Cristina Black – who once wrote for OffBeat – has a piece in the new Village Voice about Morning 40 Federation’s Ryan Scully and the work that went in to producing Andre Williams’ new album, Can You Deal With It? (Bloodshot):

It took three years to make Can You Deal, officially credited to Andre Williams and the New Orleans Hellhounds, a group that includes members of the Federation, Dixieland hipster Clint Maedgen, and organ-noise freak Quintron. In the process, Williams demanded cocaine and broke studio equipment when he didn’t get it, had a seizure and almost died while hospitalized, and got sober and then fell off the wagon at Mardi Gras, an episode captured in the upcoming documentary Agile, Mobile, Hostile. As for Scully, he “lost his mind,” ran away from home, and nearly wrecked his marriage. All the while, the group was laying down catchy, dirty r&b songs about coke whores (“Pray for Your Daughter”) and true love (“If It Wasn’t for You”), at times in a laborious, piecemeal fashion, with a very sick Williams painstakingly overdubbing his vocals.