Jeff Pitchell & Texas Flood - Fat Cigars (1997)

"Texas Flood is often touted (appropriately enough) as a Stevie Ray Vaughan tribute band. After all, an SRV album is the source of the band's name. However, Jeff Pitchell and his band are much more than a cover band. In fact, on Fat Cigars the grand majority of the songs are originals, with the covers being tributes to such big men of rhythm and blues as Phil Spector and Willie Dixon. Further, Pitchell's playing has itself garnered tribute from the "Big Man" himself, Clarence Clemmons. Few, if any, "tribute bands" could make that claim! Though a few songs are similar to each other and perhaps a bit too similar to Vaughan on Fat Cigars (especially "Angel in Black," which riffs very much like Stevie's "Cold Shot"), Pitchell covers it all, from A to ZZ (as in ZZ-Top). Pitchell's fast and clean playing will have listeners seeing Double Trouble, but his New England-Southern style (Pitchell is from Connecticut) also mixes funked-up, low-down blues with all-in runs and all-out rock reminiscent not only of Vaughan, but also of Hendrix, Guy, Clapton, and Cray. With a subtly ghosted vocal rolling out simple, honest lyrics, Pitchell and his "Texas" bandmates tell it like it is. And it is, in a word, "fat."