An Evening with Stacy Mitchhart

Stacy Mitchhart’s Live My Life stakes out bold new territory for the veteran entertainer. The 12-song album mixes down-home blues with a splash of soul to serve as a springboard for his canny storytelling and meanly elegant guitar. Live My Life is a departure from his mostly soul-blues flavored catalog, reflecting Mitchhart’s deepening connection with the genre’s primal Mississippi roots.

Powered by strong, original songwriting and surprises like raw-boned cigar box guitar, Live My Life opens with the grinding blues howler “I Drink Whiskey,” showcasing his dirty licks ‘n’ tricks. The title track, which is also the album’s first video, shines a beacon on the rollicking artist’s newly stripped down approach. The song is among the three tracks that showcase Mitchhart’s cigar boxes, while another side of his playing fuels the instrumental “Soul Stoll,” which teams an elegant, funky soul-blues groove with flashes of jazz and a sinuous melody. The disc’s biggest surprise, besides its unfiltered hard-core blues sound, is Mitchhart’s interpretation of the Beatles’ “Come Together,” which he reinvents as a killer Delta blues.

Live My Life was co-produced by Mitchhart and Scott McEwen at Nashville’s all-analog Fry Pharmacy studio and features the touring band that accompanies Mitchhart for an impressive 275 shows a year including his famed ongoing residency at Nashville’s Bourbon Street Blues and Boogie Bar.

“I’m more comfortable onstage entertaining than I am in my own living room,” Mitchhart says. “I’ve spent my whole life there. And I feel like the stripped down approach of this new album lets other people get inside my music almost as deep as I do every night when I’m performing.”