Fired-up & Ready

Mike Whellans is the real thing, a keeper of the one-man blues band flame that burned so passionately in the work of this highly specialized form's masters, including Doctor Isaiah Ross, Jesse Fuller and Whellans' great British forerunner, Tony 'Duster' Bennett. Like all true bluesmen and women, when Whellans sings and plays, he means it. He can set a scene of darkness and foreboding, play twelve-string guitar in the grand driving blues tradition or sing of hugging his baby's deserted pillow so that you really feel his loss. The one-man blues band is self-sufficient but Whellans occasionally calls on other musicians to expand his palette and yet retain the spirit of individuality that is his strength - even when guests such as David Bromberg have recorded their parts on different continents. If this is your introduction to Whellans, prepare to hear a talent who's not only his own man as a singer, guitarist and ace blues harpist, he's his own rhythm section, too Mike Whellans is a consummate bluesman: a brilliant songwriter, a sharp singer, and a mean hand at the guitar. Think of him as a Jimmy Reed or Willie Dixon transplanted from Lake Michigan to the shores of Loch Lomond UTNE READER