Review: Shelby Kemp – Portrait (South Mississippi)
Shelby Kemp – Portrait (South Mississippi)
Format: CD – Digital / Label: Color Red Music
Release: 2024
Text: Pascal Wilhelm
‘Potrait’ kicks in with Robert Johnson’s Come On In My Kitchen. Quite daring, I must say. But Shelby Kemp gets away with it. The album contains nine acoustic country blues tracks with Shelby singing and playing the guitar.
He has long awaited the opportunity to record an album honoring some of his favorite creators of this type of music, as he says. It is a true live recording; you can hear background noises just before the songs start or right after they end.
Shelby Kemp is a musician based in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. He got his first guitar when he was 14, and he quickly gave up his attempts to be good at or enjoy sports, mathematics and deer hunting.
It was the British rockers from the 60’s and 70’s that attracted his attention. Through his favorite guitarists like Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page, he learned that their roots run back across the pond into Shelby’s own backyard. It was these roots, the Delta Blues, Country Blues or Folk Blues (“… whatever you want to call it”) that became his fascination. Robert Johnson, Charlie Patton, and Mississippi Fred McDowell became his heroes.
But Shelby also does other stuff. With Eddie Roberts & The Lucky Strokes he plays some mean Southern rock and with Royal Horses he delivers some fine Americana.
So, we are looking at a versatile musician here. The album contains nine songs by, amongst others, Blind Willie Johnson (In My Time Of Dying), Charley Patton (Down The Dirt Road Blues), and songs like You Gotta Move and Keep Your Lamp Trimmed And Burning whose authors are a bit more difficult to pinpoint, as I understand.
If you like country blues, check Shelby out folks!
Tracks:
01. Come On In My Kitchen
02. Feels So Good #2
03. Down The Dirt Road Blues
04. Keep Your Lamp Trimmed And Burning
05. In My Time Of Dying
06. You Gotta Move
07. Poor Boy, Long Way From Home
08. Coffee Blues
09. Uncloudy Day
Website: https://www.shelbykemp.com/