When listening to the Bloodhounds, my whole collection of oldies went through my mind in a few minutes, not that it is a bad thing, on the contrary, the quartet is a true-to-the-core 60’s R&B revival and they play it with a real conviction.
The Bloodhounds were playing an in-store at Origami Vinyl on Saturday night, and they rocked the place, attracting more and more people in the store with their upbeat and familiar rhythms. It’s always funny to see young guys who were not even a project in their parents’ minds in the 60’s or 70’s, but nevertheless embracing the retro wave, and mixing blues, old style R&B and good old rock & roll, with such ease and delightfulness… add to this a subtle Latino flavor, which makes total sense when you know they all come from East LA.
There were plenty of joyful howlin’ harmonies, a lot of 60’s-infused surf and bright guitars, and their music grew even much bluesier as they progressed in their set, adding a full Elwood-blues harmonica on some numbers and a real showmen attitude. More and more girls started to do full dance moves downstairs, while people were cheering and clapping,.. Could these guys already have a following?
They were discovered in the streets of LA where they often busked and performed with cheap acoustic guitars and some ordinary household items turned into instruments, something that sounds so unusual and old fashioned in these electronic-obsessed days. But I like old-fashion, as these guys apparently do, they looked like some cool cats doing some dynamic Chuck Berry-like moves, able to produce feisty riffs, sounding very familiar at the first listening. While enthusiastically rediscovering the sound and the rhythms of the golden age of rock & roll, they were making it more alive than ever.
In an interview, the band described their influences as ‘Old blues such as Charlie Patton and Howlin’ Wolf, and the 60’s bands who loved that music’. ‘We were brought up on Thee Midniters, one of the first big Latino bands to break out of East LA, known as ‘the Mexican Beatles’, they added, ‘they wore suits on stage, looked real cool and wrote great songs’.
The Bloodhounds, which are Aaron “Little Rock” Piedraita on rhythm guitar, Johnny Santana on bass, Branden Santos on lead guitar and Mark Schafler on drums and percussion, are releasing their debut album ‘Let Loose’ via Alive Naturalsound, and since the Origami crowd didn’t want to let them go and were asking for encores, they must have played most of the album.
And to prove you they are the hot thing of the moment, they will even be part of a compilation ‘Rock and Roll Is A Beautiful Thing (Alive 20th Anniversary)‘, a Record Store Day exclusive to celebrate Alive Naturalsound’s 20th anniversary. The double LP will feature a newly recorded track of the young band (‘La Couahuila’), as well as unreleased studio outtakes of big names such as the Black Keys or Buffalo Killers among many others… quite a deal for an almost unknown band.