Between The Ditches

Each year, Reverend J Peyton and his blues trio [pictured below] set out from their home in the heart of rural America to play up to 250 gigs. The character of the road runs through their music; Between The Ditches opens with a repeating groove, a growling guitar riff that sounds like a rumbling truck and continues, one way or another, for most of the album. As inferred by the brawny, tattooed arms on this album’s cover art, this is no-nonsense country blues delivered with bite. With Peyton’s guitar handling both bass lines and grinding melodic figures, his wife Breezy’s rattling washboard and Aaron Persinger supporting from the drum kit, the band’s sound is indeed damn big. That’s not to say this music is unsophisticated. Peyton writes memorable tunes and his lyrics are wryly observant about life in the foothills of Indiana, the Big Damn Band’s backyard.

Big and bearded, Peyton’s personality carries the band and his fire for the blues lights up every corner of Between The Ditches: ‘It's too dang hot and the bugs are too dang mean,’ he sings on ‘Shut the Screen’. His singing voice is strangled but powerful and his broad accent fits perfectly with his sliding guitar licks. This album is the band’s fifth but first proper studio one and if Peyton and co were worried about losing the spontaneity of the live records, they needn’t have: Between The Ditches has all the spirit of a roughed-up blues joint on a country road.