Seven Minutes, and Nobody Stopped It

BILOXI — Bait Shop Blues is the second record by Two Stinky Fingers of Apalachicola, and if you are only buying one, it is the one. It sounds as if it was recorded close enough to the river that the river got on the tape. We mean that kindly.

Side one is the blues as the band plays it on Tuesday nights: Curtis Ladner’s harmonica out front, Roy Thibodaux’s slide underneath it, and Fish Fontenot’s bass holding the floor down like a sack of ice.

Track three is the drum solo. It runs seven minutes. It was not, as we understand it, requested.

“At seven minutes it is over. The band comes back in on the beat it left on. Nobody remarks on it.

Damp begins it quietly, on the rims, and works toward the middle of the kit over the first two minutes. By the fourth minute the rest of the band has stopped playing. By the sixth there is nothing on the tape but the drums and, once, what we believe is a screen door. At seven minutes it is over. The band comes back in on the beat it left on. Nobody remarks on it.

We have played track three for four people in this office. Two asked us to turn it off. One asked us to play it again. The fourth, our bait man, listened to all seven minutes standing up and said it was about as long as it takes the tide to turn at the jetty. He meant that as a compliment. He does not give many.

Side two is shorter songs and the title song, which closes the record on a harmonica note Mr. Ladner holds for longer than this reviewer could hold her breath trying to count it.

Bait Shop Blues is on Franklin County Records. You can buy it at the counter of the bait shop in Apalachicola and at a few record racks between there and Pensacola. The band is out on the Gulf Coast Circuit this fall: Eastpoint, Carrabelle, Sopchoppy, Wewahitchka, Hosford, Port St. Joe, and home. If you see a show card stapled up beside the door of a block building on a Saturday night, that is them.