Project Blues – Drivin’ Home To Carrie’s Café
The project features several singers: Guy Forsyth, Karen Lovely, Tom Holland, & Sean Carney. Each decorates with diversified vocals, which make for an interesting ride since they sang 12 tunes while Drivin’ Home To Carrie’s Café (Dropped Sept. 5/Bear In the Chair Records/51:16). Project Blues bus in cancer patients, survivors & indigents on Friday nights to the LifeCare Alliance banquet & café for a catered dinner & some blues. Some musicians have lost loved ones to cancer, and Project Blues has become a movement that sponsors a women’s cancer clinic. There are good people in this world.
Anchored in big band horns, their blues tendrils were recorded in Austin, TX. An entertaining showcase produced by Anson Funderburgh (guitar) & Mike “Bear in the Chair” Berichon (guitar/triangle/songwriter). The music isn’t so much real blues as “blues as entertainment,” a genre generated by the need to spread music that has been fading. Not anymore. Many tunes are well rendered & upbeat. The real blues, after all, isn’t about feeling good. But this is an exception. The feeling in these is authentic & the performances have enthusiastic fuel.
“If Trouble Was a Woman,” — the title alone is closer to the real blues, though it’s drenched in a foot-tapping arrangement. No matter. Vocally, the entire LP is fiery & bone-vibrating. The band is genuinely engaged. Their intentions are good. “Closer To Dead Than Born” is a spiked punch with steady drums, melodic piano notes, caustic harmonica bursts & simply a dynamic groove.
The band has created for itself a fibrillating style. It shakes the paint off the walls & pounds the nails out of the wooden floors. Full-sounding horns navigate through each number. The vocals vary between Kim Wilson & the Fabulous Thunderbirds ‘ sweat-gloss blues & an early J. Geils Band musical breadth. If the song is unassuming, the arrangements & horns keep the take afloat with bold strokes of notes.
“Soul Survivor,” along with a few others, is sung by Karen Lovely. She gives it just enough soul to keep it from being soulful & holds it down as a bluesy ballad. Sophisticated, with a Steve Cropper-type lead guitar by Jonn Del Toro Richardson. Guy gives it his best Tom Waits vocal on “580 To the Wheels.”
These people smoke their tunes down to the filter.
Highlights – “One More Time With Feeling,” “If Trouble Was a Woman,” “Closer To Dead Than Born,” “Soul Survivor,” “We’ll Get There Eventually,” “Carrie’s Café,” “I Can Never Give My Heart Away Again” & “580 To the Wheels.”
Musicians – Guy Forsyth, Karen Lovely, (vocals), Sean Carney (vocal/guitar), Jonn Del Toro Richardson (guitar), Tom Holland (vocal/guitar/slide guitar), Bobby Floyd (Hammond B3), The Texas Horns – Chuck Moore (tenor sax), John Mills (baritone sax), Nate Rowe, Lenny Paul, Steve Parakis (bass), Louis Tsamous, Brandon Pettiford (drums), Alice Spencer (bgv), Mark Kazanoff (harmonica/tenor sax/bgv), Nick Connolly (piano/Wurlitzer) & Bobby Floyd (piano/Hammond B3).
Color image courtesy of Steve Mack. CD @ https://www.projectblues.org/