Hot Wax: Preacher Boy's Ghost Notes (2024)

I’ve written here previously about the musical charms of Preacher Boy (a/k/a Christopher Watkins), a blues poet of no little talent and a unique perspective that digs deep into the music’s historical roots and then recreates it with a fresh artistic vision that belies tradition in creating something vigorously new and interesting. Ghost Notes is the indie musician’s most ambitious and impressive achievement to date, released on both CD and double-vinyl with a hefty paperback tome also available with lyrics, song notes, and photos. It’s the music that counts, however, and Preacher Boy has never been more compelling or intriguing than he is on Ghost Notes.

Preacher Boy’s Ghost Notes

Wielding a weathered, whiskey-soaked voice that is equal parts Tom Waits and Howlin’ Wolf yet easily recognized as Preacher Boy, I picked up on the Band’s influence on “Up the River” right away (especially since the legendary Garth Hudson had just passed away and was on my mind). Sporting a strong rhythm but laid-back vibe, “Up the River” offers up hazy memories expressed with poetic charm. “New Red Cedar Blues” is a country-blues song at heart, but with the same strong Americana roots as anything the Band ever recorded, Watkins’ mournful vocals accompanied by a riveting guitar line. The hard-fought knowledge of “Two Birds” is delivered with serpentine guitar and a Delta blues ferocity, Watkins’ desperate vocals almost drowning beneath the waves of a hypnotic groove.

The Springsteen influenced “Don’t Know What To Think Anymore” offers some of Watkins’ most inspired lyrics and fretwork, obtusely political in the way that all music is a political statement, whether it be personal or universal. You can’t separate the artist from their culture, and “Dirty Little Secret” is a blues-rock dirge that explores the cause and effect of addiction, whether it be substance abuse or the abuses of power that draws so many like a moth to a flame. The title track is a beautifully fragile story of lonely desperation, social isolation, and the compulsion to create that drives nearly every artist, delivered pitch perfect with trembling vocals and a mournful, almost Baroque soundtrack.

Land of Milk and Honey

The brilliance of “Scene of the Crime” is shrouded in oblique social commentary fueled by anger and a guitar-driven blues-rock dynamic that highlights Watkins’ fierce vocals. When lines like “the song of myself, sung by a fool and performed by a mime/tuned to a bell with a crack in the back that is still made to chime/by an old bell-ringer, long past his prime/who is lookin’ for clues at the scene of the crime” are accompanied by crying harmonica notes, you have to sit up and take notice. Ditto for “See All the People,” which grieves as passionately as “Scene of the Crime” rages; pointedly anti-violence, it also addresses the internal suffering of the killers who commit atrocities against their fellow humans, an aspect of every mass shooting too dark and inconvenient to be of concern to a society that has creates these mutants.

As close as Preacher Boy gets to a ‘traditional’ folk song, “No Rivers To Cross” is nevertheless a minimalist joy, a sort of Southern Gothic tale whose sparse instrumentation still plays loud below whip smart lyrics like “god or devil, it doesn’t matter/you praise the former and race the latter” and “down by the river, where the moonlight’s shattered diamond paints the water white/is where the drunks come to hear the monks drum/I’ll take you there where all are welcome.” Watkins claims a Tom Petty influence for “Land of Milk and Honey,” but it you couldn’t prove it by me, except for perhaps his vocal phrasing, which mildly mimics “Refugee.” The song displays a ‘60s-styled garage-rock undercurrent that skews closer to Sky Saxon, with a sorrowful vocal delivery that perfectly showcases the lyrics. Ghost Notes closes with the beautiful, lilting “Light A Candle,” written for Watkins’ wife, the considered words offered with emotion and accompanied by filigree guitarwork that touches your soul.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

Ghost Notes is the most personal and lyrically revealing work in Preacher Boy’s lengthy career (I first reviewed his Devil’s Buttermilk album in 2002 for All Music Guide), a major work by an Artist who has refused to compromise his musical vision. It’s his “Americana” album, haunted by influential ghosts like Levon Helm, Townes Van Zandt, Tom Petty, and Mac Rebennack (a/k/a Dr. John) as well as a few still corporate souls like Springsteen, Dylan, John Fogerty, and Neil Young while still managing to sound uniquely original and creatively electrifying.

Watkins poured his heart and soul into the creation of Ghost Notes, and it shows in the album’s craftsmanship and integrity; it’s well worth tracking down a copy if you’re a fan of any of the aforementioned influences. Whether you opt for the CD or the 2x vinyl version of Ghost Notes, I’d recommend grabbing a copy of Watkins’ Ghost Notes: Songs and Stories as well, the book providing further insight into the unjustly obscure but nevertheless fascinating talent that is Preacher Boy. Grade: A+

Buy the album via Bandcamp: Preacher Boy’s Ghost Notes

CD Review: Preacher Boy's The Rumble Strip (2018)

Christopher Watkins, a/k/a ‘Preacher Boy’, has been kicking around the American blues scene for a couple decades, cranking out his original style of acoustic blues across a handful of critically-acclaimed albums. Inspired by country-blues legends like Bukka White, Son House, and Mississippi John Hurt, Watkins developed his own distinctive vocal and guitar style and launched Preacher Boy & the Natural Blues in the early 1990s. He recorded a couple albums for the esteemed Blind Pig Records label and released a couple more independently before disappearing from the blues world.

After a short hiatus from music, Preacher Boy came roaring back in 2016 with three new albums filled with inspired original songs and inspired classic blues covers. The albums all feature Watkins’ sandpaper-soaked-in-whiskey vocals and mesmerizing slide-guitar played on a vintage National Resophonic guitar. The trio of recordings wasn’t so much a commercial endeavor as an artistic one, Watkins shaking off the ‘ring rust’ and getting his blues mojo back in the wake of his absence. The Rumble Strip is his follow-up to 2016, a more commercially-oriented effort that nevertheless displays an amazing amount of artistry and musical sophistication. Simply put, Preacher Boy’s performances on The Rumble Strip leave nothing but scorched earth in their wake.

Preacher Boy’s The Rumble Strip

“The Sliding Window (Hail Mary)” reminds of R.L. Burnside’s 1990s-era electro-blues with its low-slung instrumental groove, Watkins’ vocals a cross between a guttural Tom Waits barroom brogue and Mississippi Hill Country patois. The album’s rockin’ title track is part field-holler and part street-corner talkin’ with percussive percussion, scraps of razor-sharp guitar, and an unrelenting vocal delivery that roars out of your speakers like a bootlegger speeding away from the revenuers. The devastating “Bullet” marries the poetic lyricism of Bob Dylan with Son House’s fatalism, the song’s ornate underlying instrumentation doing little to soften the crushing body-blows and uppercuts delivered by Watkins’ explosive heavyweight-class vocals and harrowing socially-conscious lyrics. I’ve been listening to rock and blues music for almost 50 years and I’ve never heard a more haunting, desperate, anguished story-song.

Watkins’ “Bandy-Legged and Broke” returns to the same cutting-edge blues sound that Jon Spencer brought to Burnside’s A Ass Pocket of Whiskey. The song crackles with energy, with vocals shouted above a deep background groove to jarring effect. The yearning vocals of “Saint Peter” are out of character for Preacher Boy, but quite effective here, Watkins displaying a more soulful facet of his talents on a song that buzzes with distortion, emotion, and raw immediacy. The syncopated rhythms of “Crazy Dirty James” are matched with similar vocal gymnastics with clashing instrumentation adding punctuation to Watkins’ lyrics. Preacher Boy’s familiar National Resophonic can be heard fighting to rise above the din, grounding an otherwise chaotic performance in the murky mud of the Mississippi Delta. The muscular “Can’t Sleep Here Tonight” is a Led Zeppelin-styled blues-rocker pumped up on steroids, threatening to blow out your speakers with a sonic tsunami while “Showers of Rain” ups the ante with exotic instrumentation clamoring behind Watkins’ colorful (autobiographical?) lyrics and world-weary vocals.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

Although The Rumble Strip showcases a welcome expansion of his musical palette beyond his signature country-blues sound, Watkins’ vocals on these songs still growl and bite like Howlin’ Wolf chewing on a microphone, swallowing electricity and spitting out lightning bolts. It’s with his lyrical skills where Preacher Boy really shines, though, and The Rumble Strip is full of whip-smart story-songs backed by imaginative and often-dense instrumentation that proves that Preacher Boy is no one-trick pony. Recommended for rock and blues-rock fans alike, The Rumble Strip marks the return of a unique and original musical voice. Grade: A

Check out Preacher Boy's website

Also on That Devil Music.com:
Lost & Found: Preacher Boy

Buy the CD from Amazon.com: Preacher Boy’s The Rumble Strip

Lost & Found: Preacher Boy

Christopher Watkins, a/k/a “Preacher Boy,” was a teenaged blues obsessive who discovered his muse in the country-blues sounds of acoustic bluesmen like Son House, Bukka White, and Mississippi John Hurt. After honing his craft playing guitar with a number of go-nowhere rock bands, Watkins embraced his alter ego and formed Preacher Boy & the Natural Blues in 1992. The band quickly made a name for itself on the thriving San Francisco Bay area blues scene that included talents like Tommy Castro and Elvin Bishop, and the band released its self-titled debut album on the esteemed Blind Pig Records label in 1995.

Preacher Boy & the Natural Blues opened up for artists like Los Lobos, Counting Crows, and J.J. Cale when they performed in the Bay area, and they wowed the audience of the 1995 San Francisco Blues Festival. The band released its sophomore effort, Gutters & Pews, on Blind Pig in 1996, the album incorporating a more Americana vibe centered on Watkins’ multi-instrumental talents (guitar, mandolin, banjo, accordion, keyboards, washboard, etc.). Moving to the U.K. in the late ‘90s, Preacher Boy released the 1998 solo album Crow. An opening performance for Eagle-Eye Cherry led to a songwriting partnership between the two artists, Watkins subsequently co-writing and playing on five tracks for Cherry’s 2001 release Living In the Present Future.

Preacher Boy's The Devil's Buttermilk

In the meantime, Preacher Boy wrote and recorded The Devil’s Buttermilk with keyboardist Steve Pigott and drummer Paul Burgess, the album released in 1999. This is where the Reverend picked up on Preacher Boy’s unique blues sound, writing for All Music Guide that “the listener is assured that The Devil’s Buttermilk is not your typical blues album and that Preacher Boy is definitely not your usual Telecaster-toting modern bluesman. With a guttural black-cat moan to match any death-metal howler, Preacher Boy sermonizes at the altar of hard knocks, reading from the good book of Muddy Waters and spreading the gospel of Howlin’ Wolf.”

I concluded my review of that album stating that “Watkins crosses the traditional country-blues of haunted legends like Robert Johnson and Son House with a modern, rock-influenced perspective similar to Jon Spencer or Jack White of the White Stripes, branding the sound with his own distinctive mark.” Sadly, Watkins and his Preacher Boy persona all but disappeared after the 2004 release of Demanding To Be Next, about which All Music Guide’s Stewart Mason wrote “Preacher Boy might be a young white boy singing the blues, but think Tom Waits and Captain Beefheart more than Led Zeppelin and Bad Company, and throw in some Townes Van Zandt and Gillian Welch as well.”

The National Blues

This wouldn’t be a ‘Lost & Found’ column without some resolution for the artist, though, and Watkins reached out to the Reverend on Facebook to let me know that contrary to the rumors that Preacher Boy was dead and gone he was, in reality, alive and thriving. After a short hiatus from music, Preacher Boy came roaring back strong in 2016 with three new albums filled with inspired original songs and choice classic blues covers. Released by Coast Road Records, the albums all feature Preacher Boy’s gruff vocals and the ringing sound of his slide-guitar playing on his vintage National Resophonic guitar.

The National Blues was the first of Preacher Boy’s three 2016 releases. According to Watkins’ website, the album was recorded in a shed in the mountains high above Santa Cruz, California. The performance is about as organic as one can get – no edits, no overdubs, and no freakin’ Auto Tune – just Watkins’ voice and guitar and drummer Zack Olsen. The result is a stunning collection of acoustic country-blues. The album-opening “Obituary Writer Blues” reminds of Son House, Watkins’ deft fretwork creating a mesmerizing vibe while his whiskey-soaked vocals conjure up the ghosts of the Mississippi Delta.

The spry “My Car Walks On Water” displays elements of the Piedmont style of blues, mostly due to Watkins’ jaunty git licks, while the haunting “Seven’s In the Middle, Son” is a Charley Patton styled blues dirge with wailing vox and dark-hued guitar lines. A pair of bonus tracks round out a ‘baker’s dozen’ of rock-solid ‘alternative blues,’ Watkins’ “Evil Blues” a deceptively engaging song, his strained vocals a cross between Tom Waits and Randy Newman as the song’s fascinating lyrics leaving you hanging on every word. A languid cover of the chestnut “Baby, Please Don’t Go” captures all the angst of the original by framing it in a different musical setting, Preacher Boy putting his own ‘stank’ on the song with an imaginative reading.

Preacher Boy’s Country Blues

The aptly-titled Country Blues followed The National Blues, the album’s cover featuring a B&W drawing by visual artist Amy Marinelli titled “Home” which depicts the rustic setting in which the album was created. Musically, Country Blues offers a similar sort of blues buffet as The National Blues, Preacher Boy reaching back to his roots to deliver eight scorching covers of songs by country-blues legends. The album was recorded ‘live’ without overdubs over the course of two nights on location at was once the old Meadowood Lodge, tucked away and virtually hidden among the redwood trees in the Santa Cruz mountains. Country Blues was released on November 12th in celebration of Bukka White’s birthday.

With his gravelly voice accompanied only by his National Resonator guitar, Watkins uses his interpretive skills to spin unique takes on songs like Delta blues giant Robert Johnson’s “If I Had Possession Over Judgement Day,” which pairs Watkins’ imaginative fretwork with a unique arrangement that makes full use of a light/dark dynamic. Others artists receiving the Preacher Boy treatment include Bukka White, whose “Fixin’ To Die Blues” is provided a rowdy, upbeat performance while the traditional “Stagolee” – a classic song about which you could write a book or academic theses about – is delivered as a jaunty Piedmont-styled jam. Blind Willie Johnson’s “Jesus, Make Up My Dyin’ Bed” features some nimble pickin’ on what is a truly unique and exhilarating reading of the classic blues dirge.

Estate Bottled Blues

Estate Bottled Blues rounds out this trilogy and represents the “long lost” Preacher Boy album. Pursuing an exercise in personal creativity, the songs on the album began with Watkins’ promise to write and record a song every day until his muse was exhausted. It ended 42 songs later in a Chicago hospital (a story for another time), the songs forgotten in an old box until Watkins’ rediscovered ‘em and remastered the material for Estate Bottled Blues. Offering 16 of those lost songs, Estate Bottled Blues is Preacher Boy’s most fully-realized album yet, the multi-instrumental talent layering electric and acoustic guitars, keyboards, mandolins, banjos and such onto an eight-track tape machine.

Preacher Boy pursues a different tack with his singing here as well, softening his sandpaper vocal chords with a gentler delivery befitting the lush instrumentation of the tracks. He also adds a bit of Southern Gothic vibe to the lyrics and arrangements, mixing the lyrical sensitivity of a folk artist to his normal gutbucket acoustic blues. It’s an artistically-successful collection, ranging from the Tom Waits-styled barroom blues of “Envelope” and the more rock-oriented “Revelation Falls” to the lyrically-powerful “The Fine and the Weak” – which features some of Watkins’ hardest-edged fretwork to date – and the eloquent “Pulling Black Flowers From An Hourglass,” where Watkins’ gets his most oblique, lyrically. Estate Bottled Blues is Preacher Boy’s “rock” album, the songs full of passion and energy.  

Lost & Found: Preacher Boy

So, as one can tell from the previous 1,000+ words, Christopher Watkins/Preacher Boy wasn’t exactly ‘lost’ though he definitely is ready to be ‘found’ by a legion of blues fans in search of authenticity and sincerity in their music. Although his country-blues influences are evident in these grooves, Preacher Boy’s sound is entirely of his own making, and he’s been busy making vibrant and electrifying music that stands outside of the mainstream of the insular and tradition-bound world of the blues. In this, he reminds a lot of an artist like Corey Harris.

Preacher Boy wrote, recorded, and released three high-quality albums within a year, without succumbing to exhaustion or cliché. Nevertheless, I suspect that Preacher Boy still has some interesting music to make...

Buy these Preacher Boy CDs from Amazon.com:
The National Blues
Country Blues
Estate Bottled Blues