Asie Payton

Worried (Fat Possum)

Listen to Asie Payton's "I Love You"

Paul Jones

Pucker Up Buttercup (Fat Possum)

On which side of the Epitaph-associated Fat Possum Records fence to you reside? It probably depends on how old you are. Some folks might think it jarring, obnoxious, or possibly even disrespectful to take unknown or semi-known Mississippi country bluesmen and keep some of their tunes totally raw and backwater, and manipulate other tunes ex post facto and make them extremely retro-hip and fuzzed-out a la Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, an annoying but brilliant punk whose lifetime dream is to make every album Exile on Main Street, which itself comprised the Rolling Stones trying to rip off . . . Mississippi country bluesmen. As for me and the insouciant slacker generation, we get it. We think itŐs cool as hell, and hope that the boys at Fat Possum keep blasting out this raw country blues for years to come. The two latest, noisy CDs the label has procured include the work of Asie Payton, who died working in the fields not long after the demo recordings on his CD were put on tape, and that of Paul "Wine" Jones, a journeyman construction worker and welder who also plays one mean blues guitar. Long may they weep, wail, and play them blues. --Don Fluckinger