Chris Badnews Barnes

Badnews Travels Fast

Gulf Coast Records

“Hokum,” according to Webster’s: a word probably created as a blend of “hocus-pocus” (meaningless talk or activity) and “bunkum” (nonsense). “Hokum blues,” as defined on Wikipedia: “A particular song type of American blues music which uses extended analogies or euphemistic terms to make humorous, sexual innuendos.” Interesting, but I have never enjoyed humor within music apart from isolated cases taken in small doses. I now dance enlightened and converted by Chris Badnews Barnes and his bad new album, Badnews Travels Fast.

Barnes made a name for himself as a member of Chicago’s prestigious Second City Comedy Theatre, moving on to such TV shows as Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm. He entered the music world in 2017 with a debut album aptly titled Hokum Blues, on which he was backed by members of the Saturday Night Live and Late Night with Conan O’Brien bands. Influenced as much by 1920s blues men such as Tampa Red as by satirical performers like Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi, he proved himself an accomplished blues music presence.

Badnews Travels Fast is the second of Barnes’ now four albums produced with the golden punch of pervasive drummer, Tom Hambridge. It rocks, and it presents a funked up, seriously bluesy perspective cut with sharp wit, on a bent America and its wonderful people. But the comedic aspects blend seamlessly and almost invisibly with the power of the material and performances. The Nashville hotshots (Barnes is based in Music City these days) assembled for the album, including the monster guitarist Kenny Greenberg, play the songs for real. No effects but the huge talent. A strong continuity is obvious, as Barnes wrote all the songs with Hambridge, and a handful of them with Richard Fleming as well.

Barnes sings engagingly, in a barnwood voice perfect for the roughhewn, raucous nature of his songs. He opens the album with its title song, a charging melody as one would expect accentuated by funnels of stormy harp by the legendary Jimmy Hall. “True Blues” then eases in, a smoldering blues of infidelity sliced through with guitar by another guest star, Walter Trout. The song also benefits by the otherworldly backing vocals of Tabitha Fair. A definitive hokum blues, “You Right Baby” features guest singer Sugaray Rayford in a call and response duet with Barnes, the groove a sexy, slip-slidin’ juke-style affair with the fine Ms. Fair accentuating the back-and-forth jabs.

“His Majesty the Baby,” riding on a groove as appropriately greasy as can be, slays the notion that a certain politician acts like a helpless child with a victim’s mentality and a need for others to depend on him. Barnes’ use of imagery and metaphors, and that he does not actually name the subject, peg him as a masterful songwriter.

“Mushrooms Make Me a Fun Guy” ends the album on a trippy note, reminding the listener that it’s all just in great big fun after all, and that Chris Badnews Barnes is an artist to take the trip with.

 Tom Clarke for MAS

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