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To see and hear a bespectacled Jim Heath play old blues and jazz standards with this side project trio is to see him lounging Clark Kent-like, without the costume he’s made of his Reverend Horton Heat persona, except that a bit of cape is poking out of his Hawaiian shirt in the form of that big red Gretsch guitar. Reverend Organ Drum, which also features Asleep at the Wheel B-3 organist Tim Alexander and Heath’s next-door neighbor Todd Soesbe on drums, plays exactly the kind of music you’d expect the lounge-lizard Rev. to listen to while winding down after a show: cool, unobtrusive, mostly instrumental covers played by old pros. Off-the-cuff blues solos, steamy Hammond blasts and precision jazz drumming are like the chaser to the Heat’s shot of gin. It’s obvious by the way Heath and Alexander exchange easy smiles onstage that they’re totally comfortable playing familiar covers such as “Hideaway” and “Bim Bam Baby” in a band that exists solely for the fun of it, happy to let Heath’s Gretsch do most of the singing.
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