Not Over You

Basehead was a glorious thing back in the day – the most indescribable band in era of genre mashing. Basehead was an outfit somewhere between hip-hop and country-western, and believe it or not that blend has aged well due to the good writing and consistent performances throughout.

Leader Michael Ivey sing-raps in a slow drawl about the blues in life – women, friends, drinking beer – as the band glides through the changes on mostly acoustic instruments. Many songs build to a slow-boil, balancing tension and melancholy in his pleadings, fully aware that they are breaking new stylistic ground.

They did 2 great albums in the 90’s – Play With Toys and Not In Kansas Anymore, then dropped out for a while. Ivey did manage another hard to find album after renaming the outfit DC Basehead but to my ears some of the initial magic was gone.

Here’s one of the many great tracks from their debut:

Looks like they reformed with some original members for a 2007 album called Rockalyptic Music under the name Basehead 2.0.  The samples sound pretty good, I might have to pick that up.