Old Souls & Wolf Tickets

1	Congo Square at Midnight 4:32
2	Tony Did the Boogie Woogie 3:19
3	It Don't Happen Overnight 3:22
4	Sweetie-O 3:19
5	Piggle Wiggly 1:44
6	Two-Tone Car (An Auto-Body Experience) 4:09
7	Anthem for Old Souls 4:20
8	Sneaky Jesus 3:45
9	Down the Road a Piece 3:28
10	No Hep Cats 3:58
11	Jolie's Nightmare (Mr. House Dick) 4:46
12	Blood Alley 4:45
13	G-D Damn Liars 3:25
14	Dixieland Funeral 3:57

Barnes & Noble

Chuck E. Weiss is the Southern California hipster who inspired Ricki Lee Jones’s “Chuck E.’s in Love.” He is also a longtime hanger on Tom Waits’s scene and a fan of Louisiana swamp music. These elements -- dark and quirky lyrics, lean and loose instrumentation, and a head full of roots sounds -- infuse Weiss’s latest release. He rocks like Little Richard on “Two-Tone Car,” takes off from Dr. John and the Neville Brothers with “Congo Square at Midnight” and “No Hep Cats,” and salutes Waits on “Anthem for Old Souls.” The set is a knockoff of sounds gone by -- Weiss even includes a 1970 recording of “Down the Road a Piece” that he made with Willie Dixon -- but it’s not exactly derivative and certainly not a cliché. Like his 1999 release Extremely Cool, Old Souls & Wolf Tickets presents an artist who follows his inner muse, even though it has meant that he’s only released two albums in the past two decades. Weiss’s lyrics and subjects are fresh; Who else could write a song about Al Jolson’s ex-wife’s second honeymoon (“Jolie’s Nightmare [Mr. House Dick”]) or turn a gang war into the sultry ballad that is “Blood Alley.” Though Old Souls & Wolf Tickets has sounds familiar enough to make you tap your foot, each listening conjures up new images and more than a few chuckles. Roberta Penn

All Music Guide

Weiss, a crony of Tom Waits since the early '70s, has probably heard more than enough comparisons between his and Waits' music. It's nonetheless hard to avoid when describing Old Souls & Wolf Tickets, which has much in common with Waits' own fusions of hipster growl, blues, smoky after-hours jazz, and weird Americana. Just because it sound at times like a poor man's Waits, however, doesn't mean it isn't likable enough on its own terms. Weiss is considerably more steeped in Louisiana-styled R&B, backwoods blues, and Cajun music than Waits is, so what you get here sometimes sounds like an unholy cross between Waits and Dr. John. The New Orleans influence is no secret from the mere title of the opening track, "Congo Square at Midnight." Weiss' wizened, sly vocals are a good match for the off-kilter material, which stews together goofy, onomatopoeic wordplay with the kind of bemused boho world-weariness you would expect from his persona. Sometimes the goofiness crosses over to silliness, as in his deliberately high, squeaky minstrel vocals on "Piggly Wiggly." When he gets close to straight blues, the results get more pedestrian. A duet that he recorded with Willie Dixon in 1970, "Down the Road Apiece," might excite extreme completist blues collectors, but sounds out of place on a CD where everything else was recorded 30 years later. But if you're looking for more modern equivalents to the kinds of idiosyncratic music Dr. John made in his voodoo rock days, this isn't a bad disc to check out. Richie Unterberger