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SOUTHERN GENTLEMEN - Good Ol' Boyz
By Carl Begai

Although guitarist David Chastain is perhaps best known for his power metal mastery during the '80s - what we now call "old school" - he has continued to make keep things burning going into the 21st century. In the latter half of the '90s he brought out two Chastain albums (Sick Society and In Dementia) featuring a much heavier, more aggressive and ultimately stronger sound, assembled a new power metal outfit called Zanister, devoted time to promoting bands like Vainglory and Firewind through his Leviathan record label, and founded Diginet.com to promote and sell guitar-oriented metal over the internet. His biggest triumph, however, came in 2000 with the unexpected success of a heavy blues rock project called Southern Gentlemen. Many fans of Chastain's large body of work and rock fans in general were drawn to Exotic Dancer Blues, which was essentially a new take on '70s-based blues rock in the tradition of Hendrix and ZZ Top. As such, it stands to reason that Chastain would try his luck again, and so he has with Double Your Pleasure, a heavier, raunchier and if possible, bluesier follow-up.

Like Exotic Dancer Blues, Double Your Pleasure is a record of three musicians clearly having a blast playing their hearts out. This time out, though, there seems to be more of an improvisational vibe to the music, as if the songs were created around a few beer-soaked jam sessions.

"Well, as far as the guitar solos went it definitely was a jam thing happening," Chastain agrees. "It was all improvised; I never work anything like that out. This band was put together with the idea of playing the local club on a Saturday night. I wasn't worried about anything more than having a good time with the music."

Originally meant as a one-off project, the success of Exotic Dancer Blues is what spurred Chastain on to do a second Southern Gentlemen album.

"To be quite truthful, I actually had a whole different Southern Gentlemen album written," says Chastain. "I have another band that is supposedly more blues-oriented called that Georgia Blues Dogs, and I recorded an album with them, but after I heard the songs I decided to re-record them with much heavier guitar. I was originally planning on releasing Double Your Pleasure as a two-CD set, with one being the clean version of the songs and the other being the heavy version, but I scrapped that idea in the end. So, in reality, this was never the second Southern Gentlemen album; it just evolved into that. Now the Double Your Pleasure concept refers only to the cover art (laughs)."

SOUTHERN GENTLEMEN - Good Ol' Boyz Page 2