Howlin Tumbleweeds

Based way down in Chicago town, the Howlin’ Tumbleweeds play high-energy rhythm and blues with a distinct Southern-fried sensibility. The songs paint vivid pictures of a twisted backwater world, half circus and half tent revival, where the old country western mainstays of heartbreak and revenge roam free, and the threat of hell is never far away.

Since their debut in early 2008, the Tumbleweeds have stamped themselves on the Chicago rock scene as a live act difficult to ignore. Their lyrics are by turns mournful and exuberant, their antics playful and sinister. But above all the performance is unrelenting, played at high volume and high intensity that seldom, if ever, lets up.

The Howlin' Tumbleweeds recently completed their debut album, Trouble With The Man Downstairs, which demonstrates a wide variety of musical influences. The style comprises stout helpings of roots rockabilly and blues, with healthy traces of bluegrass, country western, and hardline gospel.

The four-piece band offers a dirty Chicago blues harp, pounding upright bass, and an old-fashioned rock and roll core kicked up to new levels of barely-controlled madness. Topping it off are the sardonic tales woven around the music, delivered in a range which only a name like the Howlin' Tumbleweeds can properly suggest.