The band's wildly energetic and seriously soulful new CD JUMP START is jam-packed with Lil' Ed's incendiary slide playing and rough, passionate singing, as the ragged-but-right Blues Imperials cook like mad alongside him. Produced by Williams and Alligator president Bruce Iglauer, it is a tour-de-force of untamed slide guitar, rock solid rhythms, heartrending ballads and authentic deep blues vocals. Williams wrote or co-wrote 13 of the album's 14 songs, ranging from the non-stop boogie blast of ''If You Were Mine'' to the heart-on-his-sleeve honesty of ''Life Is A Journey'' to the bouncing and jazzy ''Jump Right In'' to the swaggering, autobiographical ''Musical Mechanical Electrical Man.''