#reverend peyton

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Gaelic Storm and The Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band

early edition Mar 2025

[falloutbradreviews]

The Reverend Petyon’s Big Damn Band – Honeysuckle

I’ve made it no secret that I love the blues, but one of my favorite artists of all time is the fascinating Robert Johnson. Made popular in the 1960s when Columbia released a collection of his music that inspired a lot of the blues-rock guitarists and musicians that would help to define the late 1960s and early 1970s, the music was originally written and recorded in the 1930s. Johnson was even the subject of an urban legend where he sold his soul to the devil to play the guitar amazingly. Who’s to say if that urban legend came from the fact that a Black man playing guitar so well was a myth in itself, or if people really believed his magically got his skills, but regardless, his music is fantastic. It’s a shame that we don’t know much about him, only that he died when he was 27-years-old, and recorded a handful of songs that have gone down in history as part of the blues lexicon. He inspired many musicians over the last almost century, and one of them is Reverend Peyton. He’s an Indiana-based musician and songwriter that’s been around for quite some time. Formally, they’re known as The Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band, but they’re a band that I’ve been aware of for years, just never have bothered to listen to them. I remember hearing about them in the late 2000s and early 2010s, but I didn’t really care to listen to them, because they were in a space that I wasn’t a fan of them at the time. I got curious when I saw their new album, Honeysuckle, the other day, because I read about how this album is an acoustic country-blues album in the same vein as Robert Johnson, or any number of 1930s and 1940s blues artists (specifically Delta blues), and he also was using both genuinely vintage and accurate reproductions of guitars from the 1920s and 1930s.

That alone made me turn my head and perk my ears up, because albums like that are both very hard to find in this current music landscape and they’re usually really good. The last blues album in this vein I heard was Nat Myer’s debut LP, 2023’s Yellow Peril. I picked it up last year, and it’s such a great acoustic country-blues record that’s also from a really young artist that clearly knows his stuff, but this type of music is so niche, it’s hard to find a lot of it in this vein. Thankfully, Honeysuckle is such a wonderful record, and it’s honestly one of my favorites of the year so far, because of how fun, vibrant, energetic, and unique it is. I mean, sure, the overall sound isn’t very unique, because this type of music has been around for the last century, but that’s also what makes it unique – you don’t hear artists playing this stuff anymore. The blues are still around, but country-blues, and finger-picking blues is very hard to find. This is music that people talk about, because it’s part of history, but how many people do you see listening to Robert Johnson just because? I’ll listen to his music every once in awhile, but not everyone wants to listen to music like that (let alone that old).

Despite this album not being super unique in terms of its overall sound, this album is a hoot and a holler to listen to. I’ve heard of Rev Peyton for a long time, but for my first album of his, this is something special. The first thing you notice when you press play is that his voice is so loud, authoritative, and commanding. He really sells these songs, and he has that voice that a bluesman (especially of that era) should have. You just stop and listen to what he says, and he says quite a bit, but it’s all rather poignant. Like with other albums, they mix originals with blues standards, and at some points, you really can’t tell what’s what, because they write with such accuracy that these songs sound like they’re all blues standards. I also love how short this album is, at only 35 minutes, it breezes by very quickly. Another thing I really like about is that each song sounds the same, but they all stick out in some way, usually through really strong hooks. I just really love this record, whether it’s for its retro sound or the vocals alone, but this is one of my favorites of the year, and it only just came out a couple of weeks ago. I’m such a sucker for albums like this, so I had to jump on this thing the moment I first heard it.

[americanahighways]

Key to the Highway: Reverend Peyton

Key to the Highway: Reverend Peyton @reverendpeyton @americanahighways #newmusic2025 #americanamusic #americanahighways @deviousplanet #coffee #advice #sunglasses #creedence #ccr

Reverend Peyton photo by Bill Steber  Americana Highways’ Key to the Highway series Fans always clamor to learn more about their favorite, most beloved musicians and those who travel with them. There’s such an allure to the road, with its serendipity, inevitable surprises, and sometimes unexpected discomforts. This interview series is a set of questions we are asking some of our favorite roots…

Key to the Highway: Reverend Peyton

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