The Starlet Room presents
Blues & Bourbon: HowellDevine
$16 General Admission – $14 SBS Members
This Event is All Ages
All sales are final, please review before purchasing. No Refunds.
HowellDevine
"What a pleasure to find a young band that really gets the blues...Deep and true to the roots.”
"An album of gutbucket blues in the key of apocalypse, the fifth album by Oakland’s HowellDevine finds drummer Pete Devine, guitarist and harp player Joshua Howell, and bassist Joe Kyle Jr. taking a blistering temperature of the times. Interpreting songs by the likes of Muddy Waters, Memphis Minnie and R.L. Burnside, and offering four trenchant originals responding to recent trials and tribulations, HowellDevine speaks to troubling times while celebrating artists who creatively thrived through much worse."
"There is no blues band performing today as different as HowellDevine – nor as delightful,”
Yes, it’s traditional. And simple, with that telling “deceptively” qualifier. Joshua Howell lays down a lazy bottleneck riff on his 1931 National steel-bodied guitar – a Duolian resonator model favored by the likes of Son House and Bukka White. Pete Devine adds seemingly random brush strokes at first. Josh’s vocal is laconic and understated – no “shouting the blues” here. Lyrics about dark clouds, hoboing, and “my baby” aren’t even of this millennia, let alone forward-thinking. He kicks into a hypnotic groove in the manner of the song’s composer, Fred McDowell, with Pete rolling into a steady rhythm as Joe Kyle, Jr., plucks his upright bass, alternately grabbing his bow to make the bass growl. Sure, it’s the blues, but it’s also a study in dynamics, of theme and variation.
Labeling art is always fallible, which is maybe why HowellDevine calls its style simply “shack-shaking music” – as apt a description as any. Hitting “play” for Strange Times Blues is a guarantee your apartment, shack, or mansion will be shaking in no time. Mine hasn’t stopped.”
