A new *improved* Andre Williams album

If you recently picked up a copy of Andre Williams' oddly low-key Bloodshot release Hoods & Shades – which he calls "my folk album" – and were wondering what happened to the raunchy rhythm & booze-inspired frolic for which Mr. Rhythm is known and loved, evidently Andre was saving it up for a rematch with the Sadies. 

On May 15, Yep Roc (Outside in Canada) will release the Jon Spencer-produced Night & Day packed tight with the sort of lascivious humpin', bumpin' and thumpin' we've come to expect from Andre Williams. That's right, no Don Was involvement whatsoever. Phew! The label has thoughtfully made Andre's much-anticipated comeback album available for pre-order in various configurations which you can get directly from Yep Roc's site

Here's the press release: 

Canada’s finest live band, The Sadies, have reunited with explicit soul singer/cult legend Andre Williams for Night & Day on Yep Roc records. Night & Day is the result of sessions that began in 2008 at Key Club Studio in Detroit and captures Andre, then 70 years old and still using at the time, at his most raw, honest, and immediate. No filter. 

Andre is aided by a stellar cast of musical friends, dirty bluesers who have earned the trust of the ancient hustler, including Jon Spencer (who directed these sessions) and Matt Verta-Ray of Heavy Trash, Danny Kroha of Detroit’s own gutter-blues superheroes, The Gories, the unsinkable Mekon, Jon Langford, and of course, behind it all, The Sadies’ long-time line-up of Dallas Good on guitars and keys, his brother Travis Good on guitars and fiddle, Mike Belitsky on drums, and the mighty Sean Dean on the bass. The result is a raw, gritty slice of raunch rock that has attitude in spades and the hooks and playing to back it up.

The story starts at Key Club Studio, an old school jungle of analogue gear an hour outside of Detroit. Andre had just been sprung from a few days in the county cooler where he was being held on powder possession until his manager came to bail him out, a charge he would eventually beat, but his most recent stop in stir is reflected in "Your Old Lady," a song about sending a lover back to her man after he gets out of prison.

Throughout these sessions, Andre kept his rum buzz and his harangue on, and even if he showed up missing his bottom row of dentures -- he growls "I like my rum, coz I got no teeth, I let it flow over my gums" -- he was still able to drawl and percolate his continuing narrative of life in songs. In "America" he sings that "Living in America ain't no fun, better have some money or you'll be on the run, and it's a goddamn shame, without cash you're trash... the men are dogs, the women are hogs, but that ain't a bad thing... it's better than living in Africa."

Since these sessions, Andre was able to shake off some of his demons and has been living clean ever since. Says Andre, "I like where I am now. My family admires me now. I kinda wanna keep it like that."

Dallas Good writes in the liner notes for Night and Day that the first session "was good but we were worried for Andre. A couple years later, everything was different. He was sober and sharp. Agile, mobile and hostile. Night and Day. It wouldn't be fair to the new Andre (who I'd never met after working together for like, 12 years) to let the old Andre have this album. So we did more."

The resulting record is a modern classic, with Andre showing remarkable range -from heartbreak and bitterness to ribald humor, swagger, sleaze, fear and retribution, romance gone right and romance gone wrong, and all in the spirit of the sloppy fun that has made him a legend. Andre Williams represents as the first and last of a breed of pimp-rolling R&B wise men, the real deal, an authentic totem of the low-down and disreputable, a man who has played outside the law, and outside the record business, and somehow managed to come out not only alive, but with a fervent cult behind him.

Night and Day

1. I Gotta Get Shortly Out Of Jail

2. America (You Say "A Change Is Gonna Come")

3. The Seventy Year Old

4. Your Old Lady

5. Bored

6. Mississippi & Joliet
7. I Thank God

8. Don't Take It

9. One-Eyed Jack (listen)

10. Hey Baby!

11. I'll Do Most Anything For You

12. That's My Desire

13. Me and My Dog