GravelRoad - Duty To Warn

Size: 93.3 MB
Time: 40:10
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Released: 2023
Styles: Blues Rock
Art: Front

01. Get It Together (3:47)
02. Jailhouse Limp (4:02)
03. Traveler (5:16)
04. Storm's Coming (4:55)
05. World On Fire (4:31)
06. My Love (3:31)
07. Oceans (6:24)
08. You Ain't Shit (1:59)
09. Wired To Rust (2:53)
10. Manimal Farm (2:46)

Full-blown ambassadors of the blues, Seattle’s own GravelRoad are sending another charge into their beloved Mississippi Delta source material with a ninth release, a Jack Endino-engineered blues rocker DUTY TO WARN.

On their ninth album, DUTY TO WARN explores GravelRoad’s well-earned weaving guitar interplay-earned with tens of thousands of miles of touring through the US and Europe in support of their last eight albums over 20 years. Truly, GravelRoad are a confident, masterful institution of guitar-driven blues with a passion for the heavy back beat and storytelling.

This is the band’s fourth release with co-conspirator Jack Endino, with the rock institution helming engineering, mixing and mastering duties. Endino also worked with the band on CROOKED NATION (2019), CAPITOL HILL COUNTRY BLUES (2016) and EL SCUERPO (2014).

While maintaining a base with gigs at Tractor Tavern, Sunset, Slim’s Last Chance and The Funhouse, GravelRoad has continued to pile up the frequent flier points, touring Europe and the US consistently for the last decade. The band’s songs are featured in the TV shows POWER (“Monkey with a Wig” Season 5 epi 3); ARROW (“The Run” epi 512); BLOODLINE (“The Run” epi 302), THE AFFAIR (“Bring Me Back” epi 104) among other movie and TV show appearances.

Like earlier proselytizers Canned Heat and Mike Bloomfield, GravelRoad apprenticed the genre, traveling to their beloved Hill Country section of Mississippi and helping their good friend T-Model Ford (James Lewis Carter Ford) tour the US, performing as his band at ALL TOMORROW’S PARTIES, among other festivals. With T-Model, GravelRoad recorded the outstanding TALEDRAGGER (Alive Natural Sound 2011) and LADIES MAN (2010), masterful performances captured to vinyl to preserve the legacy of one of the great characters of the blues. The band continues pushing into new territory, but their legacy of documenting and supporting this unique American folk art continues. The band maintains a presence in Mississippi, appearing regularly at blues festivals including the Deep Blues Festival in Clarksdale, Mississippi.

With DUTY TO WARN, and their accompanying US and European tour, GravelRoad continue to record, tour, and bring it where it needs to be brought, celebrating the guitar, the beat, the joy and the groove.

Duty To Warn MP3
Duty To Warn FLAC

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GravelRoad - Crooked Nation

Size: 90,5 MB
Time: 38:40
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Released: 2020
Styles: Blues Rock
Art: Front & Back

01. Got Me Movin' (3:02)
02. Crooked Nation Blues (3:17)
03. Got You On My Mind (3:19)
04. Hey Hey Hey (5:02)
05. Downtown (3:15)
06. OC (1:23)
07. Cosmic Flowers (7:43)
08. Come Back Baby (3:39)
09. Whats In A Name (3:41)
10. 10 Brown Treasure (4:15)

GravelRoad pushes the boundaries of heavy rock and blues on their eighth studio album. Crooked Nation was recorded, mixed and mastered in Seattle by Jack Endino. It is sound of new and old - heavy fuzz, more introspective moods and a fist pumping rallying cry for a good time.

Crooked Nation

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GravelRoad - Mississippi Time

Size: 81,7 MB
Time: 34:58
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Released: 2018
Styles: Blues Rock
Art: Full

01. My Baby's Tryin' (6:49)
02. Roll Me Like A Stone (3:57)
03. Demonstar (7:27)
04. Get It Right! (2:07)
05. Left Me Twice (2:56)
06. 149 Delta (7:29)
07. Bleeding Well (4:10)

For the those of you who dig sludgy landscapes of reverb-oaked guitars and hypnotic rhythms that challenge your senses, prepare to be satiated by Mississippi Time, the seventh studio album from Seattle based heavy blues rockers Gravel Road. The new tracks were recorded and mixed during the fall of 2016 at Dial Back Sound in Water Valley, Mississippi, hence the title. This is an important point because this is not a delta blues album in the traditional sense, but rather a reflection of the new Memphis underground and the very far left of center world of the movement deemed “Deep Blues.” The quartet delivers a full on symphonic garage rock sonic that explores all the sounds possible with two guitars, bass and drums.

The opening track “My Baby’s Tryin’” is a rumbling one-chord boogie that evokes images of Howling Wolf mashed up with The Velvet Underground. The greasy “Roll Me Like A Stone,” works over a Jimmy Page inspired guitar riff until its beaten into bloody submission. The first of two tracks that weigh in at over seven minutes “Demonstar,” is a thick paste of psychedelic wallpaper, that bookends two minute quickstep tracks, the fuzz rocker “Get It Right,” and the scorching Hill Country Blues “Left Me Twice,” before the Black Sabbath goes to Clarksdale stoner jam “149 Delta.” The almost conventional tome of lost love “Bleeding Well,” closes the set with some very tasty slide guitar and sorrowful vocals. ~Rick Bowen

Mississippi Time

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GravelRoad - 2 albums: Capitol Hill Country Blues / The Bloody Scalp of Burt Merlin

Album: Capitol Hill Country Blues
Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 43:25
Size: 99.4 MB
Styles: Psychedelic blues, Hill Country blues
Year: 2017
Art: Front

[3:56] 1. Capitol Hill Country Blues
[3:15] 2. Come and Gone
[4:54] 3. Back Yard
[4:04] 4. Rather Be Lonely
[2:29] 5. One More Dollar
[5:25] 6. Rabbit Run
[7:34] 7. Song to Darkness
[8:19] 8. Green Lungs
[3:25] 9. I Feel High

GravelRoad is a Seattle band that blends the trance of North Mississippi Hill Country blues with the fuzz and power of heavy rock and roll. The band continues to bring its high energy shows to venues & festivals throughout the US and Europe in support of the new record and beyond. GravelRoad’s mix of driving rhythms and heavy guitar sounds range from minute-long fits of angst to slow and methodical psychedelic tracks. “Rabbit Run” and “Rather Be Lonely” give followers a sense of the familiar from the veteran band. Conversely the band pushes boundaries on Capitol Hill Country Blues songs such as the Krautrock-inspired instrumental “Green Lungs” and the album’s finale “I Feel High”, a stunningly beautiful solo acoustic track.

Capitol Hill Country Blues was recorded and mixed by legendary engineer Jack Endino in late 2015 & early 2016. This follows work with Mr. Endino for the bands’ last full-length album, El Scuerpo (2014). “It’s a little like what John Lee Hooker may have sounded like in Black Sabbath. And who wouldn’t want to hear that?” ~Patrick Wells

Capitol Hill Country Blues

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Album: The Bloody Scalp Of Burt Merlin
Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 38:00
Size: 87.0 MB
Styles: Psychedelic blues, Hill Country blues
Year: 2013
Art: Front

[3:29] 1. The Run
[3:59] 2. Cocaine Baby
[1:50] 3. Monkey With A Wig
[3:53] 4. Maybe The Wind
[1:01] 5. Med Pass!
[4:01] 6. Bottom Of The World
[2:29] 7. Death Bed Blues
[5:13] 8. Last Night's Dream
[7:47] 9. Space
[4:13] 10. Bring Me Back

GravelRoad are the worn down white dudes who can play the holy shit out of the heavy beat blues– the swung bass beat style that you hear from the acoustic Delta recordings of Clarksdale to the electric work of the Hill Country near Oxford (where the bass drum kicks like a hip bone, sometimes pausing just enough to get the groove into it).

We watched the band develop from DIY blues fans with their 2004 self title release and their 2008 release Shot the Devil, then their apprenticeship with T Model Ford– across 60,000 miles of touring, across the US and Europe, across two fantastic records, The Ladies Man and Taledragger. When they dropped Psychedelta, I felt I got it. The band was looking for a new angle, a new take on blues. They’d studied up and now they were striking off on their own. The ten tracks on that album are thick, emotive, consistent– I think Cough Syrup Stomp would be an accurate description– though maybe people who’ve led cleaner lives wouldn’t use that term. Classic Rock Magazine called it an album of the year.

Well, shit. If that was album of the year, Classic Rock Magazine is going to lose their minds over GravelRoad’s fourth full length release, The Bloody Scalp of Burt Merlin. I’ve been blown away by it from the day they stepped up on stage in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle and belted out the inaugural track, “The Run.” 60,000 miles of touring has an effect. To see Stefan Zillioux and Jon Kirby Newman lay down the weave of guitar work, then sing the doubled lyrics as effortlessly as a breath… I was stunned. I knew they were blues musicians, I didn’t think they could integrate the 60s Brit-Blues harmony more flawlessly than Black Rebel Motorcycle Club.

The Bloody Scalp… is full of these displays. There’s the doubling harmonies that so few bands can pull off. There are the great riffs– not 70s classic rock riffs, but a jittery, relentless riffs… more Angus Young than Duanne Allmann, as demonstrated on “Monkey with a Wig.” There’s even a aching homage– with the sweet open string partial chord work that blues fans will recognize– to Junior Kimbrough, “Last Night’s Dream”. Nothing is easy on this album. Nothing is safe. It’s a full bore explosion of a statement. The band even departs from the hip-shake beat that, I feel, locked them into the Mississippi form. I’ve always been impressed with how drummer Martin Reinsel locks down the groove of their sets live. Here, he takes the role of a hard driving trucker, moving beyond that hip shake kick… slamming the band into heavy rock territory with the RPMS climbing on “Med Pass,” then slipping it back down with “Bottom of the World.”

There’s the old story about the crossroad not far from GravelRoad’s beloved Red’s Juke Joint in Clarksdale. A lot of musicians use that cliche now when a band disappears and suddenly shows up lightyears ahead of the pack. I hate to turn to it, but from the second I heard the first song on this album played live, to today, as I’ve been listening to the final master, I’ve got to admit… when something like this comes along, you’ve can’t help thinking of the supernatural. ~Bart Cameron

The Bloody Scalp Of Burt Merlin

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