# CD review: Delta By The Beach – Doc Ventura – The Single of the Month – 2023: Video, CD cover, buy direct

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2023/12/21/cd-review-delta-by-the-beach-doc-ventura-the-single-of-the-month-2023-video-cd-cover-buy-direct/
- Published: 2023-12-21T00:04:12+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**California blues outfit Delta By The Beach vibe like the most lowdown jukebox 
in town on their new full-length release _The Single of the Month_.**

The album title refers to the one-song-a-week-for-a-year recording project that 
brought Delta By The Beach into existence and also to the choice to craft tight,
short songs that might be found on a vintage record machine. Band members Doc Ventura(
bass, lead vocals), Milo Sledge (guitar), and Eddie Layman (drums) are a small-but-
motivated crew that makes rough-edged blues music for modern ears. They’re the kind
of band that really will help keep the blues alive by not letting it turn into museum
music but by keeping it charged up with the energy and humanity of its own time.

What they’re doing must be working because the group is closing in on a cool million
Spotify streams and rocks hundreds of live gigs every year. Their authentic Mississippi
juke joint style has connected with fans all over the world and demonstrates the
eternal relevance of this music.

The songs contained on _The Single of the Month_ are a lively assortment of small-
band blues designed for hip-shaking and heartbreaking. The opening cut “Bad Deed”
is a razor-sharp Chicago blues with a Muddy Waters feel and an expressive lead vocal
from Doc Ventura. Right away, it’s clear that this is lights-out hard music for 
hard times that tells real, human stories. The shuffle groove, alone, will hit you
dead-on at the end of a tough day and pull your pain to the surface, as real blues
has always done.

The mid-speed “Give Me Back My Tears” expands on the Jimmy Reed style with tough
emotions and a big riff. Still, the sweetness of the beat comes through and will
soon have you swaying with its rough-hewn charm. Ventura and Sledge are a solid 
pair up front, capable of weaving rhythmic spells that mesmerize and fascinate. 
This isn’t shredding, contemporary blues but the stripped-down, dangerous sound 
that turned us all on in the first place and it’s glorious.

“Tired Of My Luck” is way cool garage/blues/funk done right and sounds like a night
spent out back drinking and jamming to old records on a single speaker. We can all
relate to the title sentiment in one way or another and Ventura delivers his vocals
in a way that will make you understand. Sledge’s guitar tone here is sharp and dirty
in the best way possible and fits the tune’s atmosphere perfectly.

All of _The Single of the Month_ will make blues fans happy. It’s a wonderfully 
energetic record that plays to the core strengths of blues music and refuses to 
pose or pretend. Delta By The Beach needs to be on your screen right now so you 
can dig into gems like “1000 Tears” and “You Made A Mistake” without delay. You 
want the blues? You got ‘em! Highly recommended.  – By Mike O’Cull

Delta By The Beach, as the name suggests, play Delta-influenced blues from their
base in California. The band is led by Doc Ventura who writes most of the material
and handles vocals and baritone guitar, aided by Milo Sledge on guitar/harp and 
drummer Eddie Layman. Although a trio the instrumentation is varied with a number
of guests also adding to the musical palette.

The three guys got together for what was intended as a single event, but rehearsals
showed that they enjoyed playing together, the problem being that there was nowhere
to play at the time due to Covid. The concept of recording a track each month and
streaming it was enormously successful and here we have the songs from that project
united into one album, consisting of those twelve tracks, released monthly through
2021.

The album is in chronological order of the singles’ releases, so we start in February
2021 with the trio in Chicago mood, Doc’s gruff vocals adding to the Howling Wolf
vibe of “You Did A Bad Deed”. The pace drops for “1000 Tears”, echoey guitar and
vocals, Doc’s baritone guitar doing everything that a conventional bass would do
and Milo adding some tough picking and a little harp too. Mandolin player James 
Schulfer joins in on “How Do You Treat Me Like You Do”, a stop-start rhythm with
harp and mandolin featured, while “Tired Of My Luck” goes back to the trio format,
Milo playing some varied stuff over a steady rhythm; Doc plays harp on this one,
sounding rather distant and thin in the mix.

We reach the June single and alto sax is added to “Need Your Squeezin’” by Robert
Kyle, Milo on slide over a slinky rhythm, a track that adds an element of funk to
the proceedings. “Give Me Back My Tears” brings the distant-sounding harp back over
a chugging blues in which Doc is clearly unhappy that his girl has left him and “
Baby You Got What I Need” has the loping rhythms of a Jimmy Reed song with a noticeably
clearer vocal from Doc, making you wonder if some of the earlier tracks employed
some distortion on the vocals. “You Made A Mistake” has slide and acoustic guitar
on an uptempo country blues.

The final tracks cover October – December. “Delta By The Beach” is a stripped-back
tribute to the band’s coastal base with guest Flattop Tom on the harp, David Gorospe’s
organ adds a gospel feel to the slow-boiling “Wanted Man” and “She Did It” builds
up a good head of steam. The band clearly felt that the album would not be complete
without a Christmas song and give us the cheerful, upbeat “Very Best Christmas This
Year”.

The album presents a record of a laudable project over 2021 which was surely well
appreciated by listeners and viewers in a year when everyone needed some cheer.

We had fun creating this Christmas song. I have always been a fan of the Holidays.
The chance to make our own contribution was more than I could resist. Also the decision
to release on green vinyl gave a nostalgic emotional fulfillment. We loved recording
it in a tiny loft above a big studio because the closeness of the room helped us
to groove. By comparison, our first album ‘The Single of the Month’ w as a restrospective
of collection of twelve songs that we wrote, recorded and mastered and released,
one per month. With ‘Kringle’ just having to only focuts on one recording was like
taking a mini-vacation!

We had a blast doing the cover art. We knew we wanted something amusing, but it’s
hard to create that moment and I’m proud that we pulled it off. We have been working
on a new album for quite a while, some say too long! We recorded about 20 original
songs and have picked the best dozen. We have played festivals and travelled to 
Mississippi a few times and were greatly inspired by the current ‘liveing blues’
scene there. We like artists like Jesse Cotton Stone who are forging a much heavier
blues sound, influenced naturally by some rock sensibility. I say ‘naturally’ because
the younger generation of blues musicians have grown up with the blue-rock hybridization
as a fact, not a theory. We have absorbed this and were able to evolve our sound
toward some rawer stuff. Of course, we still fall back into playing some California
West Coast styles. After all it is our natural habitat. Local players such as the
great R.J. Mischo and Frank ‘Paris Slim’ Goldwasser joined us on some cuts and that
keeps us grounded in our regional pocket as well as exploring modern Delta.

My 20 years of trawling through Mississippi left me with a mountain of photos and
videos of blues artists. I decided to develop a one-time-only show at our local 
Performing Arts venue. It was my retrospective photo tour through the state, accompanied
by some live performance examples. I tried to find guys that had the feeling. There
was one player in the area that always struck me as being marinated in the Mississippi
country blues style, without ostentatious artifacts. Milo Sledge was my first selection
for the show band.

Our first choice for a drummer wasn’t able to do it so he recommended Eddie Layman
who had just hit town after 30 years as an expatriate playing jazz in Singapore!
He had played the famous Chitlin’ circuit, backed several Hammond B3 shufflers so
he was in right away. He can name and play at least a dozen or more types of shuffles
among other things. Muddy Waters always preferred a jazz drummer for blues and so
do I. So, the one-time-only band decided to stay together and that is Delta by the
Beach,- an interview with me said Blues bassist and lead vocalist Doc Ventura of
Delta By The Beach.

We recommend that you definitely own and enjoy this wonderful CD.

[**Buy from here – New CD 2023**](https://deltabythebeach.com/music)

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