So , in 1994 Good Luck Charm was released into the world and the cycle of recording and playing live shows wherever and whenever we could was underway.

The list of different members that we’ve had over the years is too much to get into here. We never called Press Conferences to introduce new people. Some just showed up and never really left, or if they did , they might pop back in at some point.

For several years , every December at the Georgia Theatre we would put on a Bloodkin and Friends Show , filled with special guests that we dug and some folks who were deemed “Honorary Members” . Even the legendary Sax Player Bobby Keys was on that list !

And that’s the approach that we’re taking right now. “ Friends” is the name of the game. With Danny’s passing paired with the release of a reaallly good new double album (of course) titled Black Market Tango , what was the next move gonna be ? It had been 12 years since our last record , and Danny and I were really proud of this one. We truly wrote this TOGETHER. Of course COVID has been a big thorn in the side of everything, and we had been making some vague plans on what to do. And then. He’s gone.

Our Manager Carison Stokes had already had a few things lined up , and these people still wanted us to come and PLAY. Once some dust had settled (and there was a LOT of dust) , some folks started reaching out , offering ways to make this thing work. The Bloodkin and Friends approach… in 2016 we successfully pulled this off at one of our Georgia Theatre shows when Danny had suffered his first stroke.

So, in step The Friends . Tori Pater can fill the guitar and vocal Sonic Space required on many things… Eric Martinez has been doing Bloodkin things with and without us for years and could show up at any time. Then there is the Force of Nature that is Betsy Fucking Franck. Vocalist Extraordinaire and whatever else she feels like doing. Former bassist David Nickel dusting off the bass to do this again , and the regulars , Johnny Neff on Pedal Steel and Electric Guitar along with Aarron Phillips (another West Virginian ) on the Drums. My own little Charlie Watts.

There’s too many good songs and so many good people that wanna play em… what else am I gonna do at this stage of the game ? We’d better do it while we’re still able , and it appears that there are some folks who still wanna hear our Glorious Noise.

Danny and I had started to think of this band like a baseball team. It’s a long assed season and not everyone can make every game , but there always seems to be someone to step in and step up. I know it sounds horribly cliche , but lots of folks have told me “This is what Danny would’ve wanted.” And they’re probably right.

So…. Enjoy 😉

Bloodkin
Black Market Tango
Original Release Date: April 16, 2021
Produced by David Barbe

Bloodkin premieres their first single, “John Coltrane In Nagasaki” off their upcoming album, Black Market Tango, today with Americana Highways. The 15 song double album, Black Market Tango, will be released on April 16, 2021 on Cosmo Sex School Records and is Daniel Hutchens and Eric Carter’s first album of new material for the influential Southern rockers in over a decade.

Of “John Coltrane In Nagasaki,” Daniel notes, “I wrote these lyrics after watching a documentary about John Coltrane; I was struck by how on his last tour he insisted on playing Nagasaki, because an atomic bomb had been dropped there at the end of WWII, and Coltrane said he was going to ‘retune the molecules’ in the atmosphere and help heal the city and its people. Which in a way, sounded nutty, but also sounded like just about the most amazing and noble thing I’d ever heard. So this song is aimed at the future, at my kids and everyone’s kids, those of ‘em who wind up being musicians, reminding them Coltrane set a great example, and someone needs to carry that spirit forward. It features another great Eric Carter riff!”

Eric adds, “I think I’d been messing around with variations of this riff for years. It finally formed and the right words came along to make it a happy musical marriage. In my head I was hearing it as the most EPIC THING IN THE WORLD! I thought this was a little different sounding for us and Ansley Stewart’s singing on it is just wonderful. We added some Jay Gonzalez organ to make it even a little bigger! “

The story of Bloodkin began when 8 year olds Daniel Hutchens and Eric Carter met in West Virginia. Their friendship was initially built on their mutual love of baseball, comic books and rock n roll but by high school, they found themselves spending much of their time building the foundation of Bloodkin in Eric’s garage. The duo relocated to Athens, Georgia and over the course of their career has accumulated a catalog of more than five hundred original songs with gripping guitar riffs summoning hard grit blues and raw poetic lyrics that speak to individual passions and universal plight. Their masterful songwriting has influenced Widespread Panic, whose John Bell raved, “Bloodkin has been one of our greatest influences. Danny and Eric’s music has a consistent blend of poetry, intestinal fortitude, and song-craftmanship that I envy” and Dave Schools has praised, “Their ability to render their emotions in words blows my mind on a daily basis.” Patterson Hood of the Drive-by Truckers and Jerry Joseph have also named the band as influential, Joseph even name checks them on a song on his most recent album.

In the decade since releasing their last album of new material, Baby, They Told Us We Would Rise Again, Bloodkin released a career-spanning box set and Daniel released a solo album. While Danny and Eric would work on a song here and there, sending ideas back and forth via different technologies, as well as play gigs with an occasional new song thrown in, recording a new Bloodkin album wasn’t discussed.

Eric says, “I wasn’t sure there would ever BE another record. There’s always the assumption that there WILL be, but time slips by and life things happen, and then you start to wonder….”

Then in late 2018 early 2019, a decade after their last album, Daniel and Eric started to talk about making another record. They got together to see what they had, Daniel with his notebooks and Eric with his stray pieces of music and lyrics, and sat for a few hours in Eric’s apartment, going through their ideas and playing their guitars. They realized they had something and that there was still plenty of chemistry to be found in their songwriting collaborations.

They reached out to David Barbe, who has been at the helm of many of their studio albums, and got started at Chase Park Transduction in Athens, GA in February 2019. Daniel and Eric were joined by band members, Aaron Phillips on drums, Jon Mills on Bass, and John Neff on guitar and pedal steel, as well as many special guests. They ended up with four sides and decided to release it as a double album with artwork created by the legendary Flournoy Holmes.

The 15-song Black Market Tango includes several tracks with the classic Bloodkin formula of Danny’s lyrics with Eric’s guitar progressions, but there are just as many that find the band stretching itself in new directions. “Her Blues” a story told from a woman’s point of view that Eric had been playing solo for years was recorded as a duet with Ansley Stewart featuring a blues riff with pedal steel guitar. “Trashy”, a signature Daniel song, was recorded live in one or two takes and is a statement written in response to the Trump administration’s greed and prejudice about how wealth doesn’t mean dignity, and a lot of people in this country who deal with the issues of poverty but who are the ‘salt of the Earth’ have their own sense of luxury and pride and their own valued possessions. The refreshing “Freedom Fizz”, an outtake from Baby, They Told Us We Would Rise Again, provides a nice break from the heavier songs, like a lil refreshing “spritzer” or fizzy drink, hence the name.

The album ends with the almost 12 minute “God’s Bar” originally released on their box set, One Long Hustle, and one that has rattling around in Daniel’s head for a long time. Daniel explains, “It took me ages to actually write the song. It started as an incomplete short story I started back in the ‘90s then in 2008 I turned the story into a song. When we finally took the whole thing into the studio, we intended to record the two halves separately (they’re really like two different songs, with connecting lyrics), but David Barbe suggested we just try the whole thing all the way through at least once, and unbelievably we nailed the entire song on the first take! A great moment for the band, and a testament to what great musicians the Bloodkin guys really are. After 25 years of work on this it’s really satisfying to see it finally wind up on Black Market Tango.”

Daniel continues, “This song is about some kind of fascination with the supernatural and the spiritual; looking for God but aware devils hang out in the same neighborhood. David Barbe said this was like if Cormac McCarthy wrote a blues song. It’s all about spirit and loud music and ecstasy, and lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how Colonel Bruce Hampton used to say, ‘I’m not here to play music, I’m here to put the devil in the room.’’