TURCHI

TURCHI’s sound is kudzu boogie, a blend of slide-guitar fuzz and Deep-South trance, a fresh shoot growing from the deep roots of American music. With influences ranging from Hill Country bluesmen Fred McDowell, RL Burnside, and Kenny Brown, to iconic Southern Bluesrock artists such as the Allman Brothers, North Mississippi Allstars, and Black Keys, to songwriters like Randy Newman and JJ Cale, TURCHI continually incorporates new sounds and ideas while maintaining their trademark slide guitar and driving rhythm.

2013 was a busy year for Asheville, North Carolina-based TURCHI, who are coming off a hugely successful tour in Italy and a Spring album release, Live in Lafayette, which Living Blues said “marries [their] boogie pedigree…with down and dirty swamp blues.” Their recently released 10” vinyl EP My Time Ain’t Now (recorded at Ardent Studios in Memphis) featuring an Americana-influenced, narrative style, is significantly more personal than the band’s previous recordings. Reed Turchi (guitar, slide guitar, vocals) explains the narrative theme behind much of the album: “These songs came out of a long stretch of time stuck on the highway, with no home base, and lots of nights in truck stops and back roads.”

That sense of time and travel permeates the album, an ode to backroad America. While TURCHI explores a more singer-songwriter sound on My Time Ain’t Now, they continue to push the boundaries of their southern blues and rock influences. The groovy lead single, a re-interpretation of Josh Ritter’s “Mind’s Eye,” deftly pairs a laid-back guitar with gritty vocals that rise and fall in intensity. The haunting original “Ellicott City” interweaves the story of two young girls and a man dying of cancer on a melancholy summer night, while the rollicking title track has an unapologetic ladies’ man telling his girl he’s not finished yet.