TRAVIS “MOONCHILD” HADDIX

Daylight At Midnight

Earwig CD 4955

By Tim Holek

Cleveland, Ohio is not known as a blues epicenter. After all, the city is home to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Thanks to a feature in Living Blues and an appearance at the Pocono Blues Festival, Travis Haddix is putting Cleveland on the blues map. Haddix has already recorded more than a dozen albums and has written songs for Artie “Blues Boy” White, Lee Shot Williams, Michael Burks, Charles Wilson, Jimmy Dawkins, and Son Seals. Perhaps the timing wasn’t right. Daylight At Midnight came out in the same year that also had new releases by Buddy Guy and B.B. King. Those releases and their companies’ marketing budgets may have overshadowed and out-muscled the smaller artists and labels.  

Most of the ten original songs on the 40-minute disc are short and straight to the point. On all of them, Haddix commands his band like respected soul crooners Bobby Rush and Otis Clay. Haddix describes the inspiration behind the title track. “I wrote that song about a town in the northern part of Finland. When I was on tour there, it stayed daylight mostly all the time.” The unleashed piano and harp captures you immediately on Word A Lie. Here, Haddix’s growl-like vocals sound like a friendly bear and the backing horns sound as large as a bruin. The Moonchild’s baritone voice sounds like what you would have created had you’d been able to combine the vocal cords of Albert Collins with Louie Armstrong. The most memorable horn arrangement appears on Who Could I Be? Here Haddix croons, but the repetitive and polished song lacks an element of improvisation. Haddix funks up and jazzes up a traditional blues using jubilant horns that simply groovify Way Back In The Country. Backward Baby is a sweet slow blues that has an arrangement that’s similar to the Allman Brothers’ version of Stormy Monday. The guitar solos flow over you like a stream on Nine Behind, which contains some elements of rock ‘n’ roll. Disco funk is added to the mix on What To Do. Good Buddy Blues sounds like it was recorded live because the band just cooks.

            “I am the best that I can be,” says Haddix, “and since no one else can be me, there’s none better.” This CD may not offer a ton of new life to the genre, but it proves blues can be traditional while having elements of soul injected into it. The end result is a contemporary sounding album that is a very satisfying listen.     

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