Bob Log III

"And then there’s this guy named Bob Log, you ever heard of him? He’s this 

little kid — nobody ever knows how old he is — wears a motorcycle helmet 

and he has a microphone inside of it and he puts the glass over the front so 

you can’t see his face, and plays slide guitar. It’s just the loudest strangest 

stuff  you’ve ever heard. You don’t understand one word he’s saying. I like 

people who glue macaroni on to a piece of cardboard and paint it gold. That’s 

what I aspire to basically”

Bob Log III, Fat Possum recording artist and one man band crown prince of 

punk blues from Tuscon, Arizona. Witnessing Bob Log live is an unmissable 

and unforgettable experience. By rights he should be a punk blues stadium 

super star. He takes to the stage with his face masked in  a crash helmet with 

 a black visor and a telephone wired in it for a mic and wearing a blue jump 

suit. Bob then unleashes a torrent of hardcore Mississippi Delta blues, hip hop 

beats and punk rock. The crash helmet telephone distorts the vocals and his 

hands, arms, legs and feet become a blur of jump suit clad limbs as he plays 

slide, triggers drum machines and drums with his feet simultaneously. Bob 

then adds extra ingredients to this punk blues bouillabaisse with  his unique 

version of audience participation. More often them not he’ll bounce a couple 

of audience members on his knees while playing, and then bring on the 

infamous Boob Scotch.  The audience are invited to literally stick their boob in 

his scotch  which he then drinks. If Bob feels satisfied he will then launch into 

his anthem Boob Scotch!

Bob Log’s identity and history  is shrouded in mystery and rumour, probably 

helped by his stage get up and also when his record company Fat Possum 

put out an early press release claiming  Log had a monkey’s paw grafted on 

to his wrist after a boating accident as a child. Here’s an excerpt....."When 

Bob Log III was a child, he lost his left hand in a boating accident. It was soon 

replaced with a monkey paw, and a new guitar style was born. 'It's my own 

personal style, see,' Log says, 'the paw moves much quicker than a normal 

hand, so my real hand has to flop around a lot to compensate.'"  When asked 

to explain Fat Possum’s insistence that his right hand is a monkey’s paw, Log 

replied to an interviewer that, “My hand is just hairy. Very, very hairy. It is NOT 

a PAW. Fat Possum was drunk.”  Log further clarified the monkey paw myth 

in an interview with Bizarre Magazine: "I've got all my limbs. It's just that when 

I'm playing my guitar my hand moves so fast it looks like a monkey paw, a 

hairy paw. My hand moves really fast. Faster than a normal human hand”

In fact Bob Log III was born in Tucson, Arizona and is a virtuoso slide player 

who plays with extremely thick strings tuned very loose that gives him his 

unique “floppy” sound. Growing up, Log listened to  artists such as Chuck 

Berry, Bo Diddley  and AC/DC,  later commenting that "That's what rock'n'roll 

is to me. You take a guitar, turn it up and have a good time…everyone else 

can go listen to Pearl Jam if they want to.”  Bob Log got his first guitar at the 

age of 11, and by the age of 16 he had become smitten with Delta Blues, 

modelling his slide guitar style on that of  Mississippi Fred McDowell. Log 

began his music career recording with Mondo Guano, a four-piece metal-

blues band based in Arizona. Upon leaving Mondo Guano, Log went on to 

perform as one-half of seminal early Delta punk  blues  duo Doo Rag. Bob 

Log III was born when Bob was in the middle of a US tour with  Doo Rag and 

his drummer quit. With necessity , ever the mother of invention, Bob donned a 

helmet he had picked up in  a thrift store,  took to the stage and kicked his 

guitar case for percussion and thus the legend of Bob Log was born.  Bob Log 

eventually found his spiritual home on maverick Mississippi blues label Fat 

Possum in 1998 and released a trio of classic records: School Bus, Trike and 

Log Bomb.  

In this current world of homogenised and mass marketed music, we need true 

mavericks like Bob Log III more than ever.