Going to Jukesville

Having launched his own label, Leroy Records, with the blues-oriented Messin' with the Blues (2000), the first new Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes studio album since 1991, Southside Johnny returns only two years later with his second self-released effort, Going to Jukesville, which is more of a conventional Jukes album. Anyone familiar with the band's first three LPs, I Don't Want to Go Home (1976), This Time It's for Real (1977), and Hearts of Stone (1978), will feel right at home here, as the band plays in a style heavily reminiscent of the Stax Records studio band of the '60s, turning in soulful arrangements dominated by the punchy and melodic five-piece horn section, with guitarist Bobby Bandiera making like Steve Cropper, keyboard player Jeff Kazee channeling Booker T. Jones, and the rhythm section of bassist Muddy Shews and drummer Louis Appel doing their best to echo Duck Dunn and Al Jackson, Jr. Of course, it all serves to support the vocals of Southside Johnny, which have become huskier and even a bit gravelly as he has advance into his fifties. Southside, aka John Lyon, who was content to let others handle the writing and production chores in years past, has gradually become more assertive in those areas, and he is credited as co-producer with Matt Noble here, while co-writing nine of the 14 songs, often with Noble or other bandmembers. Their songs are effective genre exercises, even if they rarely rise to the heights of the material Steve Van Zandt penned for the group. But "I Can't Dance," deliberately written in the style of bar band predecessors Archie Bell & the Drells (who are name-checked in the lyrics) is an affectionate homage, and some of the covers, particularly "Gladly Go Blind" and Gerry Goffin and Carole King's "No Easy Way Down" should be excellent additions to the band's live repertoire.