Levi Platero; a reckoning with the cadence of struggled existence
Live at The Liberty in Roswell, NM, the delta stomp filled the cold night air by way of a dream manifested in the high desert of boyhood wonder.
Blues is anger refined for public consumption.
And drunken fucking. Emphasis on the drunken.
Blues is insatiable pursuit. Primal dominance caged by the colonial weak in pursuit of primal surrender. Blues was the gateway drug to modern masking.
Levi Platero is blues by way of nomadic origin over centuries of exile and migration; a necessary phonetic conviction of rhythm and a primal arousal to its carnal libations.
The blues is mechanical sound force fed through centuries of oppressed african spirit under global colonial slavery, the warrior cadence of violent killings by a pathological group think of superiority. You don’t sing about the blues, ya dig. You either is the blues, or you ain’t.
If blues is cadence of shackled existence, Levi Platero is blues of existential suffering in both primitive and tribal cadence. Man got two cadences in his delivery of pain and suffering that is the blues. Bout as locked in as it gets. I think we can stop saying Platero brought blues to indigenous; Levi Platero is the blues, ya dig.
Blues of the People.
Roswell.
New Mexico.
On a bitter cold February night in the high desert of nothingness and nowhere, Levi Platero brought me back to my peoples. The signature cadence of muggy, deep south, sharecropper suffering that is the delta blues stomp. The band however, brought their own boogie.
If blues is the cadence of suffering, Levi Platero is the cadence of imposing existence through a thundering stomp that is both primitive and tribal.1 Human suffering on all four corners, gently roped among the stars above, super nova is the sound of a man who surrenders to his spirit through amplified precision of grit and decades devoted to the pursuit. His sound now rings as true and pure through evolutions of inexplicable suffering originated in the high desert of his ancestral home by a signature humility and relentless desire to jam the blues with his friends.
Man says he just wants to play the blues, but has the signature of two different cadences with an endless, yet necessary story of human suffering throughout existence, woven into a very modern and unapologetic vocal delivery. Bout as raw as it gets.
Platero is a master guitarist, and with tones of silk, it helps a ton on the listener’s audio fatigue to chop it up with rough cut, yet genuinely soft, chompy vocals, the much needed contrast of pure guitar set to a raw amount of suffering within our modern environment. Between contrasting vocal chops, the stanza glides in a hollowed out conduit that is Levi’s signature timbre bolstering all things blues and all things carnal. The result is an effective ode to the stomp, with a whole lotta boogie. My favorite kind of blues. With Royce Platero (Levi’s cousin on drums), and Jacob Shije (bass guitar), Levi Platero hollers a new evolution of blues that will bring everyone to the high desert swamp in song and dance.
We all gon be singing the blues pretty soon, and when that chain gang revival comes, go listen to that stomp and boogie live in one of the best blues deliveries in the nation. The human nation.
Go catch what happens when a man surrenders to the childhood fabric that simply is a pure fascination with the thing he wants to do most with his friends.
Coming soon: Live at Red Rocks Amphitheater. Shit is wild ya dig.
Stringer.
Primitive = before us; tribal = after us, but before civilization and common era. What is now? a shitshow.