Gideon Smith & The Dixie Damned

Dealin’ Decks (Scarey)
by Brian Varney

Like Southern gentlemen hurtling into the mystic, Gideon Smith & The Dixie Damned play rock and roll as if in the throes of a whiskey shaman. Yes, I suppose it’s “only” rock and roll, but it’s rock and roll that could command the hips of the most frigid of bitches, its greasy, slinky rhythms the same sorts that moistened panties and panicked parents 50 some years ago.

Dealin’ Decks is the third Gideon Smith & The Dixie Damned release, a six-song EP meant, perhaps, to mark time until the next full-length, due in 2006 on Small Stone. However, it accomplishes considerably more. It maintains the high standard of songwriting that prior releases have displayed, and it truly envelops you in the band’s mythic South, the same sort of place you might read about in Absalom, Absalom! Forget about the bleatings of wanna-be Southerners who wear stars-n-bars hats and proably have no idea what sweet tea is, this is music that will transport you to a land of dirt roads and trees that whisper in the dark. And by the time you’ve given the chilling closer “Dionysus Child” (whose percussion is played by a dead man) a few spins, you’ll be haunted by this place until you return by playing the record again.
(www.scareyrecords.com)