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All his life, Eddie 9V (9-volt) has acted on instinct. Aged just 15, this old-soul artist turned away from the path of
college and jobs to burst all guns blazing onto the roots and blues club circuit of his native Atlanta, Georgia. Flash
forward to 2019, and for his debut album, Left My Soul In Memphis, the prodigious multi-instrumentalist simply
powered up the amps in his mobile trailer and with his brother/co-writer/producer, Lane Kelly, laid down one of
the year’s breakout releases, acclaimed as “fresh and life-affirming” by Rock & Blues Muse. “Memphis was a total
side project,” shrugs Eddie, “that ended up taking off.”
Now, released in 2021 on Ruf Records, Little Black Flies is the 25-year-old’s most impulsive move to date. Tracked
live in Atlanta’s Echo Deco Studios through November 2020, once again with Lane turning the knobs, plus a who’s
who of the state’s best musicians, it’s an album that Eddie planned to feel like it’s unfolding right in front of you –
right down to the clink of bottles and loose studio banter. “I’ve seen a trend in modern recording,” he says.
“There’s no soul. I took inspiration from Albert Collins, Otis Rush, Mike Bloomfield. All those great records were
done live with their buddies and no overdubs. I wanted the playing to be spot-on – but even if we made a mistake,
we kept going.”
Little Black Flies represents a passing of the baton to a bandleader that many credit for reinvigorating the South’s
proud roots scene. Born in June 1996, to a non-musical family living ten miles south of Atlanta, Eddie still
remembers his fateful first guitar. “I was six and it was one of those with the speaker in it – get the most bang for
your buck, y’know?” he muses. While manufactured pop dominated the airwaves as he came up at Union Grove
High School in nearby McDonough, Eddie forked hard left, hanging with Lane and his friends, and digging back
into the catalogues of blues giants like Al Green, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Freddie King and Percy Sledge. “I
studied the older cats,” he explains, “saw what made them groove and tick.”
As for his freewheeling lyrics, Eddie credits his home life: “I’ve been making words up on the spot for years – my
Uncle Brian taught me how to do that at our family fish fries. How to make people laugh, how to hold an audience’s
attention.”
Eddie still recalls the frustration of watching local musicians load into the fabled clubs of Atlanta. “My first heroes
were the local legends like Sean Costello, but I was too young to go see them,” he remembers. When he finally
made it inside, it was as a performer, learning his craft at the sharp end, and at precocious speed, with early
vehicles like covers band The Smokin’ Frogs, and its maturing blues-rock offshoot, The Georgia Flood. “My first
step in being a professional musician was learning how to accept failure,” says Eddie. “As a nobody, the music
business is a dartboard. You just hope something sticks.”
In 2013 – and before Eddie had even graduated high school – The Georgia Flood represented the Atlanta Blues
Society in the International Blues Challenge in Memphis. That band spilled over into the indie-rock group
PREACHERVAN, but perhaps the pivotal moment came in 2019, when he adopted the Eddie 9V moniker for his
solo work. “There are too many Joe Schmo blues bands,” he reasons. “I was on the road with PREACHERVAN and
we were talking like mobsters. We all gave each other names – and mine was Eddie.”
Since that rebirth as Eddie 9V, he’s not only pricked up the ears of the music press (“A huge talent,” wrote Blues
Blast, “to be noticed and followed”), but earned a respect on the scene that made it easy to recruit local heroes
for the Little Black Flies sessions. “Every player is the best of their craft,” says Eddie of his studio band, “and that’s
why I picked ’em. We had the Tedeschi Trucks Band’s bass player Brandon Boone and the icon himself, Cody
Matlock, on guitar. Everybody’s mood was so exciting. The energy was there.”
This record catches everything that went down at a session that felt more like a party, as Eddie leads the lineup
through nine new songs – plus three classic covers – that retool the soul-blues genre on his own terms, reminding
a new generation why this music hits so hard. Horns blast, drums rattle, slide guitars howl and at the heart of it
all is Eddie’s stinging guitar and unmistakable vocal, the bandleader thrilling us one minute with his soul-man
holler, then spinning story songs like he’s sat on the next barstool. “The title track,” he explains, “was a narrative
about me being in love with the girl in the apartment upstairs, who was being abused, and wanting to do
something about it. Deep stuff. “3AM In Chicago” is about America’s unfairness between race and income levels,
but also wanting to improve on the situation. “Puttin’ The Kids To Bed” was a total ‘let’s hurry this up and get
down to business’ song.”
With Little Black Flies, there’s a sense of an artist coming full circle: the kid who once loitered outside the clubs of
Atlanta now leading Georgia’s greatest players into the studio. Certainly, these recordings gave much-needed
catharsis to the musicians who created them. But perhaps Eddie’s ultimate aim is to pass that spirit on to everyone
who hears the record. “It makes my day to please someone after they work all day,” he says. “My job is to make
them smile and let the music make them forget – or remember.”
Event Location
Grant's Lounge
560 Poplar St, Macon, GA, 31201
Talent
Eddie 9V
Cody Matlock
United States
Mexico
Canada (Français)