JIMBO MATHUS

DIXIE KICKS

Jimbo Mathus and his southern strategy

By Matt Ashare  |
Posted January 27

Jimbo Mathus has cleverly reinvented himself more than a few times in his twenty-plus years as a performer, tinkering with his name to keep apace with each new wrinkle in the musical plot. Born James Mathis in Oxford, Mississippi, he got his start as a high school punk rocker in the the late-’80s, before moving to Chapel Hill, where he changed his surname to Mathus and struck ’90s paydirt with the aggressively retro Squirrel Nut Zippers, a swing revival outfit he started with his then-wife Katherine Whalen. In a decade awash in the brooding churn of grunge guitars, the Zippers offered a counterintuitive alternative — banjos, ukeleles, and a pre-rock mix of hot jazz and sultry lounge throwbacks.
    When his Squirrel Nut days came to a less than amicable end in 2000, Mathus parlayed his considerable skills as a guitarist into a gig touring and recording with Chicago blues legend Buddy Guy for a couple of years. He also offered his own take on the blues in a variety of guises: James Mathus & His Knockdown Society (2001's National Antiseptic); Jimbo "Hambone" Mathus (2005's Live at Ground Zero Blues Club); and Jas. Mathus (2006's  Old Scool Hot Wings). And, somewhere in there he found time to form a working friendship with North Mississippi All-Stars' guitarist Luther Dickinson, most recently in league with Alvin Youngblood Hart as the South Memphis String Band.
    If there's a common thread running through this patchwork of projects it's got something to do with Mathus' deep appreciation for the theatrical nature of genre ploys. He understands that the right look sometimes matters just as much as the right hook. That artfully playing a part can be just as important as artlessly playing a song. That John Fogerty wasn't actually born on the bayou. . .
    It's a dynamic that takes on new meaning when the role an artist chooses happens to be an authentic version of himself, which is precisely where Jimbo Mathus arrives on his new solo excursion White Buffalo. Having followed his muse all the way back to where he started — small-town Mississippi, and the Oxford indie label Fat Possum — Mathus rediscovers the dusty backroads of Americana and takes a hard turn toward something resembling hardscrabble sincerity. Think of it as his southern-rock strategy, replete with "a bottle and a bible" and a whole lot of aw-shucks twang, and an undulating Allman Brothers-style harmonizing double guitar solo on the resolutely romantic "Tennessee Walker Mare."
    The Allmans aren't the only salient Dixiecratic dudes Mathus cops moves from on White Buffalo. The churn and burn blooze of the disc's title track is a dead ringer for Stevie Rae Vaughan's Double Trouble channeling of Hendrix, with Mathus coaxing screams and wails from an overdriven guitar. And the portentous "Run Devil Run," with its haunting organ tones and queasy slide guitar, brings to mind the sort of disembodied atmospheres My Morning Jacket have made a neo-southern staple.
    Mathus may be singing from the heart on countrified tracks like "White Buffalo" and the equally twanged up trucker's tale "Hatchie Bottom," a reflective acoustic lament littered with "spent cartridges," "empty bottles," and "muddy waters." But, at heart he's too much the savvy stylist to resist mastering the masters. So, if the woeful echoes of Graham Parsons, the Florida boy who brought country music out west and bestowed it upon the Byrds in 1968, aren't entirely apparent on "Hatchie Bottom," they're hard to miss in the harmonies that coalesce around the chorus of "Poor Lost Souls," a honky-tonk slow dance that takes pity on homeless denizens who "look down and see the stars" at Hollywood and Vine.
    Elsewhere, Mathus offers his take on a well chiseled Stonesy rocker ("Fake Hex"). And he seems to be aiming in the general vicinity of epic Springsteen gravitas with "In the Garden," an anthemic reflection on the nature of sin in the city. "In the soul of the city there is something wicked," Mathus observes against a muscular guitar riff, "If you see something wicked, don't look it in its eyes."     It's good advice. But it doesn't really rise to the level of major revelation or even deep thought. And, frankly, neither has ever been a Mathus specialty. Mathus is a guy who's good at getting into character, and even better at the nuts and bolts work of hammering out hooks, crafting melodies, and putting seamlessly piecing together an arrangement, regardless of genre. He brings all of those tools to the table on White Buffalo, and really isn't a bad song be found here. Each, in its own way, is a perfectly imperfect, solid nugget of well wrought Americana. And, yet, there isn't a single track that's uniquely Mathusian. It's not a fatal flaw. But it's something Jimbo might want to think about before undertaking his next transformation.