Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
The word retrospective should always bring joy to the ears of the music lover. By its very existence it sounds more alluring, grander, more encompassing than the idea of a ‘greatest hits’ or the notion of a ‘best of’, for in its design it is surely meant to inform the listener of the totality of the music on offer rather than being picked as a crowd pleaser, an album which is designed to be in the charts rather than educating the intrigued with an entire catalogue of work.
Sometimes a retrospective will not only charm and illuminate, it will open the doors of all that you have missed, all that could have played out in front of you; for whilst we do not have the time to listen to everything that has been created in our life time, we owe it to ourselves to step away from the comfort of familiarity and search down the river of aural whispers and see where those songs have sprung from, from which stranger tides our eyes have become enthralled with.
Few outside of the Country genre will have come across Bobby Allison or Gerry Spehar, and whilst that is no sin, no crime of passion has been invoked, just by listening to the tracks that encompass the spirit of their work in the extraordinary Delta Man, it is possible to feel more than a tinge of regret that you had not found them before.
Delta Man is enormous, in both sound and depth, and it still barely scratches the surface of what the listener can find by rooting through their respective contributions, together and apart, to the music world, one that they have given great pleasure to the world as they opened for some of the big names at the time in their formative association, or indeed as they present this piece of history.
Across tracks such as Bite The Bullet, Baby’s Got The Blues, The Good Life, the superb Rockin’ On A Country Dance Floor, Eye Of the Needle, Bubba Billy Boom Boom & Me, and the absolute sheer beauty and melancholy of 25 Miles To Brady, what these two men, these two observant troubadours have brought to the scene, to the heart of the listener’s souls, is appreciation, is a groove, a pulse that makes a difference to the day, and for that Delta Man is a glorious summery of presentation.
Captivating, cool, an unexpected delivery of finesse and cheer, a country album of endless intriguing subtly; Delta Man is where the aural river flows to mix with the ocean of dreams, of proving that given the right audience, the drops of musical water can soon become part of something unbeatable.
Bobby Allison and Gerry Spehar’s Delta Man is released on January 21st.
Ian D. Hall