You do still remember the way it was, before Katrina? How the sunlight spat off the low wooden houses, off the yellow ones just as much as from the blue ones and the red ones? How the heat stretched itself languidly in the early morning already, in streets that were called Indepence, Piety and Desire? You do still remember how we had to ride our bikes around the cracks in the tarmac, some as big as potholes and so deep that my front wheel disappeared in one completely one time? Continue reading
Category: English pieces (Page 11 of 11)
www.denniscavalier.com
Rootsy piano pop.
Dennis Cavalier was the most striking artist on the tribute From The Lone Star To The Gulf Coast with his piano solo Fess It Up and the funking New Orleans Rising, recorded with band and horns. In that first song he paid homage to Professor Longhair in lyrics and style quotes in a humoristic way. He combined that with a rounded melody, just like in his other song and, in doing so, closed the often yawning gap between roots and pop music. He mixes these same elements twelve times on his first solo CD, that was released recently, despite a copyright dated 2000. Continue reading
www.harrybodine.com
Go, Harry, go!
Texan Harry Bodine made two CDs with a mixture of southern rock, blues, soul and funk with singer Michael Milligan as Delta Roux. Now Bodine surfaces again with nine new songs and two drastically changed ones from their first group effort.
Musically he once again crosses the entire South, from Austin to the Mississippi Delta and from Memphis to New Orleans in contagiously swinging medium-tempo songs and ballads. Continue reading
Pop professor.
Nik Freitas already has three CDs to his name that went by unnoticed here. Maybe we had never heard of this fourth one either, if Bright Eyes-chief Conor Oberst had not employed him as his guitar player in the meantime. His Team Love-label releases Freitas’ fourth as a result.
As tradition wants it, the man that was a photographer of a skateboard magazine once, plays all the instruments himself again in his ten new self-written songs. Nevertheless, his songs are much richer executed than his boss’s are. Continue reading
On her own feet.
Although Jude Johnstone has been unknown for four CDs already, many know songs she wrote. Trisha Yearwood reached number one with The Women Before Me, Johnny Cash sang her Unchained, Bonnie Raitt made Wounded Heart her own and on Emmylou Harris’ latest there is Hold On.
Her eleven new songs are ballads and medium-tempo songs, played in a jazzy way and produced in an open manner. Johnstone’s vocals and piano are in the centre and, because of that, her flowing, fragile melodies are too. Continue reading
Classic class.
Krista Detor’s third contains twelve songs in a mix of folk, jazz and gospel. Still she is first and foremost a singer-songwriter that only needs a small inducement for melancholical, but layered lyrics. She alternates between traditional folky subjects and a failed romantic visit to Paris or a not prevented suicide.
Producer/guitarist/background singer David Weber takes care of more musical barbed hooks than on predecessor Mudshow. Continue reading