Staying with the blues this week: Gina Coleman solo album
I’m staying north of the border this week, with one of many musical types that’s inherently Sin Fronteras – the blues. A mix of African rhythms, holler work songs, jazz, gospel, and European music buildings, it’s a mélange of nations. Nurtured within the US, liked in France, performed in Mexico, the muse of the British invasion bands just like the Stones, it has and continues to cross borders. In the present day I need to discuss a Brooklyn-born blues singer who has taken the blues world wide, Gina Coleman, and her new solo album.
For me, it began with a YouTube video “Hear My Name” with Gina Cole. I liked the resonator guitar and the vocals, so I looked for extra. Earlier than I knew it, I used to be a Misty Blues band fan. There was a spiritual message – not evangelical, only a name out for one of the best of us – and the deep, genuine, seize -your- soul blues. Their music referred to as to me.
Cole is a South Bronx native who based the internationally acknowledged blues band Misty Blues, which has given us 35 years of the actual stuff. For 25 of these years, Gina has been broadly generally known as the lead singer, founder, songwriter, and cigarbox guitar participant of the Misty Bluesband, performing unique and conventional blues with hints of jazz, soul, funk, and revival gospel. Gina/Misty Blues have recorded 16 albums with tracks that includes artists like Charles Neville, Eric Gales, Joe Louis Walker, Justin Johnson, and Kat Riggins. As Gina leads Misty Blues into the following 25 years, she is venturing out along with her first solo album, Unequivocally Blue, and it’s a winner!
Eleven genuine seize -your- intestine and eat- your- heart- out blues songs. Not throwbacks, however genuine and trendy on the identical time. The primary single on the Spotify stream, “No Extra to Give,” surrounds her whiskey voice with twangy guitars and the resonator, paced with refined however good timing drumming. It’s adopted by Days Gone By a straight time funky tune flavored in soul and well-aged with relaxed vocals that remind you of Koko Taylor.
The title observe “Unequivocally Blue”, #3 on the stream, is a movin’ blues tune with a sheen of jazz, propelled by a strolling bass line and the drummer’s brushes and pleasant little electrical and acoustic guitar accents. Someplace behind my thoughts, it jogs my memory of Bobby Troup’s “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66”.
“Let Them Eat Blues” continues the “Route 66” really feel that we’re shifting alongside and telling a narrative a strolling blues story. It’s adopted by “Ain’t No Giving Tree” with a touch of rumba, however following a basic 12 bar format with a robust rhythm guitar retains the tempo. “Fly with Me” modifications the temper and the tempo, emphasizing her vocals and a extra basic down and soiled Delta blues, with the ache pushed even deeper by knifelike guitar notes. “How the Blues Feels” strikes in a special route, staying sluggish and deep, however along with her voice up an octave, and vocal achievement on the finish of every of the verses.
“Up Above My Head” has a Sixties pop really feel/gospel/blues sound. Positively gospel, however extra of a get out and dance than keep within the pews and clap track. “Nothing’s in Useless” is breathy, virtually bed room, a sluggish waltz of a blues track with some nice guitar riffs. “Stoop Stomp” is simply what the title implies, a basic kind with a narrative that takes you to the “broad daylight” and blues guitar work that’s superb.
Will My Blues wraps the stream. It begins you out with guitar downbeats and Coleman singing intimately simply to you, modulating her voice to create the hills and valleys of a melody. It leaves you, not foot tapping, however considering, and together with your eyes closed.
Unequivocally Blue is a mellow and intimate album, a shift down from most of the Misty Blues songs. It’s – as a solo album needs to be – centered on Coleman. Primarily acoustic-based, however with exactly positioned electrical touches. If you’re a blues fan, and particularly in case you are a Misty Blues fan, Unequivocally Blue is simply that – the genuine vary of sound and soul that makes up what the blues is at present. It strikes by historical past however is all the time proper right here with you. Stick with it, Gina. We love you.
Patrik O’Heffernan
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