HowellDevine

It's not exactly a secret that HowellDevine play Mississippi Hill Country, Country and Delta Blues very, very well. The California-based trio — featuring Joshua Howell on guitar, harmonica, and vocals, Pete Devine on washboard and drums, and Joe Kyle Jr. on upright bass — is signed to renowned roots label Arhoolie Records, and has garnered glowing praise from their blues elders and aficionados alike since they formed in 2011. Still, one had the feeling during their show at The Freight & Salvage of being in on something special. Simply put, this trio makes up one of the more powerful, innovative, solid and satisfying engines putting out blues today.

"Modern Sounds of Ancient Juju," the title of their latest release, is perhaps the most apt description of what they're up to: reviving, reinterpreting and respecting the work of the likes of Mississippi Fred McDowell and Muddy Waters, while contributing a few originals to an already heady brew. ​

With little preamble, they took the stage and dug into Waters' "Can't Be Satisfied," Howell wielding his ES 335 with assurance, as Devine and Kyle Jr. kicked into high gear, going from zero to 60 without batting an eye. Later in the set, after their no-holds-barred, deeply nuanced original "RailRoad Stomp," someone in the audience called out "encore!" Most bands would be done after the ten-minute-plus effort which found Howell wailing on his multiple harmonicas, making his train come and go, steam and crash, lumber and coast over all sorts of sonic terrain. Meanwhile, Devine's arms and legs were moving in all directions, picking out rhythms within rhythms, as Kyle Jr. ably kept the pace, a well-rooted tree in a winter storm, bending as needed, but not going anywhere. It was a test of endurance and strength as much as exhbit of musical prowess. But an hour-plus set is just getting started for these guys.

"Already?" Pete said in reply. "We got more!" The HowellDevine train can, does and is ready to go on for miles. And after a brief pause, they dug back in.

~ Deborah Crooks - No Depression

HowellDevine hails from modern-day California. But inside their three throwback heads, it’s crumpled 1940s Mississippi all over again. Clearly the trio would be happiest back in their inspirational element, like off in the corner of some Saturday night Delta hothouse, inciting pandemonium among lubricated merrymakers with their tumbledown, yet highly danceable, repertoire. Burning through scrappy blues with casual precision cut on a creatively traditionalistic edge, it’s as if they’re auditioning to be the next King Biscuit Boys, trying to pry the job away from Sonny Boy with a tremulous run at his “She Brought Life Back to the Dead” or the go-go-go zoom of their own bottle-necked “Let You Go.” Frontman Joshua Howell is the one shucking out harmonica lines with the thick chording of Rice Miller. He’s also the one rolling and tumbling a slide down the backbone of his often unplugged guitar. That, in turn, spurs percussionist Pete Devine to do his best Peck Curtis imitation, imaginatively scraping metallic hailstorms from a washboard or whipping colorfully downhome drumbeats. And by thwacking its way through everything, Joe Kyle Jr.’s upright bass gives the set real legs. Just listen to the triple punishment Muddy’s “Can’t Be Satisfied” gets dished. Trumping that are eight ingenious minutes of live, onstage originality chugged out as “Railroad Stomp,” the magnum opus to the longstanding romance between wheezy harp reeds and mimicked train sounds. Modern Sounds of Ancient Juju, the sterling sequel to last year’s Jumps, Boogies & Wobbles, newly contributes as much of that juju as it borrows from the past.

~Dennis Rozanski - Baltimore Blues Society

Chris Strachwitz has been to the Delta. He's traced the trail of the blues back to the mighty Mississippi, recording neglected masters along the way for his invaluable El Cerrito roots music label Arhoolie Records, from Fred McDowell and Skip James to Bukka White and Lightnin' Hopkins. So when Strachwitz found his way to the cozy confines of the Red Poppy Art House in San Francisco's Mission District last year and felt the gutbucket grooves of Joshua Howell and Pete Devine transporting him to a Delta juke joint, the impression was drawn from direct experience. "If I had been blind I'd have thought I was in some little Mississippi beer joint in 1940," says Strachwitz, 82. "I was really taken by their mastery of the blues. Joshua isn't trying to sound like a black guy. He's just got a really neat voice. And he was accompanied by this incredible dude, Pete Devine, on washboard, jug and drums. The rhythm and syncopation fit to perfection." That encounter led directly to HowellDevine's "Jumps, Boogies & Wobbles," the first album of new blues released by Arhoolie in nearly three decades. Strachwitz's judgment has been ratified over the past year, as HowellDevine has become one of the Bay Area's busiest and most original blues acts.

Last week, HowellDevine opened for Johnny Winter in Santa Cruz, and on April 18 they open for the Preservation Hall Jazz Band at Mill Valley's Sweetwater Music Hall. Now a trio with the commanding bassist Joe Kyle Jr., HowellDevine makes its Lesher Center debut Friday, and returns to the Baltic in Point Richmond on April 19. The kismet that brought together HowellDevine is aptly captured by their pluperfect blues moniker. With a repertoire of vintage blues and original instrumentals that are all cut from the same rough cloth, the band has honed a sound as authentic as it is unfussy.

Devine has been a force on the country blues scene for decades, since his early years with Bo Grumpus, a band with a vast repertoire of rags, stomps, marches and songs from the first decades of the 20th century. More recently, he's performed widely as a founding member of Lavay Smith's Red Hot Skillet Lickers, and the gypsy jazz combo Gaucho. He was leading his Devine's Jug Band at a gig in San Francisco's Mission District when he met Howell, who opened the show with a solo set armed with a harmonica and a guitar. Devine sat in for a few tunes on washboard and "it just clicked," Devine says. "It felt like we were fated to play together."

While Devine had a long track record on the Bay Area music scene, Howell was a fairly unknown property. Raised in the East Bay, he became a teenage blues aficionado with a taste for the unplugged Delta sound. By the time he was attending Walnut Creek's Las Lomas High School, he was sitting in regularly on harmonica at Oakland blues joints like Your Place Too and Eli's Mile High Club. "At first they were cautious and kept the mic levels low," Howell says. "After a few times, they kept the levels up, and I was welcome on the bandstand. Your Place Too was my regular spot. I was there at least once a week." He settled in Santa Cruz after earning a degree in philosophy from UC Santa Cruz and spent his time building guitars and mastering slide guitar while playing harmonica with Arkansas-born country blues master Robert Lowery, who settled in Santa Cruz back in the 1950s. Looking for adventure, he lit out for Thailand in 2008 and spent three years performing solo around the country. When he was thrown in jail for working without a permit, Howell figured it was time to come home, and it wasn't long after moving back to the East Bay that he met Devine. They played as a duo for the first six months or so, but the sound really blossomed with the addition of Kyle, a veteran bassist who's played with Lavay Smith, Mal Sharpe and the Waybacks, among many others.

"In country blues, you keep a rhythm going with your thumb, and pick out a melody," Howell says. "Joe's a monster on the bass, and that's part of why the trio sounds really full, sounds like much more than a three-piece combo."

HowellDevine

When: 8:15 p.m. Friday
Where: Lesher Center for the Arts, 1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek
Tickets: $25, 925-943-7469, www.lesherartscenter.org
Also: 9:30 p.m. April 19; The Baltic, 135 Park Place, Point Richmond; 510-237-1000,www.balticjoint.net

~ Adrew Gilbert - San Jose Mercury News