CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE ENTIRE PERFORMANCE
Radio Moscow’s television debut now online! Was a pleasure to play on Rockpalast for German television. Awesome to be part of a tv show that has featured such greats as Santana, David Bowie, Rory Gallagher, Funkadelic, B.B. King, Johnny Winter, Joe Cocker, Wishbone Ash and many more. The entire performance is now up. Great sound and video quality. Check it out! – Parker Griggs
Evans tells CelebStoner: “The first verse is painting the picture of being on the flight to Europe with no weed in our possession. THC levels are dangerously low. The song is basically a cry for help. Do not marry the marijuana with the dirty, brown tobacco. That’s the ‘Dirty Spliff Blues’.”
“Let’s free the people who spend most of their lives in jail for only smoking and possessing an herb,” Evans adds. “Let’s free our crippled economy with a brand new billion-dollar industry. The benefits of marijuana are infinite.”
The album art for Dirty Spliff Blues – a burnt-out scarecrow smoking a hog-leg size joint protecting a large marijuana field playing a Resonator guitar – was created by William Stout.
Parker Griggs in LA for the recording of Joe Evans (Left Lane Cruiser) and Van Campbell’s (Black Diamond Heavies) album.
PRE-ORDER Left Lane Cruiser “Dirty Spliff Blues” on I-TUNES here
It’s album number-seven for Left Lane Cruiser (five on Alive Natural Sound if you count the one they co-recorded with Black Diamond Heavies keyboardist John Wesley Myers) and the sound has evolved to the point where nobody is resting on any laurels.
Left Lane Cruiser were once an amped-up hill country duo playing what they tagged “hillgrass blueberry”. They kicked out a helluva lot of jams for a two-piece, with fuzz, distortion and a kitchen drawer full of percussion their stock-in-trade. They even lucked out and landed a song on the soundtrack of “Breaking Bad”. Good synchronisation if you can get it.
They’re now a tub-thumping three-piece, built around slide guitarist-vocalist Freddy J IV. Drummer Ben Breck vacated the stool after a decade and was replaced by Pete Dio. The other newbie is bassist Joe Bent. Their take on blues-rock has been beefed-up as well. The lighter hill country touches have been smudged.
If the song titles weren’t a giveaway, aural wrecking balls like “Elephant’s Stomp” and “Whitbread n’ Beans” put the issue beyond doubt. The fuzz tone strut of “Heavy Honey” sits perfectly under Freddy J’s beefy soul shout.
By the time the slightly off-kilter title track slides into the pounding “Cutting Trees” and the wet concrete undertow of “All Damn Day”, it’s no contest. If you’ve had the volume up there’s no chance of you getting up off that canvas in a hurry.
The cover art shows a scarecrow with a joint in a field full of dope plants and the title song is a celebration of Indiana-grown weed, but the vibe’s more workingman’s blues rock than Bob Marley.
If you liked Left Lane Cruiser’s last album, “Rock Them Back To Hell”, you’ll more than likely take to this one. It’s just a little sharper, a fraction more focused. The band’s truly broken bad and there’s no looking back.