One of my joys is to find an artist that I had completely missed but whose creds are stellar. Karen Lawrence has been around since the seventies. She has credits for lead vocals and writing on Jeff beck’s ‘Beckology’ album, wrote the song ‘Prisoner’ for the movie The Eyes Of Laura Mars that was subsequently recorded by Barbra Streisand and forms part of Joe Bonamassa’s setlist. Her rock group toured with the likes of Aerosmith, Ted Nugent, Cheap Trick and AC/DC. So, serious creds and on listening to this album, a rare and superb talent.
The music is varied. There is Blues/rock, Blues/soul, roots and Blues, all displayed here, and all written by Ms Lawrence herself. She has a main band of Dan Potruch on drums, Ron Battle on bass, Celso Salim on guitar, Tony Saracene on Rhythm guitar and Max Butler on Organ. All very capable and highly experienced but needing a great vocalist to set them on fire, and Karen Lawrence is that spark.
The album opens with ‘Die Blue’. From the intro I could easily imagine the Eagles voices coming next, but instead this wonderful emotive and crackling soul vocal pours out. That is then followed by ‘Easy’, slow, intense and once more a heartfelt vocal. One of the things I really like about this album is the way that all the tracks are very different from each other but are linked by this wonderful vocal.
Other tracks stand out for different reasons. ‘Heaven’s Masterpiece’ has a fine gypsy guitar solo, ‘I’m Coming Home’ is a straight raunchy barroom Blues, the title track has a great groove and sense of swing about it.
Cracking stuff, now I have to check out her back catalogue.
