Felix Slim - Overseas Blues

Size: 182 MB
Time: 58:44
File: Flac
Released: 2020
Styles: Blues, Swing
Art: Front

1. Roll & Tumble Blues (4:19)
2. Chantelle Rag (3:15)
3. Let's Try To Make It Work (3:14)
4. I Won't Be Here (3:07)
5. Better Let Me Be (5:25)
6. LIC Stomp (2:21)
7. Right All Night Long (5:14)
8. Send Me A Picture Of Your Face (2:35)
9. Blues Disease (6:40)
10. Mystery Train (4:45)
11. What Do I Have (3:22)
12. Overseas Blues (4:29)
13. Open The Back Door (3:56)
14. Tell Me Mama (5:55)

Felix Slim is the rare guitarist who’s just as much a connoisseur of the blues as he is ragtime. And he has a sort-of-secret side that’s even more exciting…but you’ll have to wait til the end of this to find out what that is. Slim is his real name: he hails from Ceuta, Spain originally and has been a staple of the Queens acoustic scene for several years. Gauging from his music, it’s a stretch to think he might be related to to the cellphone tycoon and media mogul. Slim’s next gig is on Sept 17 at 4 PM at Skinny Dennis. If you’re up for the party – and it will be a party – New York’s best Americana crew, Demolition String Band play afterward at 9. Slim typically plays solo, so it makes sense that his latest album, Overseas Blues – streaming at Bandcamp – would also be a solo affair. It’s one of the seemingly never-ending number of releases that were recorded in 2019 – in this case, at Binky Griptite’s Brooklyn studio – and were knocked off the rails by the plandemic. On this one, Slim is at his most rustically careening: his style is 180 degrees from the careful, museum-piece blues style that so many of the white kids playing it lately seem to be shooting for. The first number is Roll and Tumble Blues, a refreshingly primitive Mississippi hill country-style tune that really rolls and tumbles: Slim plays blues harp on it too. The second is Chantelle Rag, a charmingly intricate number with a ridiculous joke about midway through which is too good to spoil. Track three is Let’s Try to Make It Work, a stomping ba-bump boogie. He follows with I Won’t Be Here, a scrambling Texas-flavored tune and then the rollicking Better Let Me Be: with his harp going full blast as he punches out a one-chord stomp, it really takes you back to a roadhouse of the mind circa 1923. LIC Stomp is a lot more than that, part deep delta swamp dance, part ragtime. Slim breaks out his kazoo for an irresistibly goofy trombone impersonation in Right All Night Long, then delivers a deliciously animated yet deadpan take of the hokum blues Send Me a Picture of Your Face. He airs out his chops with the rapidfire flurries and hammer-ons of Blues Disease, the album’s most epic jam. His take of what he calls “Mistery Train” is a lot more ramshackle than anything Arthur Crudup, let alone Elvis ever envisioned – and has a killer mystery interlude. Slim goes back to agile, light-fingered ragtime for What Do I Have, then breaks out his slide for the album’s title track, fueled by a tasty Lightning Hopkins-style bassline. He closes the record with Open the Back Door!, which isn’t as dirty as you might think, and then pulls out all the stops, kazoo and all, for a lickety-split, innuendo-packed version of Tell Me Mama. The last time this blog was in the house at a Slim gig (if memory serves right) was over the 2019 Labor Day weekend, when he serenaded a packed house in the back courtyard at Long Island City Bar with a high-energy instrumental set. The last time this blog caught a full set from him was in the summer of 2017, when he blew the headlining rock band completely off the stage there. And what is Felix Slim’s secret side? In 2014, he released an absolutely awesome album of haunting Greek underground hash-smoking anthems, which may be the best thing he’s ever done so far.

Overseas Blues FLAC

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