With a name like the Mojo Gurus, a CD called “Hot Damn!”and song titles like “Race With The Devil,” “Raylene” and “Black Cat Blues,” you would probably guess that this is a rockabilly band.
You’d be partially right. “Race With The Devil” is a rockabilly song, a twist on the “Devil Went Down to Georgia” concept, but other tracks on the album sound country, bluesy, or even that horrible catch-all phrase “southern rock”-y. It reminds me of a summer night in the market in Savannah, Georgia, in a crowd of college kids and guys with mullets and Harleys.
Personally, I tend to favor the rockabilly-sounding tracks, and I’m a bit put off when songs that sound like dirty hillbilly rock’n’roll are suddenly flattened with a guitar straight out of the 80’s. Trying to be everything to everyone never works as well as people think, and their press release brags that “Race With The Devil” is a hit song in four different formats, but I’m wondering what their definition of “hit song” is.
They’ve got most of the components for a successful rockabilly band, though the guitar needs a little work, and I think they’d be better off sticking to that.
