PAUL LAMB & THE KING SNAKES

Their 1998 CD on INDIGO IGOCD 512:
 

"Paul Lamb And The King Snakes are now firmly established as Britain's most accomplished blues band. As a harmonica player, Paul Lamb himself has been winning trophies for many years; having won the British Blues Connection award five years in a row, he is now in the Gallery Of Blues Greats. But 1997 was a triumph for the band as a whole; they took away the prizes for best band, best drummer, best guitar and 'She's A Killer', their previous Indigo release collected the gong for best album.

So what about this new record? Paul Lamb gives us the low-down:

'I produced the album, like the last one. Production for me has been a process that's been building up over the years. In the past, I've never been that happy with the stuff that's come out, so I had to learn to do it myself - nobody really knows the sound I want better than I do. I really want to get that 'live' feeling which means not having the bass and the drums somehow left in the background. I want to hear it as if we were playing in your room. What I'm really going for is that Chess sound. We're playing blues in the nineties, but still trying to capture that original authentic sound. I think I achieved that with the last album, and with Johnny Whitehill's first solo album which I also produced. I think I got it with this album as well.'

'We've recorded up in Newcastle, in this tiny place called Purple Dawn. You can get this really dry sound out of it and I've known the engineer for years. He knows exactly what I want and how to get it, where to place the mikes and all that.'

'Johnny, Chad and myself have done the writing for the album. But whereas in the past, we could play all the songs on tour before we went into the studio, this time we didn't play them first at all. We just worte them, went into the studio and said 'these are the songs for the new album.' That way, the material was much fresher. And the material is a bit different from the usual Paul Lamb And The King Snakes album. Because everybody was saing, 'Well, how are you going to beat the last one?' The answer is not to try and do the same thing. For instance, I really like one that Chad wrote called 'The Pillow' which is very reminiscent of that Elvis Presley rockabilly sound. Also, there are more slower numbers on this album, trying to create different moods, not just the normal swing or uptempo stuff that we do.'

'You see, we do blues in 16, 12 or 8 bars, it can be a slow blues, a swing and perhaps a shuffle. And eventually that can be limiting; it gets harder to find new material. But our strong point in the band is the light and shade we can put into it. On stage we can bring the whole thing down until you could hear a pin drop and then bring it all back up and that's what we are trying to achieve on the album. And the songs definitely grow on you.'

'The band is moving from strength to strength; we've been all over Europe and Scandinavia, playing all the Festivals and visited Asia for the first time. Everything is really tight and I'm very happy with the way things are going.'

Foreword and Interview by Harry Shapiro.

Line up: PAUL LAMB- Harmonicas CHAD STRENTZ - Vocals & guitar JOHN WHITEHILL - Lead guitar JIM MERCER- Upright & electric bass MARTIN DEEGAN Drums

Track list: THE PILLOW(150K) IF THE TABLES WERE TURNED SWEET, SWEET WOMAN I'M PACKIN' UP MY PRAYER THAT'S NO GOOD TO ME SOMETIMES I WONDER ALL BECAUSE OF YOU ROLL WITH IT SHOULD BE MINE WAITING ON YOU JOHN HENRY JUMPS IN (58K) DON'T ANSWER THE DOOR (153K) COME BACK BABY MY BABY LEFT ME JUMP FOR IT (Click on titles to hear real audio sample)

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