Tarbox Ramblers: Tarbox Ramblers

CML call number: CD COUNTRY Tarbox
Joshua Mamis wrote in the New Haven Advocate: "Back in the day, when Bukka White was singing 'Shake ’Em On Down,' old-timey music was punk, it was garage, it was devil’s music. While everyone else was singing hymns … these guys were rocking and rolling. … The guitar on the first cut of The Tarbox Ramblers’ debut disc reminds you of those long-ago rave-ups. A jagged fuzz-toned slide, jackhammers through the traditional blues of 'Jack of Diamonds,' establishing The Tarbox Ramblers as high-octane reinterpreters of long-forgotten rough-cut gems from the hillbilly songbook — including White’s 'Shake’Em On Down.' … The rest of The Tarbox Ramblers’ debut album (released in 2000) scorches, with an unlikely fiddle-and-electric slide combo and whomping 4/4 drumming revving up a slate of traditional tunes, as if John Lee Hooker stared down the rambunctiousness of the Skillet Lickers and sucked the yee-haw right into his Gibson. That disc … proved [Michael] Tarbox was that rare musicologist willing to pay tribute to those who influenced him by putting his own jagged stamp on the material" ("Oh, Didn't He Ramble," 4/19/07).