The Reverend Shawn Amos\u2019 biography reads like a letter straight from the present day civil rights conflagration. He cites being born in the right zip code and having the company of his white and Jewish friends during youthful interactions with the law, which in any other neighborhood would have resulted in very different and harsher results. Amos comes originally from New York and worked in the William Morris Agency mailroom; upon moving to California, he worked in the A&R Department at Rhino Entertainment. Amos describes his visit to South Central in 1992 as \u201ca visitor from a foreign land\u201d to help clean up after the uprising. His album The Cause Of It All<\/i> is a cold blast of dirty blues, played unflinchingly and with musical courage. The songs includes the classics \u201cSpoonful,\u201d \u201cHoochie Coochie Man\u201d and \u00a0\u201cI\u2019m Ready \u201c by Willie Dixon, a couple of songs by Muddy Waters, and a song each from John Lee Hooker and Little Walter. My ears lit up when the second track kicked in: a song called \u201cGoin\u2019 To The Church\u201d by Lester Butler of the infamous Red Devils, that even now not enough people know about.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Recorded in California by James Saez in 2021 (with the last four tracks being recorded in Texas 2020 by Chris Bell) the instrumentation and selection of songs is a listener\u2019s primer in how to play Chicago electric blues using just harmonica, electric guitar, and a single vocalist. The voice and the guitar are both distorted enough to deliver their sawtooth lines collectively without completely destroying their relative target pitches. Amos plays harmonica and sings, while Chris \u201cDoctor\u201d Roberts alternates between acoustic and electric guitar. <\/p>\n
Amos typically tours with a lineup that includes the drummer Brady Blade (Dave Matthews, Indigo Girls), bassist Christopher Thomas (Norah Jones, Carly Simon, Macy Gray), and guitarist Chris Roberts as the The Reverend Amos & the Brotherhood. The Cause Of It All<\/i> release eschews the soft cover of an ensemble and courageously lays bare the songs to the listener as ghostly skeletons. <\/p>\n
Amos And The Brotherhood released their debut album\u00a0Blue Sky<\/i> in April of 2020 and hit the Billboard Blues Album Chart at number\u00a0six. Amos\u2019 debut novel Cookies & Milk<\/i> is scheduled for release in spring 2022. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":96,"featured_media":34317,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[10650],"rating":[5646],"class_list":["post-46152","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-the-reverend-shawn-amos","rating-rating-a"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/96"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46152\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46152"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}