San Diego duo Christy Barrett (lead, harmony vocals, percussion, kazoo) and Ryan Schilling (kick drum, guitar, harmonica, harmony vocals) produce music worthy of the trial and tribulations of the road. We Come With The Dust the duo’s self-contained sophomore album comes from five months well spent in the American South; Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee, plus Texas; and it has a great bearing on the album. Barrett’s keen, sometimes barbed lead vocals have, and rightly so been noted as possessing Janis Joplin influences. But there is much more to her blues, soulful wailing than this, because though there is some of Joplin’s full on, wild and fearless appeal she also has other aspects too. Like her ability with an all-action performance from Schilling to pull off the totally irresistible country, blues gospel plied “Say It To Me” and with a wonderful if troubled calm, “Killing Season” (‘farmer stacking hay, season for all of his killing, more red than blue covers our land’ as their lyrics, they wrote all the songs speak of said progress), and with a soulful calling “One Is The Number”; loaded with additional blues and rock they blaze a inviting trail.
To go with the above you have other notables in a traditional inspired blues romp “Brown Dog Blues” to go with another with a familiar ring to it “Marching Drum”, and lead off track, road trip inspired “California To The Crossroads”. Americana radio should pick-up on it; likewise “No One At The Wheel”; and on which Barrett lets go with her gritty, barroom blues-rock intoned voice. “Sleep” with its restless rhythm, more blues-rock, and finely spun acoustic guitar it too has all the right ingredients, and two musicians committed to following their muse.
While Barrett might gain the greater attention through her lead vocals, Schilling via his sibling-like harmonies and laying down the foundation, musically because it is along the tracks he lays the former is given direction as to where the music is headed. Right up to the final cut “A Hobo Knows”, a story of a unknown out there travelling the long lonesome highway with no place they can call home, and with little in the way of direction, only a feel in their bones to help them decide which road they will take next.
Maurice Hope