The Athens, GA swamp-blues rockers are back with a vengeance on Fall Line, out April 7 on New West imprint Strolling Bones Records

Stream Fall Line Here

The Chickasaw Mudd Puppies rocked the late ‘80s/early ‘90s seminal Athens, GA music scene with their idiosyncratic, Deep South sound — swamp rock with a dash of hillbilly blues. The proto-Americana duo were taken under the wing of R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe and released the band’s White Dirt EP (’90) and 8 Track Stomp (’91) album, two fine hillbilly-blues, swamp-rocking gems produced by Stipe and blues legend Willie Dixon. After a live album recorded in London; the duo, Brant Slay (vocalist, washboard, harmonica) and Ben Reynolds (vocalist, percussion, electric guitar) went their separate ways for 20 years until their music was rediscovered and tapped for film, including The Mechanic and Tracing Cowboys. Slay and Reynolds regrouped and added a third member, Alan “Lumpy” Cowart, drummer of the The Beggar Weeds (also Stipe-produced).

On April 7, 2023, the trio will release Fall Line on New West imprint Strolling Bones Records. The album was produced by the band and mixed and mastered by John Keane; known for his decades-long work with R.E.M. among many others.

Fall Line is a high-octane distillation of all the sound and the fury and the supercharged heart and soul that made this crackerjack combo so rip-roaringly great from the get-go back in day. If anything, Fall Line full-on eclipses its own intrinsic brilliance as an incendiary showcase of their spectacular return to form, shining like a vibrant creative rebirth rather than some run-of-the-mill reunion. Like fiery-eyed cicadas that have at last returned to the earth’s surface and freshly shed their shells, the Chickasaw Mudd Puppies are screaming out their unmistakable call louder and livelier than ever before.

At the end of the day, Fall Line casts the spell of a grand, yet inadvertent concept album, something of a “Sgt. Puppers” if you will. Opposing sides collide, exposing the deep divisions, dichotomies, and contradictions of the Southern condition – dark vs. light, good vs. evil, sin vs. salvation, nature vs. mankind. All with a buggy full of them hyphens to go where their many musical influences collide, plus to get a bit literary, a little Hank Williams meets Tennessee Williams, Tom Waits meets Tom Sawyer, Willie Dixon meets Willy Faulkner, and so on.

To celebrate their first new album in 20-plus years, Chickasaw Mudd Puppies and will be performing at SXSW 2023 as well as select shows in the South.