Bloodkin’s 20-year history has been a roller coaster of the good, the bad, and the ugly. There have been personal demons to tame, real tragedy to endure, and a very uphill battle to keep their creative relationship intact. But through it all, their music remains a genuine article of southern gothic narrative wrapped in the cloak of powerful and raw guitar-driven rock & roll music. With 8 albums of material to their credit Bloodkin is an undeniably important, although generally under-recognized, part of the contemporary southern musical landscape.
As the heartbeat of the band, Daniel Hutchens and Eric Carter have been making music together since they were children. The relationship began during elementary school in their hometown of Ripley, West Virginia. In this rural mountain environment, their creative collaboration started with countless hours spent listening to The Beatles, The Stones, Dylan and their parent’s Johnny Cash records. Music became an obsession that formed their high school years and ultimately landed them in Athens where the collaboration assumed the name Bloodkin.
While the band has enjoyed only limited commercial success, they have always found respect among other artists. From their early days in West Virginia where poet Allan Ginsburg invited them to be his “backing band” during a spoken word event to recording and performing with Moe Tucker (of Velvet Underground fame), Bloodkin has collaborated with a long and impressive list of performers, writers, and producers.
The most productive of these relationships exists with the touring juggernaut of Widespread Panic. Their legion of fans has come to know Bloodkin’s work through the list of covers that regularly find their way onto the WSP setlists. Singer John Bell has this to say about Bloodkin’s influence:
"Just like when we do a Robert Johnson cover or a Talking Heads cover, we want to pay tribute to someone...These guys [Bloodkin] happen to be young and alive and just as prolific and just as important as our other influences." (Billboard Magazine)
Bloodkin is currently hard at work on a new album with Athens based Super-Producer David Barbe. This collection of songs promises to be a stripped down rock & roll record that harkens back to the days where songs were recorded in a single take and relied on the raw energy of 5 guys playing together in a room. With band members Eric Martinez, David Nickle, and Aaron Phillips, Bloodkin will once again be hitting the road this year to support this new album that is due out in early Summer 2008.
