Brad Vickers & His Vestapolitans
That’s What They Say
ManHat Tone Records

Brad Vickers was the bass player in Little Mike & The Tornadoes. He appears on 1988’s “Pinetop Perkins with Little Mike (Markowitz) and The Tornadoes After Hours” and also on 1990’s “Heart Attack” featuring four tracks with Paul Butterfield (believed to be Butterfield’s last recordings) and special guests Perkins, Hubert Sumlin, Ronnie Earl, and Warren Haynes; both albums issued on Blind Pig Records. Sometime thereafter Vickers left that band to eventually form his own band but re-united with Little Mike on 2014’s “All The Right Moves”. He occasionally still tours with them.

In 2008 Vickers switched to guitar and partnered with bassist Margery Peters to form Brad Vickers and The Vestapolitans and released their debut album “Le Blues Hot”.  The Vestapolitans followed with 2010’s “Stuck With The Blues”; 2011’s “Traveling Fool”; and 2013’s “Great Day in The Morning”.

This new album is their fifth. The album opens with “Seminole Blues” from Hudson Whittaker a.k.a. Tampa Red. It showcases Vickers on bottleneck guitar in a trio with Peters, bass; and Bill Rankin, drums. Vickers states that he learned “Don’t You Love Your Daddy No More?” from Leadbelly and he is joined on the song by Dave Gross, upright bass and mandolin; Rankin, drums; and the horns of Matt Cowan, baritone sax; and Jim Davis, clarinet. Vickers contributes six originals including one of his earliest songs “Another Lonesome Road”; and an Appalachian ode “Mountain Sparrow”. Peters also adds six of her own including “Wishing Well”; the humorous “Mama’s Cookin’” and “In For A Penny” on which she is joined by vocalists Gina Sicilia and Christine Santelli. Peters and Vickers have co-written the title track “That’s What They Say”. Other musicians include Charles Burnham, fiddle; and Mikey Junior.

They achieve an infectious but old-timey sound especially on “Everything About You is Blue”. Vickers is an ambassador of American musical genre’s including blues, folk, ragtime, and roots-rock and a guardian of these treasures as Vesta is defined to mean “household gods”.

The album is produced by Vickers and recorded, mixed and mastered by Dave Gross.
Richard Ludmerer