Photo by Derek Landwehr
Dustin Arbuckle & The Damnations are a blues-centric band with a wide reach. Out of Wichita, KS, they’ll roll from a Delta groove into honky tonk, into Southern soul, into country-rock trucker’s anthem in a single set, and never lose the thread. That broad stylistic reach is the draw at the Damnations’ live shows. On their new record, the surprise is the discipline.
Fight Like the Devil is the most focused album of their run, and their best. The band that plays everything they love onstage narrowed its aim in the studio and made a straight-ahead blues and roots-rock record with a spine.
Early on, Arbuckle loosely modeled the Damnations on roots-rock legends, Los Lobos.
“Those guys are so unique, and obviously we don’t share all of their influences, but Los Lobos has always been such a great rock and roll band that can also play blues, and can play country, and can play soul, and can do so many different things tastefully and effectively,” he says. “That’s the kind of band I wanted.”
While that approach has thrilled the Damnations’ live audiences, reaching for it in the studio left some listeners, and the music industry, unable to latch onto the band’s stylistic identity.
“My bandmates had to remind me that your identity live does not have to be your identity on all of your records,” Arbuckle says.
So they leaned into the core and let the record hit hard in one direction.
The lyrics are mostly Arbuckle’s, pulled from the road and the harder things underneath it. Most of the music and arrangements come from guitarist Brandon Hudspeth, bassist Caleb Drummond, and drummer Colby Aiken, with nearly every song on the record built by the whole band together. A couple more songs come from Arbuckle’s old friend, Ryan Taylor, an award-winning songwriter who has contributed many songs to Arbuckle’s projects over the last two decades.
Each player came to the Damnations with their own serious bona fides.
Arbuckle and Hudspeth bring the blues pedigree. Arbuckle sang and played harmonica in Moreland & Arbuckle for 15 years, a run that included records on Alligator and Telarc, a finals berth at the International Blues Challenge, numerous blues awards and nominations, and stages shared with Buddy Guy, ZZ Top, George Thorogood, Robert Cray, Los Lobos, and others. Guitarist Hudspeth, a multiple-time Blues Music Award and Blues Blast Award nominee himself, also leads Kansas City’s Levee Town and the duo Hudspeth & Taylor.
If those two anchor the band’s roots, Aiken and Drummond are a big part of why the band’s sound can range so far outside them. Both are music-school graduates who’ve toured with a wide range of acts across many styles, Drummond moving easily between jazz, bluegrass, and heavier rock, Aiken between rock, jazz, funk, and reggae. A rhythm section fluent in that many idioms is what lets the Damnations turn corners many blues bands can’t.
Four players, a lot of miles, and not much they can’t touch.
After a couple of slow years spent regrouping post-pandemic, the band is back at full stride, and the blues world has noticed. Arbuckle was the December 2025 cover feature of Blues Blast Magazine, the Damnations have toured across North America and Europe, and last summer they turned big festival crowds into new fans.
A record only tells half the story with a band like this. They’re made to be seen. Catch them live, and let it run.
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