Grit your teeth, hold your breath and get your funky ass down to your local juke joint because with Chris Russell's Chicken Walk in town, that juke is gonna be the most happenin' joint in town.

Flicking his own mix of Mississippi mud in whatever direction his guitar is aiming, Chris Russell's swamp-dirty, Delta-inspired blues is as authentic as it is inspirational. This is the kind of down-home, stompin' music that has filled nondescript tin shacks across the American music food bowl of the south for decades, and Chris Russell's Chicken Walk have been throwing it around Melbourne for the last few years.

With co-conspirator Dean Muller (Hoss, Cosmic Psychos), Russell moved upward from playing background music – which he had been doing for 20-odd years – and into pubs and bars across the city. And with a band name worth remembering and a passion for traditional juke joint blues, this is a duo that have plenty of music to share. Despite only having the two members playing on it, Chris Russell's Chicken Walk contains enough diversity across its eight tracks that the listener never gets bored. At the heart of each song is the guttural rawness of the blues, with Russell's gutsy vocals and guitar riffs playing off against each other while Muller offers as much emotion as a drum kit can allow.

It's not pretty, but Chris Russell's Chicken Walk is one of the local finds of the past year, and – unsurprisingly, given the amount of time Russell has spent trawling through the Mississippi Delta over the years, watching his heroes – word is that Chris Russell's Chicken Walk also deliver live. Miss them at your own peril.