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Jonty West
Kentucky Blues Hog
Jonty West is a forgotten legend.
Now trying to claw his way back using MySpace with appaling rap, he was once a legend.
“Hey Mr Traindriver” which opens the album is a highlight, a single based on the rhythms of a train and with punkish yet country guitars. The vocals bring to minfd Johnny Cash or Chris Isaak.
“Andrew” is a sad song dedicated to a dead friend. It sounds like Wichita Lineman recorded underwater and features no instruments apart from a single, sad xylophone.
It’s followed by two country-punk numbers “Born To Lose Our Minds ” and “Jack The Cattle Killer”
After this comes a series of almost maudlin, yet somehow lovely if a bit mawkish covers of standards like “Danny Boy” and “The Curse Of Jack Green” accompanied only by the blues picking of his guitar.
The album ends with a storming punk-country rampage through “Ketucky Blues Hog”, with it’s rattling trap drums, banjos seemingly stolen from Deliverance and out of tune yowling tomcat vocals,eventually swallowed up by wave after wave of feedback.
I picked it up for very little in a charity shop. The reissue itself was soon deleted,selling around 20 copies.
This album is another sad part in Jonty’s story, the story of a country singer/straight to video artist. If this got the recognition it deserved, it would be up there with The Bordellos, Poisoned Electric Head and The Staves in the list of bands so unsung, even the obscurists say “WHO?”.