GET YOUR BACK INTO IT!
The Nick Moss Band Featuring Dennis Gruenling. Alligator Records.
Coming out July 14 is a fun, hip throwback to an earlier blues era that certainly is worthy of consideration as a dance party album for young and old.
The Nick Moss Band Featuring Dennis Gruenling provides listeners in 2023 with a 14-song setlist of new songs, but written with the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s in mind. It’s a clever project that Moss and Gruenling pull off so well that you’ll find yourself wondering if they’re amped up covers of classic songs or actually originals.
The title track especially has some get-up-and-go pep to it. Many of the songs have some whimsical moments, too. Moss wrote all except two which Gruenling did, one of which is the tongue-in-cheek number, “Your Bark Is Worse Than Your Bite.”
Moss learned the blues firsthand from Chicago greats such as Jimmy Rogers, Jimmy “Fast Fingers” Dawkins and Willie “Big Eyes” Smith. He’s a guitarist with some serious chops. Gruenling learned from harp icons James Cotton, Snooky Pryor and Sam Myers. He adds a lot on harmonica. Moss and Gruenling are both good singers, too.
The album has a pretty loose feel as opposed to structured charts, and that spontaneity adds to the appeal. There are times listeners might think they’re inside a blues house party, with the band in the living room.
Moss is from Chicago and Gruenling is from New Jersey. They’ve won Blues Music Awards for Traditional Blues Album, Band of the Year, Song of the Year, Traditional Blues Male Artist of the Year and Best Instrumentalist—Harmonica. They’ve toured across North America and Europe.
First Published July 6, 2023, 11:00 a.m.
