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Chris Whitley : Dirt Floor
© Messenger Records 1998
Dirt Floor is as musically raw and basic as the title implies. With nine of Whitley's unadorned country blues and ballads ... Whitley has tapped into some deep emotional reserves; in his voice and in his guitar playing are ghostly echoes both of black southern blues and ancient Celtic hill music.
Moreover, Whitley chose to shepherd the elemental art of "Dirt Floor" with the aid of a small boutique indie label here, Messenger Records. Whitley's core fans responded warmly to the intimacy of "Dirt Floor," which was recorded in one day and with one mike in a Vermont barn. Yet it was the pairing with Messenger that ultimately made 1998 a watershed year when it could have been a dry season.
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Chris Whitley : Weed
Acoustic Blues / Folk
Chris Whitley is a master of the National Steel guitar, a difficult instrument that (literally) slides between acoustic and electric blues. It's a description that also fits Whitley the artist, always caught in the distance between styles. Weed is a spacious, dark album, full of understated tension and simmering passions, focused on images of desire, corruption and wanderlust.
Chris Whitley : War Crime Blues
Blues / Folk Rock
Recorded completely live without overdubs of any kind, Whitley accompanies himself on bottleneck guitar and stomping board. If there were any lingering doubts as to Whitley's abilities as either a brilliant and original songwriter, or as a bona fide American bluesman in the tradition handed down from the American South, this disc should eliminate them for all but the most ignorant.