It’s hard to know where to start with this  post. Heaps has happened since I last had time to sit down at this god forsaken machine and punch out a few words. First of all Stobie Sounds has ordered Chewy to shift it into hyper-space and morphed from a one-man-sham into a well oiled three man machine. So it’s with great pleasure that I welcome on board Mat and Dave, two old mates who reckon that Stobie Sounds is a mule worth getting behind. We’ve got big plans. Big friggin sexy plans. More on that later.

By now you’re probably asking what the frig is that donkey doing at the top of the page and how can it conjure up some magic boogie shit? Hmmmmm.

From time to time we all get on our soap box and spew forth a tirade against the interweb and all its evils. Well between all the lols and semi-colon-with-bracket-smiley-winks some good things happen out there in the ether. One of those very good things is the fact that  Stobie Sounds stumbled across Texan instrumental duo and masters of the steady rolling groove Old Gray Mule. To be honest, I don’t know how we hooked up but we can honestly say that these guys play a style of low-fi back porch blues that we can relate to.  Anyway, we got to talking and one thing led to another and now the Mule’s upcoming album Sound Like Something Fell Off The House is gonna get a run at Stobie Sounds.

STOP. If you’ve got this far you might as well press play below to listen to Mali Marula from the fellas soon to be released album…

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OK. Count to 20 slowly and let that drizzle over ya.

By now you’re probably getting an understanding of how Old Gray Mule operate.   C. R. Humphrey on guitar has a tendancy to get in a groove and stay there. He just plugs away at a riff until it gets under your skin. Mali Marula is something you put on when you’re cracking that first beer on the back verandah and contemplating heading down to your local for a few more. Go on, go grab a coldie out of the fridge and come back to read the rest of this little article.

By now  C. R.  is just laying down that groove while Joe Falco mans the drums  and builds it up.  Repetitive. Trancey. Nothing fancy. But by the end you’ll be tapping your foot and doing that thing with your neck that you do when you’re feeling a little groove but don’t know it yet.

Old Gray Mule are just a couple of blokes from Texas who make music that we like down here at Stobie Sounds so we’re gonna hook up with the fellas and put the album out for general consumption in Australia through Stobie Sounds. Nothing major. But that’s what we do – small batches of homespun music for people to get up into. Giving people what they need as opposed to what they want.

The Mule play a brand of instrumental grooves in a style associated with the North Mississippi Hill country but have mixed it with their Texas swagger and bits and pieces they’ve picked up over the years. The album was recorded in a day in an old 1880′s German/Lithuanian chapel in central Texas. You can feel the room on this album. All songs are recorded live, no overdubs. What you hear is two blokes sitting down and playing music. The way it should be.

OK. The Mule will crank it up too. It’s actually what they do best. They’re a dance band. They play dance music. Why not have a listen to one of their dance tunes – Odell Harris is Cool as Hell – which is an ode to one of North Mississippi’s hidden gems. check it.

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The finishing touches are just being put on the record. When it’s ready we’ll let it loose.

more soon…