James Day & The Fish Fry
THE RACKET
The experience for your ears...
THE JAMES DAY & THE FISH FRY DISCOGRAPHY
James Day & the Fish Fry
FIRECRACKER
BLUES REVUE MAGAZINE - by Tom Hysop
Talk about Truth in labeling: Firecracker, the new James Day CD, sports not only Day’s indelible songs and harmonica, but production and guitar from the talented Nathan James, piano by Carl Sonny Leyland, and saxophone from Jonny "Nocturne" Viau. The rollicking affair hits on both city and country blues beginning with "Blues on a Fuse," in which Day blows a squalling solo over a chugging shuffle, continuing through the T-Bone Walker-style "Big Money," which reflects on how corporate giants are pasteurizing America, one town at a time, and touching on the spooky Latin blues "Before I Go." The many hotspots include James’s fat-toned stuttering guitar break on "Man About Town," Leyland’s boogie masterpiece "Too Many Tattoos," and Day’s roaring harp showcase "Boiled Peanuts." Fabulous stuff.
-Recorded at Sacred Cat Studio, producer James Harman, engineer Nathan James, Oceanside, California
James Day & the Fish Fry
SOUTHLAND
BLUES BLAST MAGAZINE - by Rex Bartholomew
The heart of their music is Day's fresh, humorous songwriting brought to life by the musical stylings and performances of this talented group of musicians. "Southland” is a meandering down the Mississippi river- a musical tribute to the Gulf Coast and has got it all. James Day sings and blows harmonica, but his greatest talent is bringing fresh original tunes to a diverse sonic palette of Southern American Roots styles.
Southland has 14 tracks and with a running time of 50 minutes you can do the math and figure out that the album is not loaded up with self-indulgent 10-minute guitar jams. Instead, you will find a solid crop of well-written original tunes that relate a vivid image of life in the American South (so, it turns out that Southland is not just a clever title). There is no shortage of different southern musical genres that are used to tell these stories, including blues, zydeco, rockabilly, country, New Orleans parade marches, gospel, and a whole lot more.
-Recorded at Widget Studios, producer James Day,
engineer, Dave Young Media, Pennsylvania
James Day & the Fish Fry
FREQUENCIES
Bluesblast Magazine UK
- John Sacksteder
This album was recorded over a ten-year period at three different studios: Sacred Cat in Sacramento, Sun Studios in Memphis, and High Rye Studios in Kintnersville, Pennsylvania. Accordingly, there is a very long list of performers on the album related to that time span and the disparity of locations where the songs were recorded. In the liner notes, James established that all the songs “have an occult connection, and the blues and roots genre is the perfect format to explore events beyond everyday physical life. In this life, you may see apparitions, spontaneous auras, experience missing time, or witness something strange in the sky. One thing is for sure, most folks are skeptics, and no one believes this mess until it happens to YOU.”
James plays acoustic guitar and harmonica, provides the vocals and produced the album. The album is his third release in the blues and roots genre. Firecracker was released in 2009, and Southland was released in 2015. James grew up in the coastal southern towns of Biloxi and New Orleans but presently calls Philadelphia home. Regular bandmate Ron Baldwin joins him on organ and electric and acoustic piano. Seventeen other musicians fill out the list of performers on the album.
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