(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)

They seemed like your typical rowdy saloon band, loud and rough, but Cash Money was actually the project of guitarist John Humphrey (formerly of God And Texas), accompanied only by a drummer (Scott Ciampino, Touch And Go’s public relations man) and occasional friends.

The Chicago cowboy made his entrance with the brilliant Black Hearts And Broken Wills (Touch & Go, 1997). The album is inevitably a solo showcase for Humphrey, who had already displayed a strong singer-songwriter personality in his previous band. Here he dominates with classic, rugged, armored rock rooted in country and blues, having internalized the lessons of Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin, but also aware that younger generations hear this sound in the sanitized form of Bush. The album soars with a masterful Hendrix-inspired track, Short Change: the guitar sprays fierce riffs at full tilt, and Humphrey’s deep, “black” voice paints a sinister melody. The syncopated blues of last summer’s single, Oil Can, holds up but now seems almost shy and awkward beside hard-rock avalanches like Lonesome Stranger, rock-and-roll epileptics like Death Note, and rock-solid invectives against life like Train To Ruin. Humphrey’s sentimental side is no less compelling, capable of a subdued and psychotic Lazy, of burning slowly through the blues lament of The River, of rising in epic cries like Totem, and finally roaring like a lonely wanderer on the slow dance-hall number Nightwind that even Springsteen could only dream of.

On Halos Of Smoke And Fire (Touch And Go, 1998), Humphrey presents an instrumental rock-and-roll opener, Pie And Gas, and unleashes his desires in the martial, rocky boogie of Do It Again and the derailing garage-rock of Run Like Hell. A knee-bending Slim Harpo-style blues (Ashes To The Wind), a werewolf cadence ā la Cramps (Drowning Boat), and a horror instrumental (Mask Of Amontiago) sow chaos within the rural music tradition. The bile only calms in the blues numbers, reminiscent of early Led Zeppelin, but played as if in the grip of severe mental depression.

Orange Sessions (Orange, 2001) is the serious version of Cash Audio's blues revival, i.e. a more traditional (and relaxed) take on the marriage of blues and rock.