“He’s influenced by all sorts of things from all different worlds. But when he ingests it, it sort of comes out like this bastard child of Little Richard. This cat JD McPherson is just the real deal. It’s totally for real. And I think to myself, where has this been my whole life?” – Josh Homme, QOTSA
With a shining endorsement from the ringleader of the most revered gang in Rock, live-wire of soul JD McPherson is a musical time machine primed for the spotlight. A highlight fixture of QOTSA’s “End of the Road” Halloween show in Los Angeles, which also features The Kills, Nick Oliveri’s The Uncontrollable, side show freaks and the most terrifying goddamn haunted house you’ve ever seen.
Years ago, McPherson made an attempt to walk a traditionally safer path as a schoolteacher, but the music he’d been playing since around 13 years old just spoke too loudly. Driven deeper into his punk roots and drawn to the sonic designs of Buddy Holly, he began carving his own sound with an eventual evolution into a something more reminiscent of a half-century ago. It’s within this stylistic range that he found his true voice, and with a rockabilly revivalist mission JD put together a band and hit the road.
A few calendar flips down the line, McPherson’s seductively kickass debut album Signs and Signifiers, recorded in analog and produced by his musical partner Jimmy Sutton, is a testimony to Homme’s enthusiastic accolades. A spark of Little Richard streaks through opener “North Side Gal,” with a lean toward Guitar Slim on the naked groove of “Country Boy,” while the gravel-passion of “Wolf Teeth” ignites a fire that burns through nostalgia and makes a primal play across the keys and cymbal rides toward shaking out the bugs of the heart. This shit makes you wanna thrown your drink down, grab a pretty girl and dance your ass off.
You’re neck deep in a barroom revival during “Scratching Circles,” and taken to the back door of Hell through the delicate devastation of “A Gentle Awakening”. The high piano plinking plays like fingers down your spine before a powerfully soulful refrain. Listen to Signs and Signifiers for yourself in full right here to dispel hyperbole suspicion.
Cheap rockabilly is embarrassing, a goofy caricature with bouffant hair and Johnny Cash tats on prominent display. But McPherson is a fire of genuine soul, and whether pulling influence from Son House or the Wu-Tang Clan, he rolls with the smooth control of Gene Vincent, but always with a bullet of intensity in the chamber, always ready to roar.
If you don’t have the ghoulish spark to take park in the Queens of The Stone Age freakshow Halloween spectacle at the Forum, you can catch JD two nights later at Pappy & Harriet’s out in Pioneertown, CA. A two-hour eastbound night drive from Los Angeles finds you driving through desert scrub and Joshua trees into near-total blackness, where on the edge of nowhere a gloriously badass little roadhouse bar doubles as a venue for desert denizens and wild-eyed imports.
Sounds like the perfect place for a first impression.
For more JD McPherson show dates, check out his tour page. Also keep up with him on Facebook, Twitter and his official site.
