A New Zealand Three-Piece Signs with Overton Music and Tops Three Roots Music Report Charts
Wrong Side Of The River opens on Midnight Rider: a gritty guitar riff first, then a deep, unhurried vocal over the top. BB & The Bullets released the 11-track blues-rock album Wrong Side Of The River worldwide on 2 October 2026. It came out through Overton Music, a Memphis label, after a home release in New Zealand in April.
BB & The Bullets and Wrong Side Of The River now sit in our classic rock and blues rock playlist, and the trio’s coverage is gathered on the BB & The Bullets artist profile. The album reached this desk through PopHits.Co Music Charts, which verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news desks. Press play on the album, then read on for the scene it comes from.
The Independent Blues Labels Carrying Small-City Bands to the Rest of the World
Blues-rock has a working circuit outside the major labels. Specialist labels sign bands from almost anywhere. As a result, a record from far away can chart alongside American acts on the Roots Music Report charts.
Dixiefrog Records in France and Overton Music in Memphis are two of those labels. BB & The Bullets have signed with both.
That route matters for a band from the other side of the world. In fact, Wrong Side Of The River has already topped three of those charts: Blues, Blues Rock and Australian Album.
Where BB & The Bullets Fit, a Three-Piece That Keeps Wrong Side Of The River Between Its Own Players
BB & The Bullets come from Whanganui, New Zealand, and they work as a three-piece. Brian Baker sings and plays guitar, Stu ‘The Glue’ Duncan plays bass and Brad MacMillan plays drums. All three sing. On stage, the trio mixes classic mid-century blues covers with original songs.
This is the second album. High Tide, the first, came out in September 2025. Before it came singles such as Something In The Water and a version of The Beatles’ I Want You (She’s So Heavy).
Nobody else plays on the record. Baker also wrote the title track and produced the album. So it keeps the trio’s own sound, with no session players added.
First, the album came out in New Zealand on 17 April 2026 and reached number four on the national sales chart. Then Overton Music signed the band and released it worldwide on 2 October. Three singles went ahead of it: Midnight Rider in July, Wild Honey in August and Freak Show in September.
Those three singles open the album in the order they came out, and the title track follows at number four. The 11 tracks run to 39 minutes and 32 seconds, and only Freak Show goes past four minutes.
The sound is direct. Gritty riffs lead and the rhythm section pushes hard behind them. Meanwhile, Baker’s vocal stays deep and unhurried, more storyteller than shouter. The band also strays from straight blues now and then, towards jazz and even a little hip-hop attitude.
The early press has followed. Americana Highways called the trio “a high voltage unit”, and Muzic.NZ described the album as “warm, a little dusty”.
BB & The Bullets Follow the Power-Trio Line of Cream and ZZ Top on Wrong Side Of The River
The blues-rock trio is an old format with a long reach. Cream formed in London in 1966 with Jack Bruce on bass, Eric Clapton on guitar and Ginger Baker on drums. The band then released four albums in three years, from Fresh Cream to Goodbye.
ZZ Top took the same shape to Texas boogie. The band formed in Houston in 1969. After that, Billy Gibbons, Dusty Hill and Frank Beard stayed together for five decades, through records such as Tres Hombres in 1973.
Wrong Side Of The River carries that tradition at an independent scale. It keeps the same three-way balance of guitar, bass and drums. Meanwhile, the band keeps the live side busy too, with shows across New Zealand and beyond.
The album suits listeners who like blues-rock with a live feel and a story in the lyrics. Think anywhere from Cream to ZZ Top. It also suits curators in the United States, the UK and Canada building playlists of independent blues.
RockRevival.News’s curator team: “A band that films a video squeezed into a 1934 Ford Tudor knows exactly what it is. Wrong Side Of The River sounds like those three people in one small room, with nothing in the way.”
Start with the album player on this page and play it in order, from Midnight Rider to Crawl Right In. After that, check the band’s site for the next run of shows.
Follow BB & The Bullets on Spotify and Instagram. Tickets, news and physical albums are on the band’s official website.
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