Photo Mandi Fountain
SPEAK TO ME
There is an old photograph somewhere in the imagination when you hear the words Delta blues.
A man.
A guitar.
A road that probably isn't paved.
We have become rather good at putting this music in the past.
Nicky Diamonds doesn't seem particularly interested in doing that.
On Speak To Me, his second full-length album, he moves further into blues, country hill blues and American roots music than he did on 2024's Perdido en La Salsa.
Or perhaps further down is the better description.
Because the blues has been sitting underneath this music all along.
Diamonds, born Nick Long, grew up in Texas. His father was a Baptist preacher. Before Nicky Diamonds existed, there was Lonely Horse, the indie rock band he fronted before eventually stepping away from music altogether.
Then he came back.
Different name.
Different direction.
Country. Roots. Blues.
Old hymn books. Family history. His Afro Indigenous heritage.
Quite a lot to carry into a song.
And Speak To Me sounds increasingly comfortable carrying it.
There are eleven tracks here, running for roughly 44 minutes. Four of them had already appeared during 2026: “She Never Knew”, “You Gotta Move (Speak To Me)”, “Whiskey And Red” and “Ball And Chain”.
So the album hasn't exactly arrived unannounced.
Still, hearing those songs as part of the complete record changes the picture.
The blues is no longer something sitting beside the country music.
It is moving towards the centre.
That movement has been coming for a while.
Some of the story leads to Spicewood, Texas.
Pedernales Studio.
Willie Nelson's place.
Diamonds found his way into Nelson's musical circle and eventually into the studio, working there with longtime Nelson engineer Steve Chadie. He later appeared with Tami Neilson on her recording of “Sister's Coming Home / Down At The Corner Beer Joint”, also recorded at Pedernales.
A nice room to find yourself in.
But the Willie Nelson connection can become a distraction if you let it.
The more interesting connection runs much further back.
Robert Johnson.
Diamonds has spoken about Johnson as an important influence, and earlier this year he took part in a celebration of Johnson at San Antonio's Gunter Hotel.
That address matters.
Johnson recorded there in 1936.
Ninety years later, Diamonds was there playing the blues and talking about its continuing relevance.
There is something rather neat about that.
Although “neat” may be the wrong word for the blues.
Diamonds has been clear about the larger point: this music shouldn't be treated as a historical object.
It is still here.
Still being played.
Still changing.
And that is the useful way into Speak To Me.
Because it would be very easy to hear slide guitar, Delta blues, country blues and old American forms and call the record a return to the past.
It doesn't feel like one.
Diamonds isn't dressing up as 1936.
He is using a musical language that was never finished in the first place.
You hear it in the longer songs.
“Whiskey And Red” gets nearly six minutes.
“Pale Moon Dancer” does too.
The opening “You Gotta Move (Speak To Me)” passes four.
There is room.
For the guitar.
For the voice.
For the groove to hang around a little longer than modern singles are usually allowed to.
Good.
The blues has always needed a bit of room.
And somewhere in these eleven songs, the relationship between country and blues starts to feel less like a discussion about genres and more like what it has always been.
Family.
They share stories.
They borrow from each other.
They argue.
They occasionally pretend they aren't related.
Then someone like Nicky Diamonds makes a record and the resemblance becomes difficult to ignore.
That is where Speak To Me gets interesting.
After Perdido en La Salsa, he could have kept moving sideways. More country. More honky tonk. More soul.
Instead, he dug underneath it.
Past the labels.
Past the revivalism.
Down towards the music that helped make so much of what came afterwards possible.
There is history there.
Of course there is.
But history is only useful when somebody does something with it.
Nicky Diamonds does.
Speak To Me doesn't sound like a man visiting the blues.
It sounds like a man realising he was already standing in it.