Musical acts you love that you figure hardly anyone knows about

My next submission: Darryl Purpose

The man has lived an incredibly interesting life. Was once considered one of the world's best Blackjack players and banned from casinos all around the world. I believe he might have been part of team the movie 21 was modeled after. Became an activist for environmental causes. Somewhere along the line, he started writing and recording songs. I discovered him in the middle 1990s and his songwriting style reminds me so much of Harry Chapin -- a lot of the stories seem to be straight out of his life. He used to have a website with a lot of stories from his blackjack days that were great, but I can't find that site anymore.

This link takes you do an entire album that is great.

 

Jon Cleary

 

I bought that Webb Wilder cassette ("Doo Dad") when it came out about 25 years ago. A great collection of songs. I especially dug this one:

Good cover of "Baby, Please Don't Go" on there, too.

As for Rory, what a talented guitar player.

This is one of my work-shift go-tos:

 

I'm just getting into Rory Gallagher. This thread looks an awful lot like the CD wall in my studio. (I'm an artist when I'm not writing for the Man. ::insert eyeroll here: That quote from Hendrix makes me like him even more.

I give you...The Subdudes

One of their earlier songs:

Their post-Katrina release got some attention for this track:

One of my favorite Subdudes songs:

 

Dear God, I love Webb Wilder. He spoiled me for the available men in my life. Okay, I'm exaggerating. Sort of.

Human Cannonball is a lot of fun, but his first album, "It Came From Nashville" is still the Last of the Full Grown Men at his best. The later expanded editions are worth getting, and I don't say that about many reissues.

Here's a link to the whole thing on a Youtube playlist:

 

Wilder, Southern Culture on the Skids and Mojo Nixon are part of a genre known here as Psychobilly.

Mojo Nixon:

SCotS:

 

Here's a guy I came across while surfing YouTube recently: Marlon Williams. Incredible voice.

A couple I've been listening to a lot lately:

 

If you're interested in knowing more about Rory, there are a couple good bio-type videos on YouTube.

 

The Rev. Horton Heat:

 

Thanks for the info. I'll do some searching the next time I'm knocking around Youtube.

 

Every town has one band that everyone thinks should be bigger, and in Roanoke, that was Agents of Good Roots. Annoyingly spiritual/new-agey like Rusted Root and unusually instrumented (sax!) like Dave Matthews, but they wrote better songs than either. They operated in sort of a jam-band space but generally avoided the worst impulses of other jam bands. Jazzy, tuneful stuff.

They put out one album on some sort of major-label subsidiary and got one video in brief rotation on MTV (see below, and be sure to pay attention to the oh-so-deep lyrics), but the album flopped and they never got back there. I will ride for them to this day. There's no reason they shouldn't have had, say, Vertical Horizon's career.

And from what I understand, the singer injured his voice box in a skiing accident, which is why he sounds like that.

 

I was at a festival about a decade ago, and Rusted Root came on. I was familiar with the name, but hadn't heard any of their stuff. They did a good cover of Suspicious Minds, but otherwise, I wondered what all the hippies surrounding me were thinking.*








* I was generally sober, so there was a likely disconnect, but I was underwhelmed.