John Popper is as true blue as he’s ever been on Bootlegger Days!!

The exclamation points are part of the album’s title, though the news is exciting. 

The joint between the Blues Traveler frontman and producer/multi-instrumentalist Jono Manson covers all kinds of blues across its 12 tracks including blues-rock on “Before the Heat Rolls In,” country blues on the banjo-based dirge that is “Cabin Fever” and the grinding blues on “New Cocaine Blues,” on which the narrator sings: “When the sun comes up, I got to crawl down low.” His gun, meanwhile, is making its way from the floor of his car to the side of his head.

Deep blue is that one.

Popper spends the bulk of Bootlegger Days!! singing with dexterity he rarely favors while eschewing his favored harmonica sounds with the Traveler, opting instead for deeper tones – tones that illuminate his and Manson’s morbid and morose songs of lives of crime (“Heat”), lives mired in the genre (“The Same Old Blues”), lives in search of redemption (“Beneath the Blood Wolf Moon”) and lives of heartbreak as on the the languid and balladic “Your Crazy.”