What’s in a name? Well, a CD with a name like “I Smell Catfish” by the Night Crawlers sounds like something a fishing worm might say as he discovered himself lowered into the river on a hook! Turns out it has some hooks, but of the musical variety – the project of a harp player /singer with the interesting name of T-Bone Stone.

In a rather fuzzy sleeve picture, T-Bone appears to be a white guy with white hair, blowing his harp – and no further connection to fishing is apparent. The tunes are mostly slow-to-mid tempo blues with tasty guitar and keyboard riffs, with T-Bone singing in a country-tinged voice and blowing. The tempo picks up on a tune with a freight-train boogie bass called “My Baby She’s Gone”, one with yet another interesting name, “Jelly Roll Queen”, and on the only song T-Bone didn’t write, a cover of “Two Headed Woman”, from Junior Wells’ first-ever session at Chief Records in the Windy City in 1957. The Night Crawlers version is a bit more up-tempo and fuller sounding than Junior’s (check it out on Junior’s “Calling all Blues” CD on Fuel 2000, with notes saying he copied the song from Muddy Waters’ “Mojo Workin’”). T-Bone picked a good one to cover!

Speaking of covers, both the front and back of the “Catfish” CD have an image of the pre 9-11 (2001!) World Trade Center Twin Towers as seen from the Hudson River. The CD copyright is 2002, so it’s hard to figure what that is supposed to mean – by then the whole world had a different image of those towers – fishy!