How does a little-known if perfectly-capable blues guitarist get heavyweights Dr. John, Texas Tornado Augie Meyers, Baton Rouge blues great Raful Neal and ace drummer Big Johnny Thomassie—the latter two long deceased—to play on his debut album? The answer is a little tricky, but the liner notes explain. Neal and Thomassie’s tracks were cut an unspecified time ago by bassist/producer David Hyde, who was doing a Slim Harpo tribute album that never materialized. Novelli and the other guests added their overdubs, and those tracks, along with spoken reminiscences from the late players, comprise the final 18 minutes of his disc.
It takes either an opportunist or a serious blues scholar to put such an artifact on his album, but Novelli clearly falls on the right side of the fence. His playing throughout the album is as tasteful as it gets. The opening “Texas Tonk” is a T-Bone Walker-style shuffle that offers plenty of openings for cheap fireworks—and he declines them all, preferring to put forward an elegant main theme and some economical, chord-based solos. He’s equally at home on Tex-Mex rock ’n’ roll and Little-Feat-style swamp funk (Delbert McClinton’s “Lie No Better,” with Little Feat’s Paul Barrere). In each case, Novelli plays some nicely understated licks while letting his guests take most of the spotlight. The most original moment by a long shot is “Grand Isle Dawn—April 21, 2110,” which combines slide guitar, synth and jew’s harp for an evocative sound portrait that’s less blue than pink, as in Floyd.
That track is one of many that attests to the upstate New York transplant’s love for Louisiana. There are back-to-back songs here about Katrina and the BP oil spill (the latter, the funk tune “Wrong Number,” can match any song on the topic for righteous anger). The one thing Novelli doesn’t have is an especially great singing voice: He has to work hard to sound gritty, which makes the Harpo segment the least satisfying thing here. For the most part though, this journeyman earns the right to play alongside his heroes.
