Mississippi John Doude

"MJD is an energetic blend of Hank Williams Jr. and Tom Waits with a mean slide guitar."
- Bryan Ghiloni, Gallery RFD, Swainsboro, GA
- Gallery RFD

"...solo act Mississippi John Doude whips up a soup of working-class rock, dusty blues and hillbilly folk." - Flagpole, Athens, GA

- flagpole

Mississippi John Doude is a rockabilly bluesman with an old-time sound drawn from greats like Son House and Muddy Waters. He plays guitar and harmonica while keeping the beat with a hi hat and bass drum. His new record is titled “Voodoo Panther,” a name as swampy and rural as the music it contains.

Throughout his tunes Doude employs a raspy, slippery slide guitar style that is more Elmore James than Dwayne Allman. Everything about the tunes on “Voodoo Panther” smacks of traditional roots music, but there is a connection with the California sound of artists like Tom Waits and Lowell George.

The sparse quality of Doude’s rhythmic approach gives his songs a raw, haunting sound that evoke the rural south. “Cornbread Time” shows a lighter side of Mississippi John, with lyrics about the joys of a particular southern food.

The song “Social Inequality Blues” is a fuzzed out, raunchy, politically charged track with a cadence like “Hoochie Coochie Man,” while “Cotton Picking Blues” has an Eric Burdon vibe to it, and a slow, sinister beat.

Mississippi John Doude is a do it yourself musician with a sound that goes well beyond being a gimmick. He manages to capture the essence of the downtrodden delta blues sound while avoiding pure imitation. The best way to preserve music is to replicate the attitude and feeling of music rather than the actual notes, and in that Doude has succeeded.
- The Corner News, Auburn, AL

Fuzzed-out, country-blues guitar picking sheds light on dark, forgotten places: Mississippi John Doude intones lyrics like a mystic casting a trance with earthy and immortal Southern sounds of gnarled trees, Spanish moss, and trails overrun with underbrush. Guitar in hand, he pounds out a hearbeat on kick drum and hi hat... ...But just as readily as Doude explores the broken and dilapidated machine that is the world, he sees the beautifully crafted cog that still shines, and offters: "There's plenty for all at cornbread time." - The Independant Weekly, Raleigh, NC

The one-man blues machine digs deep into the swampy, gritty origins of Americana and unearths a raw Southern sound that'll get voices hollerin' and feet stompin'. - The Flagpole, Athens, GA

Mississippi John Doude is a one-man powerhouse, playing almost all of the instruments on this album, a great testament to what is being known as Americana. All of the songs here are very personal, feeling like pages from Doude's private diary, and whether he plays an acoustic guitar, a slide, a dobro, or drums, he knows how to do all of it with precision. His stories are bold and he sings them in a manner which feels as if he is singing to you, or perhaps making the listener feel as if they are singing his words, which in turn may become yours. In songs such as "Cornbread Time", "Hangman's Rope", and "Rollin' Like A Freight Train", his voice has a lot of conviction and even when his vocal approach is by-the-book, or it sounds as if he's trying to catch up with a chord change, you hold on and hang on because you know he is a storyteller, and one who deserves to be heard and acknowledged. There's rock, blues, country, folk, and even a bit of worldly flavor. When he has a story to tell, he does so with passion. When he sits down on the patio to jam as the rain falls, he does this too, as he does with J. Adams on djembe in "Drunk Buddha", or as he does in "Katrina", he lays on a bluesy electric guitar solo where you can feel a bit of the sorrow and hurt that is expressed in his playing. The CD cover has him just playing an acoustic guitar and the drums (which he often plays at the same time, one-man band style), but his music is not as simple as the cover suggests. Homemade and proud! - Reviewer: John Book, Music For America