Review: Christopher Wyze & The Tellers – Stuck In The Mud
Christopher Wyze & The Tellers – Stuck In The Mud
Format: CD – Digital / Label: Big Radio Records
Release: 2024
Text: Tom Wouters
‘Stuck In The Mud’ is the debut album by Christopher Wyze & The Tellers, which is described by Big Radio Records label boss Johnny Phillips with a great sense of marketing as “a fresh sound with an old as mud feel”. When listening to ‘Stuck In The Mud’, it turns out to be a bit different. The sound is not very fresh and it is not muddy either.
‘Stuck In The Mud’ was recorded in the Muscle Shoals studios in Alabama (10 songs) and Clarksdale (3 songs). Frontman Christopher Wyze wrote all the songs, the lyrics of which are quite good, but the compositions reveal that Wyze played blues standards for two decades on the road. In addition, Wyze has a Johnny Cash-like voice, which somehow does not fit to the Muscle Shoals blues sound.
It all sounds a bit too clichéd and too neat. It is all played well and the songs remain interesting thanks to the guitar playing of Eric Deaton (Alabama), who we still know as guitarist on Delta Kream of The Black Keys, and Cary Hudson (Clarksdale).
That produces nice songs like Back To Clarksdale and Caution To The Wind and makes session guitarist Eric Deaton the real star of the album.
Stuck In The Mud is a rather unimpressive southern blues album that has its strong points in the song lyrics of Christopher Wyze and the guitar playing of session guitarists Deaton and Hudson.
Tracks:
01. Three Hours From Memphis
02. Stuck In The Mud
03. Cotton Ain’t King
04. Soul On The Road
05. Back To Clarksdale
06. Money Spent Blues
07. Caution To The Wind
08. Hard Work Don’t Pay
09. Life Behind Bars
10. Looking For My Baby
11. Wake Up
12. Good Friend Gone
13. Someday