Music
Press
Local guitar-picker Quinn DeVeaux plays a honey of a 1940s six-string Kaye with the kind of calm speed that makes everybody feel good deep in the chest — it's a sound that hasn't gone out of style since it was first recorded in the 1920s. If you've been following local roots music, you know about DeVeaux' stellar turns in New-Orleansian Delta blues getups the Blue Roots and the Brown Bums; you think of him as a traditional guitar guy with a warm, perfectly scratched voice. A lot of talented guys rest on those kinds of laurels. But his new record, Lions on Lakes, goes way beyond. Has he been listening to Joanna Newsom? One song in particular, "Golden," is made up of Neil Young–type chord progressions, Mother Hips vocal harmonies, and freak-folked-out lyrics like "Golden iris of the sun/Lose your torch and join the fun/Where the breakers swell and die/Don't you know you are alive?" It's a long story-song, completely impressionistic and freeform, as pretty as an old blues shout but clearly a new beast. On the CD, it follows "Regular Girl," a more traditional love song lyrically and structurally, but watch for surprises everywhere on this record — we're talking about a meat 'n' potatoes picker who wrote a lovely and wryly mystified song about Judy Garland. - SF Weekly
Ripping through classics like "I'll Be Glad When You're Dead" the Quartets pair of lead singer/guitar players... and Quinn DeVeaux (also on Harmonica) holler out the kind of tight harmonies some people thought were extinct. "Searching for new ways to tell an old story," as the group's web site puts it, the Blue Roots are the answer to your gravel-voiced, soul-soaked, folk blues prayers. - SF Weekly
Every so often something comes across my desk that not only causes me to pick my jaw off the floor, but reminds why I began this effort. I don’t know Quinn Deveaux, but something inside of me implicitly resonates with what he is doing. This is one of those rare artists that reminds us that the essence of human soul is alive and well and living, in its most visceral form, in new independent music. - musiczeitgeist.com
Discography
Debut Release 2008
Lions On Lakes
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Bio
Quinn DeVeaux is the dance floor between the sweet old times and new hard times. It's southern soul and early gospel with the depth of cracked hands combined with the contagious dance rhythm you've been looking for all night. You hear the upright bass and drums lock into a rolling drop beat, then the piano licks up and around the groove, then a drip dried guitar jumps in followed by three lovely voices making harmonies round the rhythm, and then on top comes Quinn, with his sugarbush tones of joy.
This band is dance music for when you're feeling wrong and you wanna feel right. This band is dance music for when you're feeling right and you wanna feel so fine. This band will make you clutch your heart. This band will make you move your feet. This band is the new blue beat.
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