Robert Connely Farr - Shake It (2022)

Personnel:
Jay Bundy Johnson – Drums
Tom Hillifer – (on Cleo Pullum’s) Bass
Robert Connely Farr – Lead Guitar, Vocals
Liam Moes – Shaker, Back Up Vocals

Robert Connely Farr is a songwriter from Bolton, Mississippi - hometown of legends like Charley Patton, Sam Chatmon, Bo Carter & Walter Vinson. Since 2017, Mississippi bluesman Jimmy “Duck” Holmes has been mentoring Farr in the Bentonia Style of the Delta Blues, an obscure style that Holmes learned directly from Henry Stuckey, who also taught Skip James.

Robert released “Dirty South Blues” in 2018 to immediate critical acclaim. In 2019, Farr played Jimmy Duck Holmes’ Bentonia Blues Festival, KEXP named “Dirty South Blues” one of their top albums of the year & Farr was nominated for Songwriter of the Year & New Artist of the Year by Canada’s prestigious Maple Blues Awards - this immediately followed by a cancer diagnosis & emergency surgery.

Farr hit the ground running in 2020, releasing 3 albums, culminating into the 16 track Country Supper - which landed on numerous 'Best of Year' lists and, in similar fashion to Dirty South Blues, garnered dozens of positive reviews from critics.

“Shake It” is Robert Connely Farr’s ninth studio album. Recorded at the legendary Hipposonic Music in Vancouver BC (AC/DC, Bon Jovi, Aerosmith…) with Farr’s long-time bandmates Jay Bundy Johnson (The Blue Shadows, Herald Nix) on drums & Tom Hillifer (Slim Fathers, Daggermouth) on bass – and let it be know that the bass guitar Tom is playing on this record was legendary Bentonia juke joint bass player Cleo Pullum – of whom little is known about. With only nine songs & clocking in at 30 minutes, the album starts with covers nodding to two of Farr’s mentors – Charley Patton’s ‘Screaming & Hollering’ & Jimmy “Duck” Holmes’ ‘Going Away To Leave You’. Followed by six originals penned by Farr in the wake of his cancer diagnosis, the album ends with a Tommy McClennan cover – Sugar Mama.