Rev. Greg Spradlin & the Band of Imperials

Hi-Watter, the debut LP from Rev. Greg Spradlin and the Band of Imperials, has been waiting for us all this time, like a 100-year flood, ready to swell over the banks and drown us in its torrents of noise-damaged funk and gospel-possessed blues rumble. Swampy yet sophisticated. Greasy yet refined. Baptized in Hammond organ and rippling rock & roll guitar. It’s a record that plays like a debauched Saturday-night second line before washing your tattered soul clean Sunday morning. 

Like a flash of lightning over Lake Pontchartrain, that’s the story of the Reverend right there. Greg Spradlin. The one and only. Who tramped through Hell and back, guitar slung over his shoulder, in a lifelong search for his most kindred musical spirits—the secret, sacred ingredients he’d need to realize his fevered rock & roll vision. It’s a moment his dear departed friend and mentor, the legendary producer Jim Dickinson once prophesized: the sanctified time when the Rev. Spradlin would find the right band, the perfect complement. As Greg tells it, once he stopped looking, the dream players materialized as if out of thin air, one after the other—silhouettes in the doorways of a pair of soon-to-be-hallowed recording studios, one in the Reverend’s hometown of Little Rock, the other in Los Angeles’ sun-dappled Silverlake hills. There was Jason Weinheimer, producer and longtime Arkansas compatriot. Pete Thomas, part man, part machine, inspired and intrepid drummer for Elvis Costello’s Imposters. Guitarist and bass player David Hidalgo of Los Lobos, black-on-blonde Tele like a toy in his hands, the slicked-back, hulking picture of understated, impenetrable cool. And at the keys, pulling on the draw bars, stomping his feet and singing hallelujah, God rest his soul, the one man who could flawlessly stand in for the inimitable Billy Preston, a close personal friend of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ—Rudy Copeland. ...