Jawbone

Born Robert Walter Zabor on 8 June 1964 in Mt. Clemens, Michigan, USA, the performer known as Jawbone operated as a one-man punk blues act. Early attention arrived after legendary UK DJ John Peel broadcast his raw and heartfelt stomps and boogies on BBC Radio 1 in the opening months of 2004. The initially self-released Dang Blues subsequently transferred to the London-based label Loose following a July 2004 signing. By year’s end, “Hi-De-Hi” and “Jackrabbit” appeared in the late Peel’s final Festive 50. Although the artist’s name coincides with a track on the Band’s second album, the liner notes of Dang Blues explain that the title came from lettering on a removal van regularly seen in his neighborhood. That same vehicle later featured in the artwork of 2006’s Hauling, an image that reflected the hard-working, sleepy, and modest Michigan suburban setting of Zabor’s upbringing. Nearly all of his Polish relatives labored in the automobile sector, with his father completing 35 years at General Motors, a company referenced alongside the BBC in the raucous Hauling track “All Want Jesus Name.”

Hasil Adkins’s 1950s wild rockabilly one-man-band style exerted a strong influence, yet Jawbone’s output remained more firmly blues-rooted and displayed a single-minded vision comparable to that of Captain Beefheart and Billy Childish. Where Bruce Springsteen’s We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions presented a plush, widescreen treatment of Appalachian folk, Jawbone’s distorted field-call blues matched the grain of a dusty, vintage black-and-white small-screen television. His strident vocal approach throughout Dang Blues and Hauling evoked Bob Dylan hollering over the Butterfield Blues Band at Newport in 1964. Although the UK music press first championed these DIY releases, both albums reached US distributor Carrot Top by the close of 2006, prompting numerous favorable American notices.