Biography

-2008-


“This isn’t just a band — it’s a mission,” says Scissormen’s slide guitar demon Ted Drozdowski. “We believe the blues is as blood and guts vital and relevant as it was when the music’s giants walked the Earth, if it’s played right. So that’s how we play it — respecting the music’s roots, but not at the expense of its future.”

If that sounds audacious, you haven’t seen one of the Nashville-based group’s live shows, where just a guitarist and drummer harness up the spirit of the Mississippi hills and make it sound like a juke joint armada. That approach has won Scissormen fans across the US and Europe, where they’ve played everything from coffeehouses to blues, rock and punk clubs, to major festivals.

“Our gigs prove that the blues can reach everybody — including people who think its music only their parents or grandparents would like,” says Ted.

And Scissormen’s live audiences reach back, challenging Ted’s unique, fiery slide guitar approach by passing him, well, just about anything to play with: shoes, straws, martini glasses, keys, a lit blowtorch, full dinner plates, a machete, a 9-mm pistol.

Critic Anthony DeCurtis (Rolling Stone, VH-1, etc) has proclaimed Ted “a guitarist of spellbinding invention and intelligence. His slide playing shears the skin off your bones, and he can unleash roaring gales of sound. But lyricism and musicality lie at the heart of even his wildest moments. I have never listened to him and not been transported to a strange, beautiful place I'd never been before.”

Now that place has a name: Luck in a Hurry. Scissormen’s first nationally distributed album packs the band’s inventive and exciting energy into 11 slide-powered songs including nine originals. The music knits the inspiration of Ted’s musical mentors and friends like R.L. Burnside, Jessie Mae Hemphill, Junior Kimbrough and Sonny Sharrock together with his experiences as a rock-based improviser and songwriter in earlier bands
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Scissormen’s guests on Luck in a Hurry include Morphine drummer Billy Conway, who produced several tracks, pianist Teo Leyasmeyer, who toured with Johnny Copeland, Buddy Guy, Luther Allison and Freddie King before assuming booking duties at the original House of Blues, and Dicky Barrett, the powerhouse frontman for the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, who applies a layer of vocal gravel to the defiant anti-anthem “Whiskey and Maryjane.”

Luck in a Hurry expands the sound of Scissormen’s pervious albums, their all-duo debut Jinx Breakers and the solo acoustic When the Devil Calls…, by adding piano, fiddle and other instruments to several songs, like the guitar-piano-fiddle trio number “Mattie Sweet Mattie” and the steamrolling “Whiskey and Maryjane,” which also features members of Ted’s previous psychedelic rock band Devil Gods.

“What all of these songs have in common are deep roots, great big guitar tones, and a lotta soul,” says Ted. “They were performed live in the studio so we could keep things raw and spontaneous, because that’s the way we like ’em. ”

And that’s just one more reason why Luck in a Hurry captures the heartbeat of modern blues — and the pulse of its future.