FULLY CHARGED

Blues-soul firebrand Eddie 9V conjures up the ghosts of Macon's fabled Capricorn Studios on his electrifying new release.

- JOE BOSSO

EVER SINCE HE can remember, Brooks Mason has felt like an old soul in a young body. When he was six, his parents put him in therapy after he insisted that he'd been reincarnated. He showed up at high school parties with a copy of The London Howlin' Wolf Sessions under his arm. "My friends would be playing Lil Wayne and metal and stuff, and I'd put on Howlin' Wolf," he says. "At first, they were like, 'What the hell are you doing?' Then they'd listen and they dug it. I told them, 'You're listening to the new rap, but Howlin' Wolf was doing his own kind of rap back in the day. It blew their minds."

Mason didn't last long in high school. At 15, he took a decade of guitar playing and studying records by the likes of Freddie King, Albert Collins and Michael Bloomfield, and he set off for the blues clubs of his native Georgia. Leading a six-piece band that included his bassist brother, Lane Kelly, he rechristened himself Eddie 9V- as in the variety of battery - and took his act to every joint that would have him.

He went down a smash. Left My Soul in Memphis, Mason's 2019 debut album, recorded in a double-wide trailer, signaled the emergence of a vital new blues star. Two years later came Little Black Flies, a veritable blues party that showcased Mason's skills as an exuberant singer and guitarist, as well as his songwriting partnership with Kelly.