Maness Brothers “God Bless the Maness Brothers” 2020. Romanus Records. Very limited edition (50 copies) glow-in-the-dark sand-filled vinyl. Heavy, heavy heavy blues from Missouri. God Bless is the two-piece siblings’ second LP (their first, self-titled, from 2017 is also on Romanus as is their 2012 EP Grief Factory; Maness Brothers were one of the first bands to release on the Romanus label). Jake and David are both pretty young (late 20’s/early 30’s) but they channel the spirit of old soul classic and gritty blues. That classic sound is infused with Jake’s boundless energy on his relentlessly crashing drums and David’s hard-driving guitar; they trade off on vocals. They also put on a hell of a show; we’ve seen them perform a few times, most recently in August of 2019 at Romanus Fest in Indianapolis (I’m actually not sure they’ve played out much since then beyond a handful of local Missouri shows, though I feel like maybe we caught a livestream in 2020 when that was still a “fun” pandemic thing to do). Here’s a couple of photos from that Romanus Fest set (if you squint you can see juke-joint rockers CATL in the background in the second picture).

Most of God Bless is fast, blues rock’n’roll and those are definitely my top tracks: “Pain,” “Tupelo,” “Drive Me” and the high energy gospel meets wild slide guitar “Lord Thank You Very Much” but they can also slow it down big-time and go spiritual like on “Dip My Sins (In the River).”

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James Leg performing at Square Cat Vinyl, August 2018, Romanus Records Fest.

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