Dirty, rotten, filthy, stinking blues

There’s no other way to introduce the newest album from Reed Turchi & His Kudzu Choir (née Orkestra) than to call it straightforward, full of slide-guitar, gospel chorus, and on-the-spot-blues. The new release, Just A Little More Faith, was released on April Fool’s Day, 2018, on Devil Down Records.

If the album sounds stripped down to you, it’s because that’s what Turchi intended it to sound like. Straight to tape, with everyone playing in the same room at once with no headphones, computers or song-editing of any kind. This gives the album a halo of authenticity from its straightforward emotion and raw improvisation.

From that improvisation, you get elements like the galloping notes on “Honey Honey” that build to a cascade of sound where the next chord almost tramples the last like a horse stampede. But that’s just part of the charm of Just A Little More Faith. Lyrics like, “You spend your weekends, staring at your telephone / If you got so many friends, then why are you sitting here alone?” on “Honey Honey” conjure images of quiet Saturday nights scrolling through “social” media apps of hundreds of “friends” and “followers,” in stark contrast to the reality of you just sitting by yourself. Consider this a modern take in the tradition of the ancestral tome of the blues.

Tracks like the downtuned title song “Just A Little More Faith” and “Lord I’m So Glad I Don’t Crave Everything I See” make it sound like Turchi and his band are playing under a full moon deep inside a cemetery instead of in a recording studio. It’s creepy, it’s dark, but the ruckus is enchanting, enticing you to keep listening from afar.

“Patricia,” a slow, cowboy ballad with a slide imitating the cries of a steel guitar, was written by Turchi for his recently departed grandmother. With thought-out and heart-wrenching soul-filled lyrics like, “When you’re out there on the highway / Won’t you carry on my name?” This deeply personal track doesn’t quiver. It stands tall and strong, even in the presence of intense sadness that is undoubtedly fresh in mind.

One particular album standout is the 93-second instrumental “Wallerin,” in which pianist Heather Moulder makes you think you’ve just stepped into a 19th-century saloon where she’s playing only the best ragtime piano tricks. Moulder breaks out her chops after Turchi calls out “Come on Heather, let her rip!” on “My Time Ain’t Now.”

The band ramps up the traditional Christian hymn “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” with a clap-and-stop beat rhythm and some of the strongest and unanimous harmonies in the chorus.  “My Time Ain’t Now,” the album’s final track, sounds very doom and gloomy. Moulder’s piano sounds remarkably similar to the “funeral march” before the track transitions into a honky-tonk country song with a I-IV-V blues rhythm pattern.

Just A Little More Faith is a mix of country, blues and gospel influences. Diving deeper, the music grooves, swings and boogies, all while trying to live up to its ancestral influences. While Turchi has spent most of his career aspiring to his Mississippi blues heroes, this new album represents a chance to strive out and put the slide to string on his own stories. And he does so in a dark, dirty, but overwhelmingly authentic and groovy way.