Kid Krill, Down on Royal Street (Independent)

Some of those busking musicians really know their stuff. Kid Krill is a Royal Street regular who’s also a first-rate blues scholar: All six tracks on this EP are lost gems that hardly ever get covered. Though played in a studio, this was apparently recorded with a single mike and played the way he would on the street—banjo or guitar with his hands, bass drum and tambourine with his feet, and forceful vocals on top.

Anyone who covers “Root Hog or Die,” the Harlem Hamfats rouser from 1935, is good in my book, and this version is suitably raucous. The reefer anthem “If You’re a Viper” is probably the most familiar thing here, but he medleys it with the lesser known, but equally wonderful “Save the Roach for Me.” Songs like these are always bound to touch a chord, but Krill shows his mettle on the slower tunes: “Nowhere on Earth” is vintage, sweetly sung doo-wop and “Wee Midnight Hours” is a slow blues with a raw, spooky groove. I’d dock him a point for putting kazoo solos on two consecutive tunes—one per EP is a workable limit to these ears—but if I stumbled across this stuff on Royal Street, I’d gladly be late to wherever I was heading.