Artist: Robert Connely Farr
Album: Country Supper
Label: Self-released
Release Date: 1.30.21
Death’s been knocking at Robert Connely Farr’s door for some time now, accompanied by the demon alcohol and the malevolent presence of cancer. Used to the dark, his heart and soul consumed with the haunting, minor-key mystery of the spectral Bentonia blues sub-genre he has so lovingly championed in recent years, Farr chased them all away, winning his battle with the bottle and then surviving the “Big-C” in 2019.
It would seem then that a celebration is in order, but the mesmerizing, slow-burning Americana of Country Supper—named after the riotous parties the legendary Charley Patton once played, not a nice homecooked meal—is more often gritty and somber. Powerful meditations on mortality and alcoholism, the poverty of Farr’s youth in rural Mississippi and enduring an emotional gauntlet of penitence, resignation, and sorrow crawl from the wreckage of Farr’s honest, heart-on-his-sleeve lyrics. Bloodied but unbowed, each carefully considered word tumbles from Farr’s whiskey-ravaged voice, as the doomy acoustic country blues of a rustic “Water’s Rising”—with its lonesome harmonica howl—and the lazy, distorted growl of a fist-shaking “I Ain’t Dying” confront bodily threats and harsh realities with steely resolve. That’s Farr’s way.
The captivating follow-up to the critically acclaimed Dirty South Blues, Country Supper smolders like a dying bonfire, the tone of every wrangled electric guitar note glowing like a hot ember. Ensconced in atmospheric blackness, Farr’s own “Can’t Be Satisfied” and a heavy churn through Nehemiah Skip James’ “Cypress Grove” are trance-inducing, with Farr’s spacey version of Leo “Bud” Welch’s “Girl in the Holler” trudging through the swampy roots rock of Creedence Clearwater Revival with stoned wonderment.
—Peter Lindblad
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