Moving leftfield apace The Black Diamond Heavies' "A Touch of Someone Else's Class" (Alive) offers a defiantly different take on the blues, but also impresses. The notion of a keyboard and drums duo instinctively conjures images of Raw Sex, the inappropriately labelled lounge band of French and Saunders 80's shows; but James Leg and Van Campbell put on one of the dirtiest, loudest, most feral live shows around, and here nail their sonic tour de force for home consumption. If Tom Waits, Howling Wolf and Animal from the Muppets serenading a jet engine in a tunnel makes your perfect Sunday morning (and why shouldn't it, pop pickers?) then wade in here. - Leicester Bangs
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It's hard to tell whether Black Diamond Heavies keyboardist and singer John Wesley Myers was born with a greasy spoon stuck in his throat or if his gruff vocals are just the result of many years spent trying to sing along to Tom Waits records. Either way the result is impressive. With just Myers' own pounding on a Rhodes piano and that of his partner Van Campbell on a drum kit, the Black Diamond Heavies have taken Waits' tipsy blues cadence and injected it with the kind of r-n-r vitriol the old guy doesn't muster much.

For their second album, A Touch of Someone Else's Class, the East Nashville duo travelled to Ohio to record with the Black Keys' Dan Auerbach at his Akron Analog Studio. If anyone knows something about making a two-piece sound bigger than it is, it would be Auerbach, but the choice of engineer was fortuitous in other ways as well. Joining the Heavies for one cut, "Bidin' My Time," was Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney's uncle Ralph, longtime horn player for Waits, and his contribution gives the song a touch of late-night noir that can't be gotten from just anyone. Still Auerbach's work is one of the keys (no pun intended) to the record's success. Cuts like the leadoff "Nutbush City Limits" and "Loose Yourself" are imbued with a floor-shaking sound, just enough low-end rumble and in-the-red saturation to make the record come alive. Myers studies of the Waits catalog, Booker T and Muscle Shoals soul, and no doubt Nina Simone (the Heavies do a very worthy cover of her seminal "Sinnerman") has paid off in spades. Touch is a gritty triumph, the kind of record that can't be made without more than a little blood and sweat.
Stephen Slaybaugh / The Agit Reader
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Gravel-throated singer James Leg harbors a demi-doom perhaps due to having to hold together everything but the drums. He may be the only current broken blues carnival barker who heard John Lee Hooker long before Captain Beefheart or Tom Waits, or Man Man for that matter, and has yet to use a beard as evidence of purity-what with purity being something gutter boozers should rarely be concerned with. The razor-stabbed organ-fueled gutter-gospel, "Oh, Sinnerman," actually exudes some of the tempo meander of a rambling church sermon, but the sparse sound of a graveyard Bassholes kin.

Yes, smoky Hammond organ ballads like "Bidin' My Time" are trotted out, loose "baby"s are pleaded upon continuously, and a humid tone over heated tunes is preferred. In general, such blues hammering is best served to a greener crowd not completely sick of this style from exposure to a decade of '80s beer commercials. But mucho credit is given to these Heavies for retaining that storming, redlining fuzz to the point of something like a new kick. Especially on "Solid Gold" where the organ playing starts to whoosh in unexpected corners of the song, cymbals crash like garbage can tops, and for a few moments you forget you've heard this all before. Or maybe you haven't.- Eric Davidson / CMJ
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When I talked about the debut record from the Black Diamond Heavies, I made mention that they toed the line between heaven and hell, between sainthood and sin on almost every song. I talked about how rough and raw the keys were and how the kit exploded out of my headphones. I also talked - repeatedly to anyone who would listen - how kick ass these two men were.

Well, after what seems like an eternity, they are back with their sophomore release, A Touch of Someone Else's Class, and it is full of progression and changes. Sure the lineup is still in tact and some of the influences remain the same, but BDH don't seem as concerned with where they will end up when their time is up, knowing life is what it is and the only thing you can do is enjoy the ride. Aside from the terrific Nina Simone cover (Oh, Sinnerman) and the reference to Balaam's talking donkey on Numbers 22 (Balaam's Wild Ass), Leg seems to have stopped worrying about what the man above thinks.

Even on the most soulful ballad (Bidin' My Time), Leg's pontification is replaced with regret and questions about himself and the sound is bolstered by stellar backing vocals (courtesy of the Tour-ettes). It's much more personal, more fleshed out and really shows that BDH are more than just a killer blues duo that can make you spill whiskey and sweat as you stamp along on the floor.

Sure they can still hit you in the mouth with some blistering numbers - Make Some Time, as my grand dad would say, shakes like a dog shittin' razor blades under the weight of the heavy feedback on the keys and Van Campbell obliterating his kit and their take on Tina Turner's Nutbush City Limit is smoking - but they offer up a much more refined, even polished sound at times.

On the last record, they definitely drew from the RL/Model T Ford catalog, and on certain tracks - like the Model T cover (Take a Ride) or Everythang is Everythang - they still revisit those sounds, but they hit me more like the sessions RL did with Jon Spencer, right down to hovering back shouts. To me though, it's the huge shifts in sound that are even more shocking. Loose Yourself drifts to the edge of metal, with crazy arena choruses and thick sludgy sounds. Solid Gold is still a heavy jam, but it feels like the band (with the help of Dan Auberch) took the time to sand the edges - even if it was recorded in a mere three days. While this might be a bit concerning to fans that dug the first record, I'm actually surprised by how well the band makes the transition.

I could try to come up with something catchy to sum up, but the band found a little passage that totally fits - "Behold, as wildasses in the desert, go they forth to their work."- Herohill
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For an immediate taste of Auerbach's production skills, pick up the new Black Diamond Heavies album, A Touch of Someone Else's Class, at the band's Saturday night performance at Musica. B.D.H. is a bluesy rock duo of organist/singer James Leg and drummer Van Campbell, and the album is a raw, distorted, quickly recorded live-in-the-studio document of its southern-fried ruckus.

The Nashville-based band hooked up with Auerbach through its record label, Alive, which released the Black Keys' debut. Auerbach said he'd never met the two until they showed up at his Akron Analog studio, but was familiar with the band's reputation for raucous live shows. ''They recorded in like two days; it was bang, bang, boom, done,'' Auerbach said.

The 11-track album, the band's second, features drunken blues-gospel inflected tunes with singer Leg's Tom Waits-ian growl, which on songs such as Numbers 22 (Balaam's Wild Ass) and the ballad Bidin' My Time sounds eerily like an impersonation of Waits' Small Change era. 'It's not a put-on. That's how that (guy) talks,'' Auerbach said, laughing. ''It's not some bull where he puts on the voice, and I've heard a lot of people do that. He actually talks like that and when he laughs like that, that's what it sounds like.''

Auerbach, who won't be in town for the show because the Black Keys will be on their way to Australia for another series of sold-out shows, said he's not particularly interested in becoming a hot hit-making producer. ''I just like to make records and work with bands, and that's why I just want do it as much as I can.''

Highlights of the album include midtempo stomper Loose Yourself; Solid Gold, an amped-up shuffle that could easily be a single; and an organ-only cover of Nina Simone's take on the old spiritual Oh, Sinnerman, which Auerbach said came from one of those spontaneous moments in the studio. ''They weren't even planning on recording that song. [Leg] just came in one morning, sat down and started playing it and singing, and I started recording. I'm really glad that it made it on the record.'' - Ohio.com
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Black Diamond Heavies - photo by Patrick Boissel

To say John Wesley Myers has a rough, weathered voice is an understatement. It's not your average gravelly, growl. Dude sings like he's survived his adult life on a diet of unfiltered cigarettes, moonshine, gasoline, and shards of broken glass. While those pipes may be enough to distinguish the Black Diamond Heavies from the rest of the garage rock crowd, there's also the matter of their unique set up. It's just Myers on keys and Van Campbell on drums, responsible that raging and soulful, Southern holler.

Taken from A Touch of Someone Else's Class, the follow to the Black Diamond Heavies' 2007 debut, Every Damn Time, "Everythang Is Everythang," is one ragged romp through the looking for love with all the wrong woman blues. Campbell's drums are pushed far into the red, producing a pounding the sh*t out of a cheap kit effect, while Myers keys belie his woman toubles with something so positively bouncy it almost resembles glee. It may sound like an odd combination, but that's the blues. If your woman's got you down, then the best thing you can do is call together the band and holler about it

The Black Diamond Heavies' A Touch of Someone Else's Class, recorded with Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys, will be out June 10th on Alive Records. Special guests include Auerbach on guitar, and Ralph Carney, the long time Tom Waits collaborator, and uncle of the Black Keys' Pat Carney, who also guested on The Keys latest disc. - I Rock Cleveland
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The twosome's sparkplug is drummer Van Campbell, a descendant of bourbon distillers who bashes away on his instrument with feral force but never loses the groove. Frontman/ keyboardist John Wesley Myers is equally untamed, and when this fire-breathing son of a Baptist preacher grunts out the handful of lyrics to "Nutbush" or the stomping blues drone "Fever in My Blood," he sounds more like a beast of the forest than a fork 'n' knife-using city dweller- these Tennessee-based madmen really get it on when the chord changes are nearly nonexistent and the smell of fermented sour mash is hanging heavy in the air. When they're rockin' the floorboards in this mode, Campbell and Myers could send an army of punky blues revelers straight down to the devil's fiery pit. And be thanked for it. - Isthmus/The Daily Page
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The Black Diamond Heavies play some of the dirtiest blues around. Just an organ and drums, they have some of the most soulful songs I've heard in a long time. The lead singer sounds a hell of a lot like Tom Waits and some of the songs even have longtime Waits collaborator Ralph Carney contributing some horn work. The album includes a Tina Turner cover and a Nina Simone one too. Overall it's a great work, the only question that I can't answer for myself is if this album is better than their first. As of right now, I feel both are equal but I haven't had the time to listen to this one as much. This one is funkier and has some better jams but that doesn't mean it's overall better. Thanks to Alive for putting out some seriously amazing records. - Just As The Day Was Dawning
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One of the freshest records I’ve heard in a long time, which might seem a strange thing to say since it is also one of the most derivative I’ve heard in awhile. And that is a good thing. Part of the fun is picking out and identifying the many influences you hear. The most obvious is Myers' voice, which is part Tom Waits and part Iggy Pop with a little Joe Cocker in there, too.

You also hear some Rolling Stones’ blues-rock phrasing, and every now and then Myers’ keyboards offer a hint of Ray Manzarek’s whirling-winding-constantly-building, trippy sound with the Doors Nothing is copied here, mind you, but whether intentionally or not, Myers and Campbell have managed to take some of the very best parts of tent-revival passion, demonic rock ’n’ roll, ’60s psychedelia and punk sensibility and made something all their own.

The beauty is how well it all works together. - Chattanooga Time Free Press
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