During the fall of 2006 the North Carolina-based garage-blues duo The Moaners decided to revisit their Mississippi roots and travel by van and backcountry blacktop to Yalobusha County, Mississippi. The mission: to record their latest album, Blackwing Yalobusha, with former Squirrel Nut Zippers founder and producer Jimbo Mathus. The site of the recording would be the world famous Fat Possum studios now dubbed Blackwings. Amid the thousand-pound heat and despite the unwanted attention of prickly local cops, the female duo churned out a slow burning collection of songs that chant and spit their way through the spirit world of the old south. The songs tell tall tales of barstool black belts and monkey tongues while tuned-down slide guitar tumbles through the delta landscapes of Faulkner and O'Connor. Drummer Laura King delivers a pounding with her steady, heavy-handed rhythmic chug-a-lug. Blackwing Yalobusha is more incantation than composition meant to, as guitarist/singer and former Trailer Bride front woman Melissa Swingle puts it, "...make you feel happiness, sadness, a little creepy, just as long as you feel and feel passionately."
Cover art based on original painting by Melissa Swingle.
