Pokey LaFarge – Beat, Move, & Shake

The Big Muddy Records crew met Pokey during a Vultures\Johnny O & the Jerks tour while he was busking on the streets of Asheville, North Carolina. They drank beers by a lake and invited him to play a 4th of July basement show with them, where an epic amount of fireworks were set-off while stuffed inside a bear. A year or so later, Pokey had moved to St. Louis and adopted some of the Big Muddy crew as his own band before taking off on a never-ending world tour. Pokey has since moved on to work with Third Man and Rounder Records, but Big Muddy takes pride in having helped him get his feet going. This is the album where Pokey really began to dig deep and start searching for his sound. It’s primitive and simple and offers some insight into the influences that moved him towards the jazz and western-swing pop sounds he experiments with today.