Cards

Leave Jeb Brinkley to his own devices between the hours of midnight and five a.m. and something's bound to happen. With a little whiskey and a guitar lying around, the Chapel Hillian- originally from Irmo, South Carolina - is prone to wax poetic on every shade of heartbreak. From Appalachian folk ballads to the Mississippi Delta Blues, Brinkley channels it all in concise, foot-stomping iterations of old-time sounds. Listen to Bevel Summers and you'll hear what it's like to be a twenty-something reared on Jim Croce and Roger Miller cassettes playing in the car on the way to school, and a mother's homemade rendition of The Beatles as a lullaby before bed. In it's entirety, Bevel Summers is Brinkley and fellow songwriter David Hutcheson, multi-instrumentalist Dylan Turner, vocalist Alicia Best, drummer Jack Fleishman, pianist Matt Greenslade, and fiddle/trumpet player Ian Williams. Together, these seven talented musicians have the power to transform a room full of introverts into a foot-stomping ruckus, checking hipster pretension at the door in favor of instantly memorable lyrics and songs that plant themselves in your head in seconds flat. Bevel Summers performs with the philosophy of quick draw pistoleer the Sundance Kid from the famed 60's post-modern Western : I'm better when I move. Likening comparisons from Johnny Cash to The Wailers to Fleetwood Mac and back, at a Bevel Summers show, you'll find yourself singing along with choruses that seem to burst through the confines of whatever hole-in-the-wall joint or basement the band is playing, and you might feel, for an instant, as if you're on a back porch in the middle of the woods, the sounds of fiddle, summer crickets, lush harmonies, and the plink of guitar strings melding so effortlessly. At their core, these songs were borne of the blues, but in their live incarnation, Bevel Summers is joyful. This is what youth feels like - the highs and the lows, and the late nights full of whiskey and music in between.