Rarely do records start by effortlessly dropping you right in the middle of a groove. But, Almost Live, the debut album from Pops Fletcher & The Hucksters does just that. Songs flow from one to the next with the incalculable ease that comes with playing together for over a decade; it's just taken them a hot minute to get around to recording.

As bandleader, guitarist, and singer, Pops Fletcher founded The Hucksters as a gig band, “a return to rocking, funky blues.” Fletcher says the band found its stride about ten years ago. “We still like each other, we know our roles, and we keep improving.” 

Over the course of 11 tracks Fletcher leads his crew through a myriad of groove-heavy backroads that all merge onto the blues highway. "At our core we are a live band,” says Fletcher. “There's a lot of improv that goes on. Some of our live songs run well over ten minutes. For the album, three of us knocked out nine songs in one day. That's where the record’s energy comes from. Our lead guitar player came in a bit later and did the solos, then our keyboard player recorded his parts later, and we layered them in."

The resulting album, Almost Live, captures a band which lives for onstage interaction and clearly loves what they do. Everything is tight and loose in all the right places and it just works to near-perfection.