Brad Vickers & His Vestopolitans – Traveling Fool 6.17.11

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Brad Vickers & His Vestapolitans

Traveling Fool

ManHatTone Records

BluesWax Rating: 8

Guardian of The Flame

Brad Vickers is a student of blues, ragtime, and rock ‘n’ roll. His band name also includes the root word “vesta” that means “household gods.”  The Vestapolitans are dedicated to preserving a modern, citified approach to older forms of these styles, and so the student becomes the teacher.

Vickers apprenticed with Jimmy Rogers, Hubert Sumlin, and the late Pinetop Perkins, so it’s proper that he step forward. This is his third album and, like the last, it is produced by Dave Gross. Each album seems to get better as Vickers plays and sings with more and more authority.

On Traveling Fool, Vickers covers Sonny Terry’s “Diggin’ My Potatoes,” which I first heard by Dave Van Ronk and The Ragtime Jug Stompers. He also covers songs by Tampa Red, J.B. Lenoir, and Leroy Carr. He has written (or co-written with bassist Margery Peters) the remaining eleven songs, which sound much older than they are. The overall sound is an exciting recreation of those jug, ragtime and old timey bands that first educated me in the 1960s and ’70s, like Koerner, Ray and Glover; The Ragtime Jug Stompers; The Hudson Dusters; and Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen.

When Vickers sings the title track, “Traveling Fool,” you know he does this for the love of the music. Other highlights include “Because I Love You that Way,” “Don’t Take My Cadillac,” and “Fourteen Women.”

Bobby Radcliff is featured throughout on guitar. The band also includes Arne Englund on piano, tenor sax player Jim Davis, Matt Cowan on baritone sax, Peters on bass, and drummer Bill Rankin.

The future bodes well for Vickers, one of the last connections to those older simpler times.

Richard Ludmerer is a contributing editor to BluesWax. He may be reached by commenting below.