#16 Living Blues Charts
2006 San Diego Music Awards Winner
Best Blues Album
San Diego Union Tribune
The Fremonts
"Mighty Crazy"
Wooden Monkey
Seductive and disarming, the Fremonts ply a musical ground
that few other modern blues bands dare approach. The San Diego quintet
(which holds a CD release party tomorrow at Tio Leo's in Bay Park) insists
that more is less, with each note balanced in the silence that surrounds it.
Each of those notes contribute to the overall feel of the music as it slides
down a greasy alley.
That sound is the confident and relaxed swagger of Mighty Joe Milsap singing I've got a pocketful of money and it's all in ten dollar bills or the hypnotism of Troy Sandow's harmonica as it weaves around the beat and pushes the song toward its final destination. This is a band that believes understatement and sincerity are a powerful brew of blues.
– MICHAEL KINSMAN
The Blues Book Store
The Fremonts
"Mighty Crazy"
The new CD, "Mighty Crazy", from The Fremonts Featuring Mighty Joe Milsap is
like a good book you can't put down. I have not been able to press the eject
button on my car player since I put this disc in it a week ago. This CD
warrants repeated plays. From the first few notes of the first song, "Grabs
Hold It", to the final note on the last track, this CD grabs a hold of you
and won't let go. Each song on "Mighty Crazy" was well chosen and shows how
much respect this band has for the Rhythm & Blues sounds of the 50s and
early 60s - when the word BLUES in Rhythm and Blues had meaning. The four
original tunes and seven covers here all sound as if they were written in
the heyday of the great R&B records that came from labels like Excello,
Chess and the early Sun Studio recordings. You can hear echoes of Lazy
Lester, Slim Harpo, Muddy Waters, Jimmy Rogers, and Lightnin Slim here - not
in imitation but in the dedication the Fremonts have for the music and tone
of traditional blues.
-Barry Pickell Owner, The Blues Book Store.
Issue 100 Jun/Jul 2006
The Fremonts Featuring Mighty Joe Milsap
"Mighty Crazy"
Wooden Monkey Music
Lazy Lester, Muddy Waters, J.D. Miller, Frank Frost, Lightnin’ Hopkins – rarely has an original band’s work been so easily defined by its covers. The Fremonts are five San Diegans led by a Kansas transplant, but musically they occupy a space equidistant between Crowley, La., and Chicago. (Which puts them somewhere around St. Louis I guess.) The salacious and self-explanatory opener “Grabs Hold It” might have their name on the copyright but you’d be hard-pressed to tell it from Miller’s “I Hear You Knockin’” or Muddy Waters “I Want You To Love Me” or Lester’s “Real Combination For Love” or the other three originals here.
We can probably thank producer Mark Neill (Deke Dickerson, the Old 97’s) for the way Mighty Crazy occupies its own specific time and place – using every vintage recording technique available, he and the band have created a record that sounds exactly like some hybrid of Chess and Excello circa 1954. There’s simply nothing to indicate the last half-century of music happened, especially since guitarists Patrick Skog and Tony Tomlinson have the swamp thing nailed and Troy Sandow’s harp is practically a primer in Windy City styles. Fool your blues-loving friends at parties! Tell them you found this in a thrift store somewhere and their eyes will light up!
Make no mistake, however; this all sounds seamless, the work of a unified group that understands the feel and not just the form. In fact the trio of originals at the heart of the album represent no shift in mood or sound at all, though you might have to listen hard to pick up Mighty Joe Milsap’s mighty politically incorrect threat in “Chunk a Rock”: “I’m gonna choke you, my dear darling/Until you’re blue in the face.” Damn. The rest of the disc goes down easy, though Neill’s dedication to the time warp takes a little fidelity away from some great grooves – this recording stays sepia-toned no matter how far you push it. If you need proof that the blues is a timeless art form, this album is your smoking gun. Just don’t look to the Fremonts for the next big thing.
ROBERT FONTENOT
"Fantastico!"
-La Hora Del Blues
"The best
record I've had in my player in over 2 years.... (Mighty Crazy) gets a 7
harp salute..."
-Steve Hammel
"More than
just echoes from the past...Long live the sounds of Jay Miller"
- Brian Harman
www.bluesartstudio.com
"'Mighty Crazy'...sounds like it was pulled out of a vault
where it had been stored for three or four decades."
-Blue Ink
"Singer Milsap is a dead ringer for the late Sammy
Myers... these cats do this music as well as anyone today."
-BluesCritic.com
"Somewhere in Blues Heaven, Frank Frost, Sam Myers, Slim Harpo, Lightnin’ Slim, and Lonesome Sundown are smiling because their legacy is in very capable hands.".
--- Graham Clarke (Blues Bytes)
Thanks to everyone involved here for sharing this one with us...here we go....
For a lot of us "younger" blues fans, the only recollections we have of most of the stable of artists that cut sides for labels such as Chess, Excello, and Sun are, of course, the recorded legacy they left behind for us to savor. However, the Fremonts come the closest to anyone we've heard to capturing that authentic, "old-school" feel that one might've heard in the halcyon days of 706 Union or 2120 Michigan Avenue.
The
Fremonts hail from the San Diego area, and have consistently placed in that
area's "best of" polls where blues bands are concerned. They consist of
locals Kurt Kalker on drums, Tony Tomlinson and Patrick Skog on guitar and
bass, and Troy Sandow on harp. Toss in Kansas native Mighty Joe Milsap on
vocals, and these fellows produce a sound that is cooler than the other side
of the pillow!!
The Fremonts are able to present their sound as authentically as possible by adapting their arrangements to recording techniques from the Fifties. Also, they realize that some blues are just meant to be danced to, and that energy jumps right out of the grooves. Check out the leadoff "Grabs Hold It," with its swampy, Excello-inspired rhumba beat. Also good for a hot turn on the dance floor is an amped-up version of Sam Myers' "Dogged By Women," fueled by Troy Sandow's swingin' harp.
Our
favorites, though, covered both ends of the blues spectrum. The hilarious
"Chunk A Rock" is Mighty Joe's response to a cheatin' lover who's been "kissin'
my friend
Willie!" And, on "Real Combination Of Love," the set's only true ballad,
Mighty Joe's smoky delivery might remind many of our members of Earl
Gaines.
It is refreshing to see a group of bluesmen pay tribute to the classic styles we've grown accustomed to listening to from the masters of the past. Any of these cuts would've been right at home on Hossman Allen's WLAC shows from back in the day when you hid the transistor under your pillow at night! A big tip of the hat to The Fremonts and Mighty Joe Milsap with "Mighty Crazy!!"
Until next time....Sheryl and Don Crow
Music City Blues Society
Nashville, Tenn.