Josh Teskey & Ash Grunwald
Push The Blues Away
Album out 13th November 2020
Background
On Push The Blues Away, two of Australia’s most
captivating vocalists, Josh Teskey & Ash Grunwald, come together to cast
off the weight of expectation and revel in music’s most simple pleasures.
Like many great musical ideas, the impetus to make a blues record together came
from an impromptu jam. In the downtime between takes filming a video clip for
Ash Grunwald’s song ‘Ain’t My Problem’, a track which featured the Teskey
Brothers, Josh and Ash found themselves riffing on an old Elmore James tune,
‘The Sky Is Crying’. “Somebody filmed our little jam,” Grunwald
says, “and it became the seed of a great idea: Why don’t we do an
acoustic blues album? No bells and whistles, something from the heart.”
“We had a good laugh about it,” Josh says, “and talked
about how good it would be to record an album without any complications or
expectations, just a full-on back-to-basics, just a guitar-and-harmonica bit of
fun.” It wasn’t until months later though, when The Teskey Brothers
had a break between tours for their recently released Run Home Slow
album and Ash had wound up the cycle for his Mojo record, that
the seed finally took root. Ash called up Josh. “So, how about
it?”
Review
(by John Glennie)
This is a sensational blues collaboration between two Aussie artists who complement each other superbly.
When I closed my eyes on several of the tracks I could almost picture those poor unfortunate slaves working and singing in the cotton fields of the Deep-South of the USA. Low Down Dog, It Rained and Preacher Blues in particular feature sensational slow soulful-bluesy vocals, harmonica and slide guitar!
The slow tracks are supported by some equally good faster blues songs such as the title track, Hungry Heart and Thinking ‘Bout Myself.
I couldn’t really pick a favourite song as they are all REALLY good! Definitely put this one on your Christmas present list to add to your collection if you love blues and soul. Here’s a sample:
Track Listing
1. Low Down Dog 03:39
2. Hungry Heart 03:21
3. Thinking ‘Bout Myself 03:41
4. Push The Blues Away 03:30
5. It Rained 04:55
6. Something With Feel 03:07
7. Preachin’ Blues 03:21
8. The Sky Is Crying 04:03
No Comments