Biscuits and Gravy

Long a crowd favorite in the Tahoe, CA region, the Jeff Jones Band presents an intriguing blend of loose, R&B-tinged blues-rock à la the Faces with a Dave Matthews-like pop jam band veneer, all topped off by Jeff Jones' stellar slide guitar skills and his strong, slightly hoarse vocals which bear a strong resemblance to Chris Robinson's vocal work with the Black Crowes. This is an impressive band when all these nuances gel, and things gel often on Biscuits and Gravy, the group's second album (the first, Barbed Wire Sandals, was privately released in 2004). The wonderfully ragged opener, "Can't Make You Proud," is a sturdy rocker driven by Jones' powerful slide roars, and the stop/start rhythm of the strutting "One Last Minute" is also pretty impressive, as is the slightly generic but quite effective "Bright Blue Eyes." "The Mission," spun over "All Along the Watchtower" chords, feels like a bootleg Dave Matthews Band cut, while the goofy but fun "Goodbye Kiss" that closes the set experiments a little bit with studio editing techniques and suggests all kinds of possible directions for the future. If there's a problem here, it's in the lyrics (Jones had a hand in writing every song), which tend to tilt a little too frequently toward cliché, which makes half the album feel like it's treading water. The part that isn't treading water, though, explodes like dynamite. It's easy to see why Tahoe loves these guys.