Album Notes

\"By the cut of their bone-rattling blues and gruff vocals, this four-piece seem dredged from the same Delta mud as Howlin\' Wolf and Skip James, but they\'re actually a bunch of beardy white Canadians. \'Never Be Dead\' and the great slide guitar of \'Empire State Express\' sound both thrilling and alarmingly authentic. They do old-time country, too, best served by the raw, Dock Boggs-like \'10,000 Years\',\" wrote Andy Gill in Uncut magazine. \"The Calgary quartet\'s third LP is an impressively raw and red-blooded, thrillingly gritty affair that betrays a contemporary punk spirit alongside its rootsy and boisterous, blues/folk authenticity, lining up next to Tom Waits, Wovenhand, The Boggs and O\'Death as well as Son House, Skip James and Mississippi Fred McDowell. Steeped though it is in the Delta blues and Appalachian traditions, \'Ten Thousand\' is not an homage to AMGC\'s heroes, but rather a bunch of spirited interpretations that kick serious ass. The righteous \'Dark Holler\' is just that, while \'Rainstorms in My Knees\' even has a whiff of ZZ Top to it. If none of this appeals, your soul is truly lost,\" wrote Sharon O\'Connell in London\'s Time Out magazine. \"The JackBands with a surreal bent have a tendency to call themselves something they\'re not, so you won\'t be surprised to hear that this Canadian quartet are neither a gospel choir nor from the mountains. Their sound is a scary mesh of mistreated guitar, brutally plucked banjo, growling vocals and junkyard percussion. They\'ve resurrected the spirit of the Mississippi Delta only to beat it senseless and drive it out of town. Even the tempos are extreme: songs either lumber along like overburdened donkeys, or hurtle by like out-of-control jalopies. A whisky-sodden joy from beginning to end,\" wrote Howard Male in the London Independent newspaper. We wrote: An open letter to those who already know about us. We here at the Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir don’t do things the way the music industry expects us to. That’s why we’re authoring our own press release instead of hiring someone else to write about us in glowing terms so you might, in turn, write about us in glowing terms. Maybe it’s a detriment, but you’ll get the goods straight from the horse’s mouth. We won’t lie to you. Really. Here’s a quick backgrounder for those who don’t know about us, we’re from Calgary. We play music based on pre-WWII blues and mountain music though we’ve got our own weird, displaced take on it. In January, 2001 we formed with only a week’s rehearsal for a gig. People kept asking us to play. We put out two CDs by ourselves: St. Hubert (2003) and Fighting and Onions (2005). Critics said good things about them and people as far away as Japan and the Czech Republic bought them. We’ve played some cool and prestigious roots festivals in Canada and sold out a few clubs. Someone in Belfast, Northern Ireland heard of us and asked to play at a festival there. We did. It led to us doing a few more shows in the UK and recording a live session for a show on BBC Radio 2. Suffice to say, a few cool things have happened to the band. Therefore, good fortune encouraged us to record a new CD. It’s called Ten Thousand. A record company in England is putting it out while we’ll deal with it ourselves in Canada. (For all of you who will inevitably ask about the cover, look up Hell Bank Note in the Wikipedia. It will give you some background on the concept.) Well, then, what about the music? We’re still not a choir. We never have been. We’ve had a change in drummers, though. Jay Woolley left the band amicably. Pete Balkwill, our original drummer from way back when, rejoined the band amicably. He owns a really large drum kit. Judd and Vlad have started tinkering around with an old trombone, but that still doesn’t make us a choir. Ten Thousand was recorded in a big studio with Dave Alcock, a producer/engineer who has got a few sessions under his belt (T