Music Performance,
Southern Comfort
- Genre BLS -- Blues
- Biography At the heart of the Jelly Rollers are guitarist/singer/songwriter Darren Loucas and singer/harp man Sean Divine, a pair of Miami natives who, having met up again in Seattle, started playing together in 1993--Darren on guitar, Sean on harmonica, creating a pared-down, rough-hewn blues sound smack in the middle of the sub-pop world culture explosion. A master guitar player in a metropolis full of good guitar players, Loucas-whose playing is heavily influenced by the early bluesmen by way of ‘60s and ‘70s big rock acts like Led Zeppelin and the Who combines technical virtuosity with the deep, from-the-heart sentiment that elevates a certain few guitarists above the ever-growing herd. Divine’s harpwork twines perfectly with Loucas’ guitar sounds, bobbing and chugging and weaving with bent notes and sustained howls of train-whistle heartbreak, and his voice has a sort of alluringly rich and throaty quality; it is the voice of the blues-nostalgic and haunting, defiant and a bit tetched.
