#The Dirty Soul Revival #blues rock #hard rock #Southern rock #heavy blues rock #funk rock
Abraham Anderson, a.k.a. “Abraham Drinkin’,” tried writing songs since he was 20 years old and first picked up an acoustic guitar, but he could never seem to force the words out the way he wanted. Almost three years ago, they came tumbling out on their own, the frontman for The Dirty Soul Revival told The Daily Times this week. “I think I was trying too hard to write in this vein or that vein, but I was driving home from work one day about 2 and a half years ago, and this song just popped in my head, and it just kind of wrote itself,” he said. “It was about my wife, and ever since then, I don’t really try. Sometimes I’ll come up with an idea for a phrase I like if I’m listening to Charlie Patton or really old blues, and because I played banjo up until a few years ago and listened to a lot of old bluegrass, sometimes some ideas come out of that. I love old country, too — Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash — and the Allman Brothers, which is one of my favorite bands ever, so there’s a lot of variety. A lot of it is raunchy blues-rock, but there’s some funk, some country and some straight-up rock ‘n’ roll in there, too.”
Born and raised in Cushing, Oklahoma, Anderson started out playing banjo. He didn’t set out to pursue a career in music, but he wanted to play more bluegrass, and he wanted to get out of Oklahoma, which he describes as “ungodly hot in the summer,” and some friends suggested North Carolina. He headed east, destined for Raleigh, but when he stopped in Asheville, the temperature was a comfortable 70 degrees. “I just kind of fell in love with it; it’s beautiful, and I said, ‘I’m moving here,’” he said. “I’d never been east of Nashville, but I’ve always been fascinated by music from the South in general.”
That was in 2009; his wife, Jennifer “Trixie Laroux” Anderson, came with him, and with her on drums and him on guitar and growling and howling into the microphone, they began to shape what would become The Dirty Soul Revival into a musical force of nature. Imagine if one member of The Black Keys grew up out back of a rough-hewn juke joint back in the Mississippi pines and the other learned to play stomping barefoot on Smoky Mountain barn floors, and you’ll get an idea of what the band sounds like. It’s a successful romantic and musical partnership, Anderson said, that’s helped the two out-of-towners survive and thrive in the bustling Asheville scene.
“We first started dating about 15 years ago, and when I first met her, she was 14 and absolutely infatuated with the Beatles and Zeppelin and all this great rock from the ’60s and ’70s, and I wasn’t listening to anything like that,” he said. “She’s been into good music her whole life, and that really helps me a lot. It’s hard for me to say what kind of music I like, but I think the common denominator I find in everything I love is, for lack of a better term, soul. Not necessarily soul music, even though I love Otis Redding, but people singing something they believe in — something that’s more than just a song or a radio hit. It’s a part of them, and I just try to do the same thing. I sing and play what I feel, and hopefully some of that gets through. It’s just dirty and honest, and even though I may not technically be the best singer, if you get out there and belt it hard enough like you mean it, people will respond to it.” From: https://www.thedailytimes.com/entertainment/up-and-coming-asheville-rockers-dirty-soul-revival-set-to-open-for-shooter-jennings/article_a91b755d-bab0-5e4d-b4bf-7282a8ba2213.html
