Jeb Loy Nichols

Country Hustle

Taking his country back, one beat at a time.

“We got Donnie Fritts, George Soule, Tony Joe White…” Missouri’s finest rap-lovin’ country-soul star is rarely slow to acknowledge the stations he has visited en route to his 11th solo album, but if this album feels like the one that arrives at such a fertile time it will take him overground, then he’s making damn sure you stop to check out his influences. On Till The Teardrops Stop, it’s as blatant as letting you know who’s on the stereo; elsewhere – Long Live The Loser and I Hate Hate stand out – the arrangements are built around vamps on short loops; strip the vocals out, you’ve got a hip-hop album that lives deep in the atmospheric funk of Bill Withers, the Chuck Berry voodoo of Come Together, the swampy gumbo of Dr. John… and applies them all to Luther Vandross’s Never Too Much. Lovely. David Hutcheon