Review: Mike Farris- 'The Sound of Muscle Shoals'

Muscle Shoals. For such a small town in Alabama, it's had an outsized influence on American music. Throughout its history, artists like Wilson Pickett, Candi Staton, Aretha Franklin, and Duane Allman have recorded at the city's historic Fame Studios and helped invent a mix of blues, soul, gospel, and Southern rock that is just known as “The Muscle Shoals Sound.” For his new album, The Sound of Muscle Shoals, Mike Farris made a pilgrimage to Fame Studios to put his own mark on that sound.

Few artists are more fit for the task of recreating the Muscle Shoals Sound than Mike Farris. The former Screamin' Cheetah Wheelies frontman has made a solo career on the kind of soulful and bluesy gospel music that slots perfectly into that niche. To help, Farris tapped the current day edition of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section and some other stalwarts of the Shoals sessions scene. He also worked with producer Rodney Hall, son of Fame Studios founder and “Father of Muscle Shoals” Rick Hall.

The album kicks off with “Ease On,” a song about Farris' own upbringing in small Franklin County, Tennessee. It's a straightforward blues rocker with a familiar hardscrabble lyrical bent. “It's the times we remember,” Farris shouts, “that keep us on the ground.” It's a great choice to open the album as it's one of The Sound of Muscle Shoals' best rockers and sets the stage for what's to come.

“Bright Lights” is, in some ways, a bookend to “Ease On.” Instead of a rocker about Farris' childhood, it's a reflection on his career with the “Bright lights and big city dreams” that's an easy countrified amble heavy on the steel guitar. The country music produced by Muscle Shoals is often overshadowed by the rock and soul that permeated the city in the '60s. But Fame also coaxed hit albums from country artists like Bobbie Gentry, Mac Davis, and T.G. Sheppard. “Bright Lights” is a little bit of a reflection on that aspect of Muscle Shoals' legacy.

The album's best pure blues song is also one if its highlights, “Heavy on the Humble.” With an acoustic guitar strum kicking off the track and lulling, the electric guitars and heavy percussion come crashing in on the chorus and just build throughout the remainder of the song. This is the place where Farris is at his best, belting out bluesy lines like “picks me up every time I stumble/lays me down when I get too high” over a soaring electric guitar riff.

“Slow Train” shows off Farris' gospel influences, beginning with a choir and transitioning into Farris' best blue-eyed soul. “Everybody gets a ticket,” Farris croons. “It's up to you to catch a ride / that's how it's got to be.” The album's closer, “Sunset Road”, is a song about the futility of worry that carries its own gospel instrumental tinges. “Bird in the Rain” is an organ-drenched song filled with great blues licks and lines like “how can you love me girl / when you don't even know my name.”

Whether you're a fan of Mike Farris, a fan of the classic Muscle Shoals sound, or just someone on the lookout for a new album that will scratch your blues and soul itch, The Sound of Muscle Shoals will get you what you need. This is the music Mike Farris was born to make, and it shows throughout.