Sometimes bands happen to play in bars and sometimes bands are made for bars. Chicago outfit The Black Oil Brothers are the latter. This quartet seeks to draw that age old line between the Mississippi Delta and the Windy City with their own style of laid back bluesy roots music. Slider guitars, harmonicas, banjos and mandolins make this music ideally suited for drinking whiskey in dimly lit dives or knocking back a brew on rooftop during a humid Chicago summer. Though delta blues and Americana are obvious cornerstones of the Black Oil Brothers sound, in a way the group represents that Midwest sensibility to take musical styles from all parts of the country and make it something entirely new. Hell, the Brothers have even been known to tackle a Merle Haggard cover.
On July 8th The Black Oil Brothers release their new album Mean Business, and today we are offering a preview of the whiskey-soaked goodness that’s yet to come with an exclusive premiere of the the tune “Talk To Me”. The song features bluesy slide work and the trippy sounds of a cigar box guitar made to sound like a sitar.
Band member Tim Ryan offers his own story behind the song:
“Tony Maietta (slide guitar) played me and Manno (multi-instrumentalist) demos of some of his new songs. ‘Talk To Me’ – untitled then – was one of them. At the time, we were upstairs in front of the sound desk and monitors at Old Coachie. (Old Coachie is the coach house where Maietta lives that doubles as our recording studio.) I really liked the track and I asked if he had lyrics. He said ‘no’ so I asked if he minded me writing some. He said not at all. While we kept listening I wrote a rough draft of the lyrics. Since it was Maietta’s melody, I tried writing from Maietta’s perspective about a girl he met after we finished an opening slot for Buddy Guy. They’d been together some time but it just didn’t work out, in spite of them clearing some pretty big relationship hurdles. Since I had some lyrics and we were at Old Coachie, I asked if I could get a scratch vocal using the words I just wrote. We set up a mic, did a few takes and were all pretty happy with it. I mentioned to Maietta what I was writing about and he was hesitant, saying he’d probably write some lyrics we could use. So we let it be for awhile and just worked on the other tracks or the album. Some time later, we got back around to working on ‘Talk To Me’ and Maietta changed his mind about the lyrics, so we got to work, even adding an open C sharp tuned cigar box guitar played to sound like a sitar. It came together surprisingly quickly and ended up a better ballad than any of us expected.”
Pour yourself a stiff drink and listen to The Black Oil Brothers’ “Talk To Me”:
The Black Oil Brothers release Mean Business on July 8th. For more music and info visit blackoilbrothers.com.
