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Bumper Jacksons – “Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down” (audio) (premiere)

The Baltimore band delivers a raucous performance of an old gospel standard.

Led by singer/clarinetist/washboard player Jess Eliot Myhre and guitarist Chris Ousley, Baltimore’s Bumper Jacksons evoke a bygone era of American music, integrating early jazz, bluegrass, blues, swing, and folk into a raucous, all-inclusive hybrid that sounds as loud and energetic as it had to have sounded decades and decades ago. Their latest album Too Big World comes out this week, and the gritty cover of the old American gospel song “Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down” is a great indication of what to expect.

“Although both Jess and I grew up singing in church, we didn’t learn this song through that route,” says Ousley. “We collected this tune from our mutual buddy Adrian John-Paul Erlinger — aka Clamp — who nabbed it from Uncle Tupelo. The earliest version we found was from the Spartanburg Famous Four back in the ‘20s who sang it in a major key. We took musical elements from all three versions (driving feel, minor sound & energetic collective voices, respectively) and kept the lyrics simple by only using the words they all had in common. Our signature groove and focus on dynamic peaks and valleys gives this old hymn our personal stamp.”

Too Big World will be released 25 July. Pre-order it here.