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Eddie 9V has an endless stockpile of cool stories – and you’ll find twelve of them on new studio album ‘Saratoga’, releasing November 22, 2024 on the fabled Ruf label. It’s a record that will thrill both newcomers and fans who have trailed Eddie since the start, showcasing his fresh, fiery spin on Southern soul, blues, rock and funk, with his signature wit and sharp observations of modern America placing him squarely in the here-and-now. “I do think it’s a wonderful road trip album,” he nods.
Eddie 9V has powered up. From the day he first slung a guitar on a local stage, the Georgia-born band leader announced himself as an artist to watch. But in the last few meteoric years, Eddie’s music has crossed oceans and airwaves, transcending his cult-hero status to become a beacon for fans of real music everywhere. “Eddie 9V is something else,” wrote the UK’s Classic Rock. “A man who genuinely inhabits golden-era American roots, playing the most instinctive blues you’ll hear all year.”
Check out the gig listings and you’ll find this rising star playing a bigger club every time he blows through town. Scan the charts and you’ll find his most recent album, 2022’s ‘Capricorn’, locking horns with the giants of rock ‘n’ roll. “Capricorn debuted at #1 and that was a cool feeling for a week, until Bonnie Raitt kicked us off,” reflects Eddie with a smile. “But hey, that’s a cool story to be able to say…”
We’ve rode shotgun with Eddie for a couple of decades now. Born Brooks Mason in June 1996, he was playing guitar by the age of six (“One of those with the speaker in it – the most bang for your buck, y’know?”). Even then, manufactured pop music held nothing for him, and his years at Union Grove High School were instead soundtracked by local heroes like Sean Costello, alongside his studies of “older cats” like Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Freddie King and Rory Gallagher.
“I wanted to see what made them groove and tick,” he explains. “I’ve been making up lyrics on the spot for years. I believe that came from my Uncle Brian at our family fish fries – he taught me about what made people laugh and what kept the audience’s attention.”
Coming up on his home state’s live circuit – first with cover band The Smokin’ Frogs, then with highly rated blues-rockers The Georgia Flood – Mason soon turned heads, even representing the Atlanta Blues Society at the 2013 International Blues Challenge in Memphis. But his true birth as an artist came when he buried his birth name and adopted that striking solo moniker. “A lot of people wanted me to be the Brooks Mason Blues Band, but that’s been done,” he reasons. “I wanted to start from scratch – and I ain’t never heard of no bluesman named Eddie 9V.”
From the start, Eddie’s output pricked up ears, with 2019’s Left My Soul In Memphis dubbed “fresh and life-affirming” by Rock & Blues Muse and the chaotic free-for-all of 2021’s Little Black Flies praised by Classic Rock as “like having all your best mates in the speakers”. In 2023, he got his best reviews yet for ‘Capricorn’, a record tracked at the near-mythical Macon studio of the same name, that led The Guardian and NME’s Henry Yates to declare: “As an artist, he sounds fully charged”.
But the great artists evolve, and in both its songcraft and execution, ‘Saratoga’ finds Eddie painting with more colors from his palette. “I was shooting for a more Americana-type album this time, less blues songs and solos and more focusing on the songwriting,” he explains of the eleven originals co-written with his brother, the much- respected Southern musician, Lane Kelly. Unlike the anarchy of earlier albums, meanwhile, the sessions mostly saw the multi-instrumentalist siblings hunkered down at their own Echo Deco Studio in Atlanta, self-producing the new tracks with Patrick Meese and inviting guest players to supply horns, fiddle and lap steel.
“It was definitely more me and my brother in our home studio recording everything. There’s a lot of guests, for sure, but it was mainly overdubbing. We did the songs Saratoga, Delta and Halo at Crown Lanes Studio in Denver and it was nice to take a break, walk outside, see the mountains, feel the fresh air. At our studio, it’s just muggy with mosquitoes. But sometimes it’s good to not have distractions.”
Likewise, the new songs of ‘Saratoga’ deserve nothing less than your full attention. Eddie’s latest album announces his new groove with the crisp, purposeful beats of the opening title track, an instant favorite that gets under your skin with its almost disco- style harmonies and joust of horns and slide guitar. As Eddie says: “That song is about being in a lonely tiny town that feels impossible to escape.”
Halo struts from the speakers on Eddie’s falsetto howl, before the lush yearning of Cry Like A River and Love Moves So Slow (co-written by Spencer Pope) brings vintage soul into the modern age. The brittle riffs and spacey vocal of Delta mark another gearshift, flowing into Red River’s reflective-yet-kinetic groove. Wasp Weather speaks to Eddie’s love of rapid-fire streams of consciousness. “That’s my favorite lyrically ’cos I like spewing words that don’t make sense into songs. ‘I got a big mud house that I can’t keep clean, it’s useless’ – I love that line.”
The album plays out in style with the trilling alt-folk of Truckee – “We got high and did shrooms and camped on the Truckee river in California,” he explains of the inspiration – the wistful Tides and Love You All The Way Down. Eddie even slips in a brass- blasting take on Mac DeMarco’s Chamber Of Reflection, before bringing the record home with The Road To Nowhere’s shuddering, tremolo-drenched country lament, his trademark twang utterly transformed into a vintage croon.
Eddie 9V is right: this latest album takes us all over the musical and emotional map, while announcing that his recent career peaks are just the start. “Capricorn was a big jump for us,” he reflects. “But I’m already writing new songs, y’know?”