Category: English pieces (Page 1 of 11)

too late a discovery

The Black, gay American pianist and singer Kemp Harris proved to be socially engaged and versatile on his album ‘The America Chronicles’ (2025): in ten tracks he blended soul, gospel, jazz, music hall and reggae into songs about discrimination, marginalization and love. This revealed an equally strong idealistic and activist mindset, conveyed through a powerful, expressive voice. Although he seemed to be a new name, that is not the case at all: he had already released ‘Sometimes in Bad Weather’ in 2002 and ‘Edenton’ in 2006 while after a long hiatus ‘Live at the Bird SF’ appeared in 2021 from the man who spent his entire life as an elementary school teacher.

The songs on those albums clearly show that ‘The America Chronicles’ is a continuation of his struggle, as he was also lyrically outspoken on those two earlier studio albums, which he evidently continued to be during his 2021 performance in San Francisco.

At the same time,

www.kbbayleysongs.com

four in a Row

British songwriter and guitarist KB Bayley recorded ten songs for his fourth album.

He wrote six of them himself, but he also chose ‘Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometime’,  the 1980 hit by The Korgis. This is an unexpected nod to a happy childhood on the English east coast, as the three other covers are strongly influenced by America, his musical homeland: Gretchen Peters’ ‘Love & Texaco’, Patti Griffin’s ‘That Kind of Lonely’ and the century-old traditional ‘White House Blues’.

On all the songs, he plays his acoustic or electric guitar, lap steel, or dobro, creating a strong melancholic mood behind his already melancholic, somewhat husky voice. The fact that Kelly Joe Phelps, who died in 2022, was one of his idols is evident in his acoustic blues and folk-inspired songs.

Bayley plays solo on three of his songs, but on the others, he asked guitarists

Metropolitan Groove Merchants

Metropolitan Groove Merchants

MGOLD002CD

On their second group album as Minor Gold, Tracy McNeil and Dan Parsons present ten songs, which they recorded with drummer Austin Beede and producer Dan Horne. He also played percussion, bass, and pedal steel, thus having a significant influence on the duo’s sound, which introduced itself as

Regional Records RR0116

www.revererivers.com

blown away

Drummer, keyboardist, and singer Revere Rivers recorded ten songs for his debut with Marvin Etzioni as producer. Etzioni was once a member of Lone Justice, but as a producer, he has worked with Counting Crows, Trombone Shorty, and Jonah Tochin, among others. They were brought together by Steve Weatherby, the second-in-command of the Virgin Music Group, and this turned out to be very fortunate.

Not only did Etzioni co-write three songs and play various instruments on occasional tracks, but the two kept it very open: Rivers’ drums and the bass of jazz musician Tim Brewer, Rivers’ father, serve the music intelligently while leaving space for the horns. They appear in every song and are an integral part of the sound: David Ralicke (Beck, Jamie Lidell, Kelly Clarkson, and others) arranged and played them so originally, overdubbing them, that they deepen and enrich Rivers’ melodies without overpowering them.

Often, his songs brings the work of Allen Toussaint to mind (for example in ‘Lofty Politics’ and ‘1st Sweet Kiss’), but he also adds much originality to the other songs.

Rivers proves to be an equally seasoned as inspired songwriter who can swing in a funky way as well as sing emotional ballads. Moreover,

Know Howe Music & Bassline Music

1 99066 17911 6

www.alicehowe.com

www.freebomusic.com

alive and kicking

American singer-songwriter Alice Howe caught the attention of veteran Freebo with the five songs from her debut EP ‘You Have Been Away So Long’ (2017).
The bassplayer that is famous for his work with Bonnie Raitt and who transformed into a singer-songwriter, took her under his wing on her debut ‘Visions’ (2019) and the somophore album ‘Circumstance’ (2023): he co-wrote songs, played bass, sang the choirs and produced the albums. They also toured Europe and the US together.
Now a live album of a performance during such an American tour has been released, containing fourteen songs that they recorded during a concert at the Rainshadow Recording Studio in Port Townsend in Washington state.
On it they both played acoustic guitar and bass, with the sound of Freebo’s fretless being unmistakable. They also alternately sing the lead and the choirs with as much enthusiasm as conviction. Therefore the setlist is a combination of songs from Howe’s three albums and from Freebo’s four solo albums since 1999, whereas they also play three songs that make it clear that Freebo’s and Howe’s roots lie in the seventies:

Not Pop Records 1 95269 35581 4

https://arlanfeilesmusic.com

 everlasting elegy

Arlan Feiles’ ninth album only contains nine songs: eight he wrote himself and a cover of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Story of Isaac’. It fits in seamlessly with the other songs, because on this thematic album Feiles poses big questions about his Jewish origins, ant-Semitism and the Israeli invasion of the Gaza strip. He does so in a musical mix of singer-songwriter, roots, folk and klezmer, but he always builds in a lot of space in his songs.

Feiles himself plays the double bass, the acoustic and Weissenborn guitar, the piano and organ. In Addition, Brad Gunyon plays the drums in two songs and David Mansfield plays the mandolin in three, which he combines with violin once and with Weissenborn one other time. Carmen Sciafani plays the slide guitar once and there are only three songs with backing singers: in ‘Oh, St. Louis’ it is Layonne Holmes and in ‘Ceasefire’ Tessa, Layla and Noah Feiles sing.

His songs are European-tinged because of the combination of genres and breathe the atmosphere of lamentations with the bare but penetrating sound and often repetitive music.

These elements provide a lot of emphasis on his lyrics, also because of his  vocals, that are mixed to the front. Even more than on albums like ‘Blame Me’ and ‘What Kind of World’, Feiles interweaves the personal with the political in his lyrics, because he audibly struggles with the contradiction between his origins and the political reality of today: his ancestors came from Europe to the new world, but that destination has abandoned him.

In his songs he seems to sing about his family history more or less chronologically:

Shadville Records

www.reesshadmusic.com

lightning bolt

American singer-songwriter Rees Shad made his debut in 1994 and since released seventeen solo albums in a variety of genres, while also making four electronic music albums under the name Fester Spunk, as well as composing an operetta and music for plays and films. In these fourteen songs, however, Shad limits himself to Americana, although in some songs influences from blues, gospel and South American come into play. He played bass, dobro, acoustic and electric guitars, acoustic and electric piano and he sings, but in about half of his songs he is accompanied by Rob ‘Bobby Kay’ Kovacs on drums and percussion and Jeff Link on bass. Other relatively decisive roles are for Kemp Harris and Wanda Houston, who sing on four songs, and co-producer Doug Ford. Together with Shad, he was responsible for the transparent sound and he played guitar a few times, just like Rick Ruskin and Dario Acosta Teich.

In two songs horn players Marcus Benoit (tenor sax), Peter Grimaldi (trumpet) and John Savage (baritone sax) also play and in two others harmonica player R. B. Stone. In his songs, often written alone and sometimes with Lance Cowan, Shad turns out to be a man with a great sense of flowing melodies and the ability to write visual, narrative lyrics about the daughter of a nineteenth-century day labourer, a father who is absent because he pursues his own dreams and a woman abandoned by everyone. Some others are polemical, such as opener ‘Ain’t that The Way’, in which he sings about

www.ediecarey.com

exceptional class

Singer-songwriter Edie Carey recorded twelve songs on her sixth solo album in 2022 that she wrote around the theme of the unexpected removal of everyday life’s veil by major events.

The title track opens the album symbolically: she sings how her father put her to bed as a small child, how her own child needs her less and less, how a car accident literally and figuratively turned her life upside down and how American society becomes more divided than ever, but:

Blue Corn Music/Suburban

belated business card

American singer-guitarist Jeff Pankenhorn has been playing for others in and around Austin for more than twenty years, but has made four solo albums since 2003, none of which were released here.

The ten songs on his new one prove how unjustified that is: the first chords of opener ‘Bird Out On 9th’ form an acoustic riff that is as intriguing as it is unrelenting, supported by hypnotic drums, while he sings in a melancholic and enchanting way. After that he combines

Paraply 034

addictive desire.

You can hardly speak of a career in the case of the now 74-year-old singer-songwriter Greg Copeland: his debut ‘Revenge will come’ received very good reviews in 1982, but despite the role of school friend Jackson Browne, it got no support from his label, after which Copeland, who also worked as a lawyer, disappeared into anonymity for 26 years.

In 2008 the good, country-influenced album ‘Diana and James’ was released with guitar player Greg Leisz as producer and Browne as executive producer, and recently Copeland’s third album was released.

Leisz and Val McCallum are the distinctive guitarists and multi-instrumentalist Tyler Chester serves as producer,but Copeland holds the reins tightly. Otherwise, it is incomprehensible that Continue reading