New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
Peyton’s Big Damn Band brings its furious blues
BRIDGEPORT — The Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band may be inspired by the vintage blues of Elmore James and rural icons Furry Lewis and Charlie Patton, but the band plays furious, seriously finger-blistering blues that’s straight out of the here and now.
It’s also straight out of the hill country of southern Indiana — Bean Blossom, to be precise — where the Rev learned to do country blues finger-style picking with the best of them.
Up till now, we haven’t seen much of The Rev way up here in Connecticut. We have been deprived.
But that’s about to change — and if you blues fans know what’s good for you, you had best get on board on Friday when the Big Damn Band debuts at Bridgeport’s jewel box of a theater, The Bijou Theatre.
New Haven’s The Cobalt Rhythm Kings (which includes Register reporter Mark Zaretsky on harmonica and vocals) opens the show. Showtime is 8 p.m. Tickets are $22 and $37, available in advance at bijoutheatrect.net.
The Rev is joined onstage by just two other people, one being his wife, “Washboard” Breezy Peyton, and the other being Max Senteney on a drum kit that includes a five-gallon maple syrup bucket.
The Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band fuses country and blues music with a hillbilly attitude and a youthful energy. Its most recent album, “Poor Until Payday,” was recorded on and with vintage analog audio equipment.
Playing a custom-made National steel resonator, a 1949 Harmony Archtop, a 1954 Supro Dual Tone and a 1955 Kay Speed Demon through a 1949 Supro amp, the Rev set out to restore the “warmth, pops and hisses” mostly eliminated by modern-day compression.