Benjamin Booker

One Liner: Raw New Orleans blues guitar shredding has morphed into a more subdued bluesy rock
Wikipedia Genre: Blues rock, guitar rock
Spotify Says Similar To: Thunderbitch and The Arcs (good company to be in!)
Home: New Orleans

Poster Position: 11
Slot: ?

Thoughts:  This guy rules.  I saw him play at ACL in 2014 - Here is where you can find my review.  Despite the raw-ness of that show, his music is freaking great.  Raw, loose, shredding, and it always sounds like he's having a damn ball playing the tunes.  I won't go back into his first album, which you can read about by just going to my review that I did for 2014.  That 2014 album is freaking great though, and you should go eat it up.

Since then, he's put out a new disc, 2017's Witness, which is likewise a solid burst of good time, guitar-driven rock and blues that works really well for me.  But its a little more chill.  I said this before in my past review, but he feels like a he does the Gary Clark Jr. thing with a little more rawness, both in his raspy singing voice and in his looser guitar style.  But this is still some solid blues guitar action.  And this new album isn't nearly as urgent and loose as that first one, these tracks are a little smoother and crafted.  For example, "All Was Well" builds and builds, sounding like it is just about to kick off into a raging inferno guitar storm that will "tear this building down," but then instead it just shifts into a Beatles-esque quiet horn and strings fade.  Which I think is too bad.  But the album opener still rocks and rolls as it should.  And "Off the Ground" is a jam that hits me in all the right rock synapses.  
The top track off of that album is the title track, "Witness," with 1.5 million streams (and what sounds like a Mavis Staples cameo).

Ha!  It is Mavis Staples!  I'm good.  And the lyrics of that song are like, damn.  "We thought that we saw that he had a gun, thought that it looked like he started to run."  This "witness" isn't about witnessing for the Lord, its about witnessing more police brutality - "now everybody that's brown can get the fuck on the ground" - and what you're gonna do about it. Heavy.

His most listened to song is still "Violent Shiver" off of the 2014 album, with 6.6 million streams.

Which still makes me want to kick things over and go steal cigarettes from the local convenience store and shave my head and yell punk things like "oi!"  I wish that the new album had more of this blast, instead of keeping things reserved throughout, but I still enjoy the new tunes.  Stuff like "Motivation" and "Believe" are solidly beautiful tracks of thoughtful lyrics.  "Overtime" has a happy tone and makes me want to groove.  This guy is good.

I'll give you another video to check out as well, here is something called "NPR Field Recordings," I guess for people that are just too rad for a tiny desk?

I laughed out loud with him after her lost his tuner into that drain.  I'll definitely plan on going to see him do it up in October.