While it's not unusual for a new band to form from the ashes of other collapsing, simpatico groups, it's rare for one to emerge from the funeral pyres of two distinctly different musical units, but thus was begotten
Ilmo Smokehouse. Freddie Tieken & the Rockers was the more established of
Ilmo's parents, a smoking R&B band that had been burning up Midwestern stages since the late '50s. With an obvious penchant for bluesy rock and soul, the band boasted one of the best horn sections in the region. In contrast, Gonn came on the scene in 1966, dragging behind them their British beat influences, following the herd into psychedelia and even space rock a few
years later. The sleeve notes to
Ilmo Smokehouse explain the machinations that brought members of these two disparate bands together, and plots the original band's brief career, from 1970 through 1972, that left behind their sole, eponymous album.
Smokehouse had a ferocious live reputation, but this set did that little justice, with only "Johnny B. Good" and "Pine Needle Bed" hinting at their stage potential. What the record does do, however, is showcase precisely why this band was born to die. The nearly seven-minute long "Have You Ever Had the Blues" is a flawless example of talking blues, a sound Freddie Tieken had perfected years before. Elsewhere, jazz and prog rock collide on "Are You Happy," while jazz, soul, and rock smack straight into each other on "Movement 1 and 13," while "Pine Needle Bed" pulls in so many directions, you expect the whole tree to splinter apart. And splinter the band quickly did, in the end, becoming three different bands. There was just too much experience and quality musicianship in the ranks, all pushing too hard for their own preferred style. For some bands, eclecticism is a badge of honor, for
Ilmo it sounds more like a bone of contention. [That said, the bonus tracks, recorded two months after the album, tell a very different tale, reflecting a band by then innovatively working together, something their live reputation further confirms. Unfortunately, this all-for-one creative patch wasn't to last long.] ~ Jo-Ann Greene