Jo Carley & The Old Dry Skulls – Voodoo Bones & Vaudeville Blues
Format: CD
Label: Old Higue Records / New Retro Sounds
Release: 2020
Jo Carley and The Old Dry Skulls are proud to announce their brand new album ‘Voodoo Bones & Vaudeville Blues’ is coming out on the 4th December 2020. Twelve new songs that combine 1930’s voodoo sounds with a steamy broth of vaudeville, blues, rock and roll, calypso, and old-timey country.
‘Making deals with the devil never bodes well and sometimes voodoo antics backfire. A woman’s innocent trip to the jungle ends with a witchdoctor tricking her into marrying him. In the dead of the night she steals his zombie poison and uses it to set herself free.
She now possesses all of his magic and celebrates the end of their tumultuous relationship, but he doesn’t go away easy. Now a relentless zombie comes to bother her every night, creeping around giving her fright. Is she still under his spell?
Voodoo has found its way onto the British shores and Jo Carley is the voodoo queen sent to predict hell in a way to entertain and amaze you. This demonic music-hall mistress tells tales of terror in old-timey fashion. She is backed by her song-writing partner and husband Tim Carley, a man of considerable size who plays “syncopated rhythms to shake your soul” on a beaten up archtop guitar, kick drum and rattlin’ shoe, with friend and fellow fiend James Le Huray providing the final ingredients of the spell, in the shape of double bass and banjo.
‘Voodoo Bones & Vaudeville Blues’ (the bands third album) was recorded during lockdown in the bands tiny shack of a house on the East Coast of England. When the pandemic hit, they threw out the couch and the TV, turning their living room into a recording studio, laying down twelve new songs using only old school techniques and a few good microphones.
There, they waited out the Lockdown until they could mix and master the recordings to ¼ mono tape with Ed Deegan at Gizzard Recordings in London. This analogue and primitive way of recording totally captures the bands unique sound and the result is the bands most retro and authentic sounding record to date.
Rooted firmly in a bygone era when Voodoo and Black Magic were rife, it has all the vibe, sounds and character of the old Blues, Old-timey Country, Skiffle, Calypso and Rock n Roll records that inspired them to make this album.
Tracks:
01. Little Limbs Of Satan
02. The Zombie
03. The Devil
04. She Got Him (With Her Voodoo)
05. Lose Your Soul
06. The Jungle
07. The Witchdoctor
08. Dead But He Won’t Lay Down
09. Under Your Spell
10. Crowhurst’s Lament
11. Shipwreck Blues
12. The Bone Readers
Jo Carley – lead vocals, backing vocals, mandolin, fiddle, washboard, keys and percussion
Tim Carley –guitars, kick drum, rattlin’ shoe, percussion and backing vocals
James Le Huray – double bass, electric bass, banjo, keys, sansula, stylophone and backing vocals