Robert Allen, the driving force behind DownTown Mystic has an abiding reverence for bands like Buffalo Springfield and Rockpile, and a passion for traditional guitars, and analog recording methods. Twin enthusiasms which feed through to the kind of rock and roll storytelling that features on the upcoming ‘Rock‘n’Roll 4 The Soul: Acoustic Sessions EP’ which is out tomorrow and is a natural successor to the February release ‘Rock‘n’Roll 4 The Soul’ featuring as it does acoustic takes on tracks from the February 2024 release, as well as a couple of additional songs that didn’t make the cut for that EP. There’s a practical reason for the different takes on these songs as Robert Allen explains: “I do different mixes for sync-licensing, and I get to hear a song differently because of it. That’s how ‘Acoustic Sessions’ came about. The songs on the ‘Rock‘n’Roll 4 The Soul’ album have the full band and production and I wanted to show how some of them sounded stripped down — where it’s just about the song.”
The heart broken ‘Soul’d Out‘ has a particular connection with Americana and the UK as the lyricist was Martin H. Samuel who played drums in an incarnation of The Searchers, and has his name on the wall at The Cavern in Liverpool (we’ll send the editor along to fact check that!)**.
** In fact we were lucky enough to receive an email from Martin H. Samuel who, as well as providing photographic evidence of the band he played in being credited directly (and twenty rows) above John Lennon also provided a clarification, telling American UK that: “As a drummer and an award-winning songwriter, I co-wrote ‘Soul’d Out’, as lyricist, with Robert Allen, however, I have never played drums in ‘The Searchers’. I did play drums in the original London group Heatwave. We did play the original Cavern Club and I am proud of our commemorative brick, 20 rows directly above ‘John’, in the Cavern Wall of Fame in Liverpool. I did play drums in The Ventures (once) in Venice, California…but Heatwave played The Cavern in 1970. The photo provided is from July 2016 – I sat in that night and played ‘Jailhouse Rock’ & ‘I Feel Fine’ with The Amazing Paul Kappa Band then, Joey Shields sat in for ‘Johnny B. Goode’ & ‘Around And Around’.
And – just to fully complete the Americana circle of life – here’s Heatwave from a 1970 BBC live recording with a cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s ‘Down On The Corner.‘
