Biography
Delta Moon delivers a signature sound that blends swamp pop, bar band blues, and roadhouse roots rock inside meticulously crafted originals and covers rich with hooks. Tom Gray, the vocalist, songwriter, and lap steel guitarist formerly of the Brains, and slide guitarist Mark Johnson launched the group in the late 1990s after an impromptu encounter at an Atlanta music store. Gray, already an established professional tunesmith, had written “Money Changes Everything,” the Cyndi Lauper smash, along with material later interpreted by John Brannen, Manfred Mann, Carlene Carter, and Bonnie Bramlett. Johnson had co-founded Atlanta’s Crawdaddies prior to teaming with Gray. The duo began performing wherever possible—coffee shops, street fairs, clubs—developing their hallmark twin slide guitar approach, which drew greater inspiration from Little Feat than the Allman Brothers. Gina Leigh served as the initial vocalist and appeared on the self-released, self-titled debut in 2002. The following year the band captured the International Blues Challenge and released a live album. Goin’ Down South arrived in 2004 and documented Leigh’s exit; Kristin Markiton stepped in for the fourth studio effort, Howlin’, issued in 2005. That recording introduced Haitian bassist Franher Joseph and drummer Darren Stanley, the latter succeeded by Vic Stafford in 2015. Markiton departed in 2006 to focus on solo work, prompting Gray to assume lead vocals on 2007’s Clear Blue Flame, which contained a substantially reimagined “Money Changes Everything.” Although studio work remained vital, extensive road time shaped the group’s growth; they crisscrossed the continental United States and appeared at multiple European blues festivals. Hell Bound Train surfaced in 2010 and Black Cat Oil two years later. In 2013, while pausing new studio releases yet maintaining a touring schedule, Delta Moon issued the self-released live sets Life’s a Song and Turn Around When Possible, both of which earned widespread acclaim for their fresh take on vintage roots music. The repertoire mixed strong originals with distinctive arrangements of blues, pop, and R&B standards; Goin’ Down South had already previewed this approach via a haunting blues treatment of the David Bowie–Iggy Pop classic “Nightclubbing.” The 2015 album Low Down marked the band’s breakthrough: its twelve tracks comprised nine Gray compositions plus striking covers of Skip James’s “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues,” Bob Dylan’s “Down in the Flood,” and the title track by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan. The record landed on numerous critics’ year-end blues lists, after which Delta Moon spent the next two years touring headline dates at prominent clubs and major festivals throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe. Following a brief hiatus, the group returned in early fall 2017 with Cabbagetown; among its nine songs, several co-written with Larkin Poe’s Marlon Patton, stood a memorable reading of Son House’s “Death Letter.” Lap steel guitarist and co-founder Tom Gray passed away in Atlanta, Georgia, on October 16, 2021, at age seventy while undergoing cancer treatment.
Albums
