June 2001

R.L. Burnside
Well. . .Well. . .Well
M.C. Records

By Bill Milkowski

R.L. Burnside's Well...Well...Well is a collection of recordings from 1986 to 1993 done in a variety of settings. His stark, unaccompanied acoustic version of Howlin' Wolf's "How Many More Years?," recorded in concert in 1992 in Athens, Greece, is positively mesmerizing. Some of the most striking musical moments here come from unaccompanied home recordings taped on an old boom box in an old Ninth Ward shotgun house Burnside was renting in New Orleans in 1986. A rare, intriguing document by a bluesman who is firmly entrenched in the John Lee Hooker/Lightnin' Hopkins school.