KEVIN AND KEVIN AND A FLOOD OF CLASSIC COUNTRY FUSION

Just a short one for me today, well you know, only 1000 words hehe. Usually when i say short I end up taking at least three goes at ending a post off. 

But I'm getting better at coming up with a punchline than when I first started out in the blogging game. Maybe it`s because no son
of a bitch newspaper editor will publish any of my stuff any longer, so I have all these catchy one liners buiding.up like a snowmelt tidal wave down the Colorado River.

Anyhow, I got a bit of a country album to tell you about today, by an australian band called The Flood, but with a special guest vocalist as well on this recording. 

I love The Flood, they are still relatively obscure outside the country music fraternity, but since the late 1990`s the band had recorded I think five albums, could be six in-
cluding the one I am just about to tell you about, lead singer, guitarist and songwriter Kevin Bennett is the creative axis of the band, his introspectively complex
lyrics can at times be a bit indecipherable but the music always saves the day for him.

Musically, The Flood is very muscular and very challenging, what you would call progressive country fusion. 

The album I have in my hand is a live one, which they recorded at short notice

as a `backing band` for another country fusion artist from America named Kevin Welch. 

One would get the impression that having Kevin Bennett and Kevin Welch in the same band would have only ever lasted one alb-
um, with two egos and two great songwriting talents potentially competing against each other. 

A bit like a John Fogerty/Tom Fogerty or Mark Knopfler/David Knopfler syndrome, and Kevin and Kevin aren`t even brothers.

Anyhow Kevin Welch obviously was booked
in to do a show at the Basement nightclub in Sydney in September 2002, the only thing he was lacking to put on a show was a backing band. 

Apparently, The Flood was just in the right place at the right time and Kevin and the boys agreed to jam as instrumentalists behind Kevin Welch. 

The resultant live album from this partic-
ular gig turned out to be a country fusion masterpiece. The album is called `Live Down Here On Earth` and it is credited to Kevin Welch and The Flood. 

I think most of the songs are ones that Kevin Welch wrote, with the exception of Van Morrison`s `Queen of the Slipstream`
and a couple of songs which Kevin Bennett stood up to the mike forto sing, like `Paul Kelly`s Blues`. 

This was the first `country-ish` album at least in Australian terms that made me go wow, now ain`t that great. 

The Flood had, but not anymore I believe, a great bassist in James Gillard, formerly of Mondo Rock as I recently discovered.

And they had as well, but not anymore once again, a totally great piano player and accordianist in Tim Weddes. 

My favourite song off the album `Life Down Here On Earth` has Tim Weddes sounding tens time hotter than Jerry Lee Lewis on steroids. 

The best piece of improvised and impromptu piano bashing that I have just about heard.
The treatment that Welch and The Flood gave `Queen of the Slipstream` is beautifully controlled but simmering with tension, and `Eight More Miles` has both the
Kevins doing a duet of sorts with a crisp and delightful harmony. 

The opening track `Beneath My Wheels` is
a typical song for the road that takes ones imagination to the wild west of america and one song which should be considered to be one of Kevin Welch`s best without The Flood. 

12 songs of classic, gritty country and coun-
try rock fusion, and made to sound even better recorded live. Kevin Bennett and The Flood are a great band, but they were also the best backing band in the land on this particular night. Live Down Here On Earth, go get it!