Big Fish

In large part the new album from Joe Tatton Trio, "Big Fish" is a tribute to legendary, late Mississipi blues man Mose Allison, his sardonic songs as well as his great piano playing style, and to begin with Joe and his trio basically played full live sets of the great man's music. After a while, Joe began writing his own compositions in the vein of Mose, songs that had that same ironic and humorous view of life but updated to the 21st century. A few years ago, he needed to find the time and place to record them. So in between New Mastersounds gigs, he managed to book a few days at a studio near Nashville, "The Rockhouse", run by Grammy winning engineer Kevin Mckendree. He hooked up with a couple of Nashville session musicians, Steve Mackie upright and electric bass and Kenneth Blevins (drums), and put down all his original songs and also a cover of Mose Allison's "Ever since the world ended". The latter sounding as relevant today in the COVID lockdown age as it did back in the 1950s when it was written, a time when the Cold War threatened to get hot and end the world with nuclear armageddon.

There's the banging northern soul groove of "Just Don't Stop" (featuring the Haggis Horns), and the satirical title track "Big Fish" (about being a jazz musician in the middle of nowhere) with it's New Orleans swagger (where Joe has played so many times for JazzFest, Mardi Gras and New Years Eve). There's the very Mose-esque "Timeline" a satirical lament to "socials" and some cracking instrumentals featuring the supreme jazz flautist G-LOCK (Gareth Lockrane) tearing it up. Big Fish comes out April 30th on Rodina Music.