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Big Creek Slim
Ramblin’ Big Creek
Straight Shooter – SHOT 029

Ramblin’ Big Creek was recorded live over three days in a studio in the West Side of Arhus. It involved 11 musicians (including a three-piece horn section), one engineer, one microphone and no overdubs.

Big Creek Slim produced the album, with a couple of specific objectives: (1) to record only original material on the album and (2) for the recording to have one cohesive sound throughout.

Big Creek targeted what he calls a “perfectly unperfect” sound on Ramblin’, one that would capture the raw spontaneity of country blues and early urban blues recordings, as found on such labels as Sun, Chess and Excello.

Big Creek sang and played guitar, harmonica and piano on the album, which moves adeptly through blues, soul and roots rock ‘n’ roll.

“I sang through a little amplifier in the middle of the small room, and put the musicians around it the way it worked best,” Big Creek explains. “The horns were behind me in the back of the room. This is how the whole thing was recorded.”

The band on the sessions included Big Creek’s brother Morten Rune on guitar.

“We have played together since we were children,” Big Creek says of his brother. “His personal style is more soul and folk ballads, but he knows his blues, too.”

Vocalist Diunna Greenleaf is featured on the album’s final two tracks, “Tear Me Down Again” and “Big Fine Mama.”

“Diunna reminds me of Koko Taylor, Big Mama Thornton and Sister Rosetta Tharpe at the same time,” Big Creek says. “The way she sang ‘Big Fine Mama’ gives me cold chills every time I hear it… She is the queen to me, and I truly appreciate our friendship.”

Big Creek hits his mark with this recording. Ramblin’ Big Creek would sound right at home next to early/mid-’50s tracks by Howlin’ Wolf or Muddy Waters.

“It was a great experience to record this way, playing my own stuff, all in the school of the old masters,” Big Creek says. And, because of the “one sound” approach, he says, the recording “maintains a true identity. I love this album!”

Big Creek Slim
Bad Luck Child
Straight Shooter – SHOT 018

Big Creek Slim Finds His ‘True Sound’ on Good Mill Blues: Greasy Chicken Sessions Vol. 1 

Mercy! You may have heard Big Creek Slim before, but you have never heard him any better than this. 

Good Mill Blues: Greasy Chicken Sessions Vol. 1 captures Big Creek fully at ease and in the moment, performing live over two nights in October 2016 at “The Greasy Chicken,” a private backyard blues shack in Vaerloese, Denmark. It is a relaxed, informal setting, one that accommodates 20 or so spectators. 

There is a certain sort of liberty that a musical artist finds in such environs, one in which there is no pressure to be anyone other than who you really are, and no pressure to play anything you truly do not feel. 

That’s the secret to the success of Good Mill Blues. In these performances, Big Creek was determined to be true to his heart as a blues artist. 

“This album is me! These are the blues I like, and this is my true sound,” Big Creek says. “After my two latest studio albums with a band, I thought it was about time to do my own solo thing. This is what I sound like when I’m solo, sitting in front of a well-known, drinking crowd, playing whatever is on my mind, and [by fulfilling audience requests] whatever is on their minds.” 

On Good Mill Blues, Big Creek performs a mix of original tunes and classic country blues material from the likes of Charlie Patton, Son House, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and more. His originals are the work of an artist telling stories from his own life and experiences – a more personal glimpse than the cover tunes provide, and no less riveting. 

For example, the opening track, “North Street Blues,” is a Big Creek original that recounts a pivotal time in his life, one in which the blues began to take on a special meaning. 

“‘North Street Blues’ takes me back to a time in my life when I had to change my path. I was living on Noerregade in Ikast, serving in the army, voting for the liberals (read: capitalists), having a monthly income and was so unsatisfied that it forced me to reconsider myself and the world I was living in. The blues was my answer. I had to relearn everything and find my way back to being a little boy who didn’t know how to judge right from wrong, and be fascinated with life again. ‘North Street Blues’ is me sitting in the dark, knowing that a change is gonna come.” 

Another original, “The Big C Moan,” shares his personal experience with cancer, with the understanding that at some point the disease probably touches everyone, one way or another. 

“‘The Big C Moan’ is my counterpart to the old blues songs about disease like ‘Meningitis Blues’ and ‘There’s A Fungus Among Us.’ ‘The Big C Moan’ refers to John Wayne’s supposed last words (“You can’t fight the big C”) and tells about my personal story with cancer and the impact it has had on my family,” Big Creek says. “‘The Big C Moan’ is my personal experience, and the thoughts I had, when my mother died.” 

Heavy stuff, to be sure, delivered with no weight spared, with an insistent pulse and a slow- burn intensity that dares you not to listen. 

Big Creek’s choice of cover material also reveals about his perspectives as a blues artist. He explains that Charley Patton’s “Pea Vine Blues,” for example, is reportedly “about a freight train carrying cotton out of the Dockery Plantation. It may also have been the only way out of there, if you didn’t want to walk through the swamps. At least, that’s my inner picture when I sing the song. I have always loved the sound of Charley Patton. I have deep respect for him as the ‘Father of the Delta Blues.’ When I hear or sing his tunes, it carries my mind away to dusty roads and railroads. I see rowdy juke joints and a big mama standing in the door.”

Another meaningful cover tune on Good Mill Blues is “Walking Blues,” which finds Big Creek drawing on the collective legacy of Son House, Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters.  

Big Creek Slim 
Keep My Belly Full
Straight Shooter – SHOT 015

On Keep My Belly Full, Big Creek Slim offers up seven original tunes, and also performs songs by Tommy Johnson, Son House, J.B. Wright, Luther “Snakeboy” Johnson and Jesse James. Big Creek brings a sometimes raucous, sometimes reverent authority to the proceedings, gracing his renditions with a soulful presence and a natural ease.

Big Creek Slim is a Danish-born musician who has traveled in the United States. Keep My Belly Full is his fourth CD release, and his second on Peter Nande’s Straight Shooter Records label. Nande met Big Creek in 2007 and was captivated by Big Creek’s Delta blues playing. Convinced that Big Creek deserved a wider audience, Nande invited him to record for Straight Shooter. The result was Hope For My Soul, released in 2015.

Keep My Belly Full is a more diverse set of tunes than its predecessor Hope For My Soul, delivering a hearty dose of pre-WWII country blues, early Chicago blues, seasoned with boogie woogie, funk and gospel. The music has a vintage sound, but the emotional urgency and intensity of Big Creek Slim’s performances are timeless. Listen, and believe.

Big Creek Slim
Hope For My Soul
Straight Shooter – SHOT 014.

Prepare to take a journey back in time.

Big Creek Slim captures the true sound of the old blues, a sound you rarely hear these days except on the vintage recordings of the original bluesmen. Big Creek Slim performs with a raw, soulful authority. His powerful voice conveys experience and feeling, and his fingerpicking guitar style can cut to the bone.

On the matter of influences, no name-dropping is needed here: If you dig the blues, you can hear his musical influences in his performances and recordings.

However, Big Creek Slim is not from the cotton fields of Mississippi, or the rough-and-tumble streets of Chicago or the bayou regions of Louisiana. Big Creek Slim is from the Danish countryside. He started playing guitar as a child, and discovered the blues in his early teens. It was a turning point in his life. After school and military service, he was determined to find his own voice in the blues. He worked construction to save money for a trip to the United States. He left Denmark in 2008 and hoboed around America, playing on street corners, coffeehouses and bars, all the while writing songs.

Big Creek’s journey brought him to Teddy’s Juke Joint in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where stayed for a good while, jamming with locals and touring bands in the evenings. Among others, he met piano man Henry Gray, with whom he recorded his first album, Tumbleweeds in 2008.

After leaving the U.S., Big Creek traveled to Brazil, where he fell in love with the country and its culture. He currently lives on the island of Santa Catarina, in a cabin right by the ocean. He likes a simple, laidback life, and starts most days with a long morning swim with his dogs. Yet, he remains fully dedicated to the blues, playing all the gigs he can get.

I met Big Creek around 2007 while I was doing a compilation album for the Copenhagen Blues Festival. I was looking for new artists for the album, and I’d heard about him through friends. I tracked him down. His Delta stuff was mind-blowing! Like Muddy, the Wolf and John Lee, he brings to his blues a commanding mix of emotional urgency and economy – delivering everything a song needs and nothing else. Like the Mississippi Delta blues musicians of the 1920s and beyond, he sings and plays with a simple, expressive intensity. I convinced him to be on the album. We soon became friends and now play together every time he returns to Denmark.

Big Creek Slim’s raw talent deserves a wider audience and blues lovers around the world should know his music. In 2013, he made his second album, Ninety-nine and a half, a solo album of his own material, in the Delta blues tradition. However, his two albums are largely unknown, so I offered to produce a new album for him and release it on my Straight Shooter label.

For the recording, I had a few production ideas and songs I wanted him to try. I called some of my favorite blues guys and arranged a session in Copenhagen. I had Nathan James come from California to record it all. Nathan has recorded and mixed several of my albums, and he really knows how to capture the authentic blues sound! He also added his own exquisite guitar and washboard playing to the sessions.

The sessions were spontaneous, fun and sweaty, fueled by Big Creek Slim’s intensity and his ability to kick off one killer song after another. No explanations, no one called out so much as a key signature. Usually, he began with a guitar phrase and ended the song with a big smile and a laugh. A few times, we had to start over, simply because the song began too suddenly for Nathan to press “record” in time. In the end, we just left it on “record.” We recorded about 50 songs, live, in a couple of days, creating enough material for several albums!
So there you have it… a bunch of songs, and a bunch of guys having fun playing them! Sit back, turn it up and enjoy Big Creek Slim’s Hope For My Soul.