Vanessa Collier Meeting My Shadow

Vanessa Collier
Meeting My Shadow
Ruf Records

Young saxophonist, vocalist, and songwriter is a graduate of world-renowned Berklee College and later toured with Joe Louis Walker. She recorded a self-produced album, participated at the Blues Foundation's 2016 International Blues Challenge and has been playing at festivals and clubs. Now she has signed with Ruf Records who has issued her newest release. She is backed on this by TK Jackson on drums, Daniel McKee on bass and Laura Chavez on guitar with many tracks having the legendary Charlie Hodges of the Hi Rhythm Section on keyboards. She has eight originals and three covers here as well.

Collier has an attractive voice and impresses as a vocalist over a variety of material including the opening "Poisoned the Well," one of the more notable originals, along with her ode to James Brown styled funk, "Dig a Little Deeper." She covers U2's B.B. King collaboration, "When Love Comes To Town," with a fervent vocal with Josh Roberts' slide guitar soloing while she takes the performance to a close with some robust saxophone. Her cover of the O.V. Wright deep soul classic "You Gonna Make Me Cry," is sweetened up in her treatment making it more a lament than Wright's gut-wrenching original.

"Whisky and Women" is a rocking blues shuffle about folk complaining about whisky and women while she notes she wants to live without complaining. The tempo might be a bit slower, and her vocal could have been tempered a tad, but both Laura Chavez and she are outstanding. "Meet Me Where I'm At" has a New Orleans-flavored feel with some nice interplay by her with trumpeter Marc Franklin. There is a spirited cover of Sister Rosetta Tharpe's "Up Around My Head, I Hear Music In The Air," and if her vocal lacks the weight of Tharpe, it is still enjoyable and Chavez again tosses in a crisply, spirited guitar solo followed by Collier's short solo. "Devil's on the Downside" is an impressively sung original with Charles Hodges taking us to church on organ and a standout lyric about life's temptations sung wonderfully with Collier providing a marvelous arrangement as well for the horns to frame her vocal.

There is plenty to like about Vanessa Collier on "Meeting My Shadow." She is multi-talented as a singer, songwriter, saxophonist and arranger who also co-produced this most engaging set of performances. She is certainly establishing herself on the blues (and more general music circles) and this recording will further that process.

I received my review copy from a publicist. This review appeared in the May-June 2017 Jazz & Blues Report (Issue 372).  Here Vanessa Collier is performing "When Love Comes To Town."

J.T. Lauritsen - Play By The Rules

Blues has become an international music and a recording by Norwegian harmonica-accordion player (Jan Tore) J.T. Lauritsen, Play By The Rules (Hunters Records) illustrates this. For nearly 20 years he has led The Buckshot Hunters who have had several well received recordings. The present recording was recorded at sessions in Memphis and Oslo, Norway and has appearances by Victor Wainwright, Anson Funderburgh and others on various tracks. Greg Gumpel or Willie C. Campbell on bass, Wainwright on keyboards and Josh Roberts are common to the Memphis recordings while Atle Rakvåg on bass, and Ian Frederick Johannessen on guitar are on the Oslo sessions. Jon Grimsby is drummer throughout while guitarist Arnfinn Tørrisen and keyboardist Paul Wagnberg are heard on both sessions.

Lauritsen impresses on this marvelously varied group of performances. One would be surprised listening to him sing to discover English is not his first language. He sings in a natural,relaxed fashion and the supporting musicians do a bang-up job in backing him on some nice covers and originals. William Bell’s Everyday Will Be Like A Holiday starts this recording off on a nice southern soul vein followed by the Crescent City groove on Lauritsen’s original Next Time, with  zydeco flavor provided by the leader’s accordion with Wainwright taking a rollicking piano solo. Te title track is a nice slow blues with Josh Roberts adding slide guitar. Billy Gibbons on harp joins Lauritsen on a easy rocking shuffle rendition of Walter Horton’s Need My Babe, taken as a medium shuffle which is followed by Wainwright’s Memphis Boogie, that he gets off to a rollicking start followed by Roberts crisp solo and then more boogie woogie piano before the leader steps up.

We are taken back to New Orleans on Big Joe Maher’s Ever Since The World Began, which then followed up by a fine take on the Cookie and the Cupcakes swamp pop classic Mathilda. Like the rest of this recording, it is wonderfully played and sung at the right tempo. Anson Funderburgh adds strong guitar to Find My Little Girl as Lauritsen sings about going back to Dallas, Texas to find his little girl while plays rhythm guitar on the atmospheric take on Gillian Welch’s Valley of Tears.

The performances on Play By The Rules never come off as hurried or frantic and there is a genuine soulful quality to J.T. Lauritsen’s vocals that make this release well worth noting.

I received my review copy from a publicist. Here is a video of J.T. Lauritsen.