George,

Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, tits, I am sad you're gone.

You slapped the somnambulant herd up side the head for so long. It has mattered so much.

You helped raise me.

Love,
Bret

Bret Mosley's Light & Blood Gives Beautiful Testimony

Written by Kenya Jones
Wednesday, 30 January 2008

After years of playing to a growing club audience, Brooklyn, NY-based Bret Mosley has just released his first studio album Light & Blood on Woodstock MusicWorks records. Five years in the making, the album is roots folk rock at its best.

Quietly stunning in its seemingly simple beauty, it remembers slow, warm country nights, sleepy Sundays preaching the gospel and falling in love. Mosley summons the American spirit with rich and soulful vocals, sharply beautiful lyrics and ingenious instrumentation.

All thirteen tracks, recorded live with no over-dubs, are an example, in themselves, of the way it should be done. The album revels in dirt roads and one-room church houses ("Preachin' Blues"), with shouting sisters and grinning Deacons. It celebrates the experience of a long desired woman ("Water Girl"), and runs through the gamut of spiritual emotion without hurry or worry.

If the mood for a well told journey through the joys and pains of living strikes on a day of rest, Mosley's Light & Blood is what will suit. The perfect atmosphere for this piece of work is on a rainy day with no distractions to hold you back from fully appreciating the craftsmanship that went into sculpting such an insightful album. Blending folk rock, blues and grass roots, Light & Blood is a kickback that should go into your collection for such an occasion, because it reminds us to relax and listen. Just listen.

This Reviewer's Rating: 4 / 5

Original source: http://acedmagazine.com/content/view/888/44/

(if you're not familiar with ACED, it is an entertainment/lifestyle publication primarily aimed at college students, but has an appeal to people of all ages...they get about 3 million readers on average per month)

I heart Bret Mosley
Posted by stomcho - 28 Jan 2008 11:29 am ·

If you didn't get it the first three times my boss and I either blogged or wrote about Bret Mosley, here it is again: we really, really like him.

He's played the Bearsville Theater before, but Saturday he opened for the Blind Boys of Alabama and was just amazing. I've never seen him play with a cellist before so when he told me a cellist would be there, playing alongside a bass, drums and dobro, I really didn't know what to expect.

In his two ponytails, Mosley started singing about preaching the blues while spanking his lap-style dobro and it wasn't long until some people couldn't sit still. After a while, it dawned on you, if you didn't know already, that this guy isn't from Brooklyn, which is where's he's lived for about 20 years. He's from Texas and that's where he gets his grit from. His music is a mix between folk rock, blues, funk and Americana and his lyrics are deep without sounding pretentious.

He should be playing Bonnaroo or jam cruise and should be on a major label. In fact, one of his songs, "Supermartyr," which was written by his cellist, Trevor, actually charted No. 15 on the college charts. Cool, right? One of the reasons Robin and I love him so much is that besides being extremely talented, he's humble and grateful and doesn't take any of this for granted.

Back to the cello. Normally a classical instrument, it seemed to fit right in alongside the dobro and actually seemed to soften up the gritty sound of the song. The two seemed to compliment each other instead of sounding out of place.

By the way, what was out of the place was the chick dancing off to the left side of the stage. I don't know what she thought she was doing, I know she thought she was dancing, but to the rest of us it look like she was doing stretching exercises after having a few beers. Honey, next time, please do us all a favor and stay in your seat.

He played about 10 songs, but for me, the one that stood out the most was his version of "Amazing Grace." It was sped up and sung with a twang, but non of the reverence was taken out of the song. Mosley made it his own and the result was a new spin on a classic, which just might become a modern classic.

Seriously, check out Bret's Myspace page and give his stuff a listen. www.myspace.com/bretmosley. The worst thing that could happen is you find something cool to listen to instead of the stuff that's force-fed to you over the radio.

Original source: http://thrnewmedia.com/entertainment/?p=30

"Bret Mosley playing at the Saint. Can I say "wow" ? Forget I asked. I'm just gonna say it, "wow!" At first I was worried, as I always get when I see an unshod foot onstage, that I was in for some sorta rehashed Bob and Jerry stoner hippy rent party stuff, and I also thought Bret's foot looked like a cave man's, and that scared me. But my prejudices, wacked though they may be, vanished the moment the duet began building their little world, tune by tune and story by story. The songs were so strong, each with a strong original stamp, and the playing so open yet solid, that all fear of Uncle Jerry clonedom was erased and I rapidly realized I was in for the long haul. I'll wager very few people ever walk out of one of these sets until they're sure there are no more Mosley compositions coming.

As a producer I realized after a few songs I'd been struck by an instant, deep-seated desire to steal the cello-plucked-as-string bass element, maybe kidnap Trevor Exter himself for at least one song on a record or something. I resisted ... at least until I can get to a studio. The cello parts masquerading as bass lines were way tasty, and provided sufficient punch yet with a rare clarity in the low end, yummm. The sound was the perfect counterpunt [made up critic word] to Mosley's pinky-under-the-neck, on-the-lap-where-it-belongs slide style, which would likely be called goofy-footed or such in surf circles.

Whether invention or adaptation, Bret's radical departure from the typical style of playing slide bears mention. Usually the slide is like an ice skater, zipping about the rink of the fretboard mainly in one direction or it's opposite; but the leverage provided by Mosley's use of a pinky "anchor" makes his slide more like an acrobat, it can float above the frets and then slap down percussively like some mighty TV wrestler, or dig way in like a metal ferrett. Bret had that box buzzing like a bee one minute, moaning like a coyote the next, it definitely blew my little lap steel-playing mind. For the players in the crowd, all types, this set of tunes throws plenty of grass seed in the fields of the imagination. Two thumbs up, more if I had them!"

Joe Harvard - Guitarist/Producer
Asbury Park, NJ