Chuck E. Weiss has just rolled out the third album in a decidedly non-prolific but aesthetically pure career (this is not counting his 1981 debut which was actually demos and did not have his blessing). However, if you figure into the equation that his first true album was 1999′s Extremely Cool — 39 years into his life as a musician — then he is indeed picking up speed.
Weiss was already steeped in the lore of derelict urban environments when Tom Waits rolled into his orbit in Los Angeles. While his younger pal was forging a solo career, Weiss played and toured with various blues legends. By the end of the ’70s, Waits’ forays into boho late-night character studies ran their course (on the verge of becoming shtick, he brilliantly reinvented himself with Swordfishtrombones). Weiss, however, had been breathing in the downtrodden scene since his adolescence in Denver, Colorado, creating from that atmosphere an endlessly resilient world.
He dives into wordplay, luxuriating in new layers of beatnik prose. “Half Off At The Rebop Shop” and “Man Tan” fold words into goofy paper hats that would make Slim Gaillard grin. Elsewhere, his years of working with such masters as Lightnin’ Hopkins and Willie Dixon have taught him the value of brevity for alluding to a full narrative while needing to give only choice glimpses.
The set closes with Ike Turner’s “Goodbye, So Long”, Weiss and his quartet riding off into the sunset churning up the most glorious dust as they go.
