dozen releases highlighting both his most recent recordings and a string of historic live albums dating back to 1980. Is Bluesed Out in Houston the best of them all? That’s for you to decide.
But it’s certainly up there!
CD/VINYL: https://cleorecs.com/search?q=pat+travers+bluesed+out+in+houston
DIGITAL: https://orcd.co/pattravers_bluesedoutinhouston
Track listing
1 Highway 61 Revisited
2 Life In London
3 Just Enough Money
4 Voodoo Child (Slight Return)
5 Crash And Burn
6 Rock ‘N’ Roll Susie
7 The Pain
8 Inside Looking Out
9 Snortin’ Whiskey
10 Boom Boom Out Go The Lights
11 Born Under a Bad Sign
12 Statesboro Blues
