Matthew Robinson & the Texas Blues Band

Matthew Robinson & the Texas Blues Band

Matthew Robinson's been hard at work in Austin's Eastside clubs for many years now, as well as heading to Europe and playing with Blues Boy Hubbard, Willie Foster, and of course his own Texas Blues Band. This, his second disc, shanghais other members of the local Dialtone stable, including guitarist Johnny Moeller and hornblowers Duck Jennings and Ephraim Owens, so "Texas Blues Band" is right: This is the no-frills blues of the Fifties or Sixties, without a whiff of rock, revisionism, or irony. Robinson's hollow-body guitar tone is warm and fat, his playing fluid and expressive. There's plenty of humor that runs through the best blues, with Robinson lamenting his girlfriend's "Too Many Dirty Dishes" and getting some great dish-scrubbing sounds out of his guitar. The band hits its stride on the horn-driven stroll "Meet Me With Your Black Drawers On" and "It Takes a Long Time to Break in a New Broom." In true Sixties R&B style, Robinson even addresses "all the fine ladies out there" on "I'm Mr. Jody." Yup, this is the real deal; sweaty blues, club blues, the kind you have to look a little harder for. The kind you're always glad you found.