Jimmy "Duck" Holmes - Cypress Grove (LP)

Jimmy “Duck” Holmes has been holding court at the Blue Front Cafe in Bentonia since forever, pouring that shadowy, minor-key blues across a few tables and a creaking floor that has seen more stories than most museums. Cypress Grove, released in October 2019 on Dan Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound, feels like someone opened the door of that room and let the air rush onto tape. Auerbach produced the record in Nashville and kept the arrangements lean, so the guitar lines and the voice at the centre never lose their grip. The album later earned a Grammy nomination for Best Traditional Blues Album, which makes perfect sense once you sit with it. This is the rare studio record that still sounds like a living conversation.

Holmes is the last standard-bearer of the Bentonia school, the music Henry Stuckey passed down and that Skip James carried into the wider world. That lineage shows in the tunings and the mood. The guitars sit in an eerie, minor place that turns even a single note into a shiver. The title nods to “Cypress Grove Blues,” and the set leans into that haunted feeling without any heavy theatre. You hear fingers on strings, little creaks in the room, the soft thud of a foot marking time. Holmes’ voice comes across worn but nimble, with the kind of timing you only earn by playing for people who are close enough to see your hands.

Auerbach’s biggest gift here is restraint. The backing players stay in the pocket, shading the songs rather than dressing them up. A brush of percussion, a bass line that circles back like a memory, a second guitar that answers and then gets out of the way. It makes a track like “Cypress Grove” hit harder, because the space around the notes lets the tension breathe. When Holmes digs into the classic grooves that have rattled juke joints for generations, the band leans with him instead of trying to steer.

There is a reason this record struck a chord outside the blues world as well. You do not need a map of the Delta to feel the pull. Holmes tells the stories straight. Heartbreak arrives as a shrug or a raised eyebrow rather than a shout. Even the well-trodden numbers feel less like museum pieces and more like a friend retelling them with new detail. The guitar work carries that Bentonia drone, almost meditative, yet there is nothing sleepy about it. It is tension and release, sun on tin and a storm just off the highway.

Listen on a good system and the textures jump out. The pick bite, the string buzz, the air in the room. It is the sort of record that begs for the tactile ritual of a turntable. Cypress Grove vinyl does the music a favour, giving those long notes room to bloom and the hush between phrases its own presence. If you are crate-digging at a Melbourne record store or looking to buy Jimmy “Duck” Holmes records online, put this one near the top. Easy Eye Sound pressings tend to be sturdy, and this is the kind of album that earns repeat spins late at night.

Cypress Grove also lands as a piece of living history. Holmes learned directly from Jack Owens, who carried the Bentonia style after Skip James, and he has kept the Blue Front Cafe going since his parents opened it in 1948. That thread matters. You can hear decades of Saturday nights and quiet Mondays tucked into the pauses between verses. The songs reach back, but they are not stuck there. Auerbach’s production places Holmes in the present without sanding off any of the old wood.

Plenty of outlets took notice when the album arrived, and the Grammy nod only broadened the audience. That attention is nice, though the deeper reward is how the record sits with you. It feels both intimate and sturdy, like a well-made chair. Ten minutes in, you stop thinking about who produced it and focus on the way the melodies hover just above the frets. The playing is economical, the emotion plainspoken, the atmosphere thick enough to taste.

For anyone building a blues shelf, Jimmy “Duck” Holmes vinyl belongs beside Skip James and the Hill Country greats. And if you are curious, Cypress Grove is a fine entry point. It is one of those Jimmy “Duck” Holmes albums on vinyl that quietly becomes a favourite, the record you reach for when the room gets dim and you want music that listens back. If you are sifting through vinyl records Australia wide, this one is worth the hunt. It is the sound of a tradition still breathing, recorded with care, and it holds up every time the needle drops.