From Hell’s Fringe, located on the edge of Grady County in Oklahoma, Bloody Ol’ Mule was born into Oklahoma’s music scene in 2004 as a one-man-band drenched in traditional honky tonk and hillbilly country, old time mountain music, and hard, gritty blues with just a little drop of madness, grit, and grease.
Bloody Ol’ Mule’s influences are soaked in a greasy bucketful of what he likes to call the “old REAL blues”, preferrably the Hill Country Blues of Northern Mississippi, as well as lots of old pre-1976 country and Honky Tonk, old hillbilly music, and mountain music, the appalachian folk music of Kentucky, and West Virginia and early 1950’s rock’n’roll. The music that drives him, and inspires him ever since he was a boy growing up in the open country side of Grady County and abroad is the music of Hank Williams Sr, Jimmie Rogers, Dock Boggs, Mississippi Fred McDowell, and T-Model Ford.
Bloody Ol’ Mule is a one-man-band and the incarnation of Oklahoma born, and bred Shilo D.L. Brown who started playing music at the early age of 15, and has been playing ever since.
He plays an electric Fender Telecaster guitar, and a variety of acoustic guitars that he thrashes, and beats, and whips his wild rhythms out, making it scream, and jump with that Bloody Ol’ Mule sound that he was honed, and polished to his own liking over the years, as he stomps away on a 3×2 block of wood that he runs direct into a bass amp. His live shows have been known to be anywhere from hypnotic, and dangerous, right on down to tight grooving sounds of greasy juke-joint tempo blues with a sort of possession that seems to take him over as if possessed by some other being, or person, then at the next moment, turning the tables on his listeners with either an old time mountain field holler, or some heart-felt honky tonk country weeper that seems to take hold of the audience, and make them stop somewhere in time, and pull at their heart-strings.
Shilo Brown writes all of his own songs, and prefers to play his original material with all the grit, and horror that one could muster, producing enough original material to play a set all night long with more to come. With a style of his own, Bloody Ol’ Mule’s music is filled with elements of 1950’s rock’n’roll, hill country blues, lonely field hollers, old appalachian folk tunes, as well as anything else that might inspire him to play.
Shilo Brown’s voice at times is gritty, and haunting, and at other times smooth and hypnotic, providing that high lonesome sound that cries out from the roots of rural America, reflecting that utter heartbreak and wanting, as well as pain, and vengeance with a sense of power that takes hold of his audience, pulling them deeper, and deeper into the world of Bloody Ol’ Mule.
Take all of these elements and add a touch of 1950’s rockabilly sunk down into a pool of pure gritty hillbilly blues that is rooted out of the surroundings of Bloody Ol’ Mule’s upbringing in the rural prairie land of Oklahoma, and then you’ll have Bloody Ol’ Mule, the hell-bent honky tonk stomp hillbilly blues one-man-band.
