Witchdoctor is an album by the American band Sidewinders, released in 1989.[1][2] It peaked at No. 169 on the Billboard 200, the first Mammoth Records album to make the chart.[3][4] The title track peaked at No. 18 on Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks chart.[5]Witchdoctor had sold around 75,000 copies by the end of the 1990s.[6] The band supported the album by touring with Charlie Sexton and then Johnny Thunders.[7][8] Shortly after the release of the album, Sidewinders were sued by a similarly named band and subsequently changed their name to Sand Rubies.[9]
The album was produced by bandmembers Rich Hopkins and Dave Slutes, who also wrote most of the songs.[10][11] Sidewinders began the album with Andrea Curtis on drums and vocals; when she became pregnant, Diane Padilla was brought in to finish the tracks.[12] Curtis, who sang lead on "Love '88", later divorced Hopkins.[13][8] "Solitary Man" is a cover of the Neil Diamond song.[14] "Bad, Crazy Sun" is about immigrants dying in the desert while attempting a border crossing.[15] "What She Said" is about the end of a relationship.[16]
The Chicago Tribune said that the album "is remarkable in the way it faithfully and unapologetically evokes a sense of time and place: the waning of the Reagan era in Tucson."[19]The Ottawa Citizen stated that it "picks up on the spacious, guitar-rock sound of the debut effort Cuacha, but with sharper production, the guitars grind along even harder; the mood is darker, swirling like the shifting desert sands."[12]The Washington Post opined that the "lean songs and rusty-can guitars, though hardly distinctive, are appealingly direct".[20]Rolling Stone called Witchdoctor "a solid set of pop-rock voodoo" and "a textbook 'college radio' record".[15]
In 2023, The Arizona Republic noted that the album "offset the jangling guitars that soon defined the Arizona sound with the swagger of classic garage-punk and a mesmerizing, psychedelic splendor that often suggested a cross between Neil Young in Crazy Horse mode and something closer to the Velvet Underground or the Dream Syndicate."[21]AllMusic concluded that the "mix of indie pop with a country tinge was well ahead of its time, and Witchdoctor sounds as fresh today as the day it was recorded."[17]Trouser Press said that "Hopkins' expansive 'big guitar' references Neil Young and Crazy Horse; his uncomplicated melodies are as immediate and hummable as Tom Petty's."[22]
↑ Jenkins, Mark (August 25, 1989). "In drummer Andrea Curtis...". The Washington Post. p.N21.
↑ Masley, Ed (November 14, 2023). "Tucson rock icons celebrating album that derailed them". The Arizona Republic. p.C2.
↑ Mills, Fred. "Sidewinders". Trouser Press. Retrieved February 16, 2025.
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