Preacher Boy’s Ghost Notes is the kind of album that feels like it’s always existed. It doesn’t just play through your speakers—it haunts them. Across 18 tracks and just over an hour, the godfather of alt-blues reaffirms his place among America’s most fearless roots innovators. It’s a record that stares down the past, tips its hat to tradition, then promptly sets the damn thing on fire.
If you’re new to Preacher Boy, think of a world where Robert Johnson is raised on Dylan, mentored by Tom Waits, and crash-lands in a band with Nick Cave, Chris Whitley, and a bottle of something unlabelled but flammable. That’s Ghost Notes. It’s country blues with blood on its boots, gospel melodies twisted into minor key laments, and poetic fragments of a man who’s been everywhere and carries every ghost with him.
The album opens with “Up the River Again,” a song that sets the tone with jagged fingerpicking, stomping percussion, and a voice that sounds like it’s been dragged backwards through every back alley bar in the Delta. From there, we’re pulled through a tangle of shadowy characters and conflicted confessions: the wry swagger of “Song and Dance Man,” the hushed desperation of “Don’t Know What to Think Anymore,” and the rolling ache of “Trying to Get to Mobile” all feel ripped from some Southern Gothic fever dream.
There’s an emotional throughline to Ghost Notes—loss, resilience, longing—that gives the record its deep pulse. But this isn’t the kind of blues that wallows. It moves. There’s fight here, especially in standouts like “Dirty Little Secret” and “Chop Wood, Carry Water,” where the groove is both ominous and relentless. “Scene of the Crime” might be the most cinematic of the bunch, and if HBO doesn’t license it for the next prestige drama, they’re missing out.
Preacher Boy’s musicianship is razor-sharp, especially on the National Steel, where every slide and strum seems to speak a language older than the songs themselves. But just as vital is the lyrical depth. This is a writer who doesn’t waste words. Every verse is loaded with hard-won wisdom, smoke, and sorrow. The title track, “Ghost Notes,” is pure distilled Preacher Boy—equal parts elegy, exorcism, and revelation.
Critics haven’t missed this one. That Devil Music gave it an A+ and called it a major work by an artist “who has refused to compromise his musical vision.” Faster and Louder dubbed him “the godfather of alt blues.” Even Rolling Stone weighed in, praising his National Steel work and likening his modern spin on Delta blues to the best of Kelly Joe Phelps or Keb’ Mo’. These aren’t exaggerations. This is a record that demands that kind of reverence.
And while Preacher Boy has earned his stripes—Blind Pig Records debut, co-writing with Eagle-Eye Cherry and Rick Rubin, recording solo acoustic albums in New York, and even writing poetry in Kerouac’s old house—Ghost Notes feels like the culmination of it all. It’s the sound of an artist with nothing left to prove, only more truth to tell.
Ghost Notes is not easy listening. It’s essential listening. It’s what happens when a soul refuses to soften, when music becomes memoir, and when blues is less a genre than a gospel of survival. If you want to understand the heart of modern Americana, start here. Preacher Boy just dropped the record of his life. Don’t let it slip by.
Connect with Preacher Boy
