Chuck E. Weiss - Red Beans And Weiss (2014) RE-UP

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Chuck E. Weiss - Red Beans And Weiss (2014) RE-UP

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Which Chuck E. Weiss do we talk about here? The one who so impressed blues legends Lightnin Hopkins and Willie Dixon as a Denver teenager that they took him out in their road bands? The one who lived in LA's Tropicana Hotel in the 70s alongside Tom Waits and Rickie Lee Jones, ending up namechecked on the classic Waits albums Small Change and Nighthawks at the Diner, and in Rickie Lee Jones hit "Chuck E.'s in Love"? The one who has recorded with Tom Waits, Muddy Waters, Howlin Wolf, Roger Miller, Dr. John, Willie Dixon? Whichever Chuck E. Weiss you choose, he's a legend, and his 2014 album, Red Beans and Weiss, delivers on the big personality. Executive produced by Johnny Depp and Tom Waits, Red Beans and Weiss blends blues, barrelhouse, and bluster into a highly entertaining whole. ~ Amazon

The ultimate scene-maker, Chuck E. Weiss has spent a career hobnobbing with the cool and famous in rock's hierarchy while barely pursuing a career of his own. Born in Denver, Weiss was originally a drummer, touring with bluesman Lightnin' Hopkins. By the late '60s, Weiss had performed and/or recorded with Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters, Dr. John, Roger Miller, and others. While still living in Denver, he struck up a friendship with singer/songwriter Tom Waits, later writing songs like "Spare Parts" with him and moving to Los Angeles. Living at West Hollywood's infamous Tropicana Motel with Waits and singer Rickie Lee Jones, Weiss became the subject of Jones' hit "Chuck E.'s in Love." Weiss' career finally stumbled off the launching pad with the 1981 release of The Other Side of Town, a collection of demo tapes released on Select Records. Rather than follow this up with a proper release, Weiss instead put together a band called the G-d Damn Liars and spent the next 11 years performing a weekly gig at the L.A. nightclub the Central and later partnered with friend Johnny Depp to convert the club into the Viper Room. After a 18-year hiatus from recording, Weiss' second album, Extremely Cool, was released on a Rykodisc subsidiary, Slow River, in 1999. Old Souls & Wolf Tickets appeared in 2001, followed by 23rd & Stout in 2007. Weiss spent the next six years performing in and around Los Angeles, occasionally touring. He re-entered the studio in late 2013 and emerged with the self-produced Red Beans & Weiss on Anti. The album's executive producers were actor Johnny Depp and singer/songwriter Tom Waits. ~ Cub Koda, All Music

It's been seven years since Chuck E. Weiss released 23rd & Stout, a set that drunk-walked between roots rock, vintage R&B, jump blues, zany experimentation, and post-Beat humor. Red Beans and Weiss marks the songwriter's first album for Anti. It was self-produced, though it lists Tom Waits and Johnny Depp as executive producers. Guitarist Tony Gilkyson, drummer Don Heffington, and pianist Michael Murphy all return. The personnel is fleshed out with bassist Will MacGregor and saxophonists Jimmy Roberts and CeCe Worrall-Rubin. For anyone who's heard Weiss' Rykodisc albums Extremely Cool and Old Souls & Wolf Tickets, there will be much to enjoy here. Opener "Tupelo Joe" may have throwaway lyrics, but the scorching modern rockabilly slashed and burned through by Gilkyson's guitar playing makes it more than worthwhile. The moderately funky hipster rap that is "That Knucklehead Stuff," with its alternating honking sax and zinging guitar lines, is catchy as hell, as is its strutting counterpart, "Kokamo (Boy Bruce)." "Exile on Main Street Blues" is done in swaggering 1950s Chicago style. "Hey Pendejo" walks the line between bumping polka, East L.A. backyard mariachi, and a Catskills comedy routine. What works best here are the cuts where electric blues-boogie is the M.O. This band is tight and nasty, no matter how spaced out and loopy Weiss' groove is. Check the strutting boogie in "Boston Blackie," "Bomb the Tracks," and "Dead Man's Shoes"; they are electrified and worth the price of admission alone. The syncopated blues-jazz in "Oo Poo Pa Do in the Rebop" is complete with lyrics seemingly drawn from the world of an Iceberg Slim novel and a rhythm section that can't be shaken. "The Hink-a-Dink" is a sinister moaning blues with Gypsy violin, Judy Brown's wailing wordless soul backing vocal, and a moody male chorus moan all tossed in, but it works! Not everything does, however. "Shushie" is a noir-ish hepcat jazz number whose lyrics make a feral cat Weiss rescued into a terminal hipster. (The smoky saxophone solo is nice, though.) Closer "Willy's in the Pee Pee House" is so dumb it could have just been left off altogether. That said, none of this is contrived – it's all Chuck E. Weiss. Zany, unrepentantly retro, and drenched in an era that revivalists can't touch, Red Beans and Weiss is a greasy, gritty report from one of L.A.'s last original rock & roll street denizens. It has a grimy charm all its own. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music

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Chuck E. Weiss - Red Beans And Weiss (2014) RE-UP

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Chuck E. Weiss - Red Beans And Weiss (2014) RE-UP

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