Eric Tessmer Band

Blues Bullets

Half the globe still imagines Austin’s Sixth Street churning out Stevie Ray Vaughan clones like Strats in the “Little Wing” video. They’re down there, but this particular young guitarist in the Steamboat-era SRV cap sounds especially slick in Red River corner pocket Headhunters and now Antone’s. On gunning third release Blues Bullets, Eric Tessmer and his equally young local blues trio take another step out of the $3, early-days footprints of their legendary role model. Winking at “Scuttle Buttin'” with opener “Rebuttal,” BB‘s tone, string tension, and attack are unmistakable, Tessmer’s voice his own as it moves out from guttural blues to Ian Moore soul. “Ain’t With You” and its roadhouse riff recalls another guitarist for whom SRV paved the way, Jeff Healey, while the blues gangsterism of “Every Time” is the exact sort of rave-up for which Doyle Bramhall II’s sets beg. Swamp instrumental “Origin” is nicely situated in the middle. “Blind Eye Blues,” all too standard in structure, offers Tessmer as a convincing guitar disciple in need of interior monologues; see the title track’s fire sale on “Voodoo Chile.” Things stall at the end, not so much in momentum as in material, and while there’s plenty unoriginal in Blues Bullets, save for all nine cuts, the ETB’s conviction isn’t.

**.5

This article appears in August 11 • 2006.

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San Francisco native Raoul Hernandez crossed the border into Texas on July 2, 1992, and began writing about music for the Chronicle that fall, debuting with an album review of Keith Richards’ Main Offender. By virtue of local show previews – first “Recommendeds,” now calendar picks – his writing’s appeared in almost every issue since 1993.