| Homemade | |
| Type: | studio |
| Artist: | Cephas & Wiggins |
| Cover: | Homemade (Cephas & Wiggins album).jpg |
| Released: | 1999 |
| Genre: | Blues, Piedmont blues |
| Label: | Alligator |
| Producer: | Joe Wilson |
| Prev Title: | Goin' Down the Road Feelin' Bad |
| Prev Year: | 1998 |
| Next Title: | From Richmond to Atlanta |
| Next Year: | 2000 |
Homemade is an album by the American musical duo Cephas & Wiggins, released in 1999.[1] [2] It was their second album for Alligator Records.[3] The duo supported the album with a North American tour.[4] Homemade was nominated for a W. C. Handy Award for best "Traditional Blues Album".[5]
The album was produced by Joe Wilson, who also cowrote a couple of the songs.[6] Cephas helped write eight of the songs; Wiggins worked on one.[7] Wiggins considered the selections to be enlivening rather than sad or depressing.[8] The album opens and closes with covers of Blind Boy Fuller tunes.[9] "Slow Blues" is a version of the instrumental Reverend Gary Davis song. Two originals, "Jelly Roll" and "Meeting the Mule", explore the differences between life, and women, in the metropolitan North and country South.[6] "I Was Determined" is an autobiographical song about wanting to play the blues after hearing neighbors singing blues standards.[10]
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote that "Cephas plays in ragtime-like guitar rhythms, with Wiggins's airy harp a perfect complement... Cephas's vocals are fittingly light, even though the blues are still the blues." The Sunday Age said that Cephas "succeeds where few have dared, mimicking Skip James's keening vocals and unusual tuning on 'Illinois'." The Toronto Star deemed the album "accessible rural dance music with low-key engaging grooves."[11] The Washington Post determined that Wiggins and Cephas weave "voice and guitar together so seamlessly that one mind seems to govern both mouths and all four arms."[6] The Star Democrat considered the album forgettable and an example of "generic" blues.
AllMusic noted the "rustic, laid-back charm."