Al
Basile Creates New Roots Music Masterpiece with B’s Expression, Due
September 18 on Sweetspot Records
Latest
Release Is Most-Fully Realized Album Yet
RUMFORD, RI – Singer/songwriter/cornetist Al Basile
announces a September 18 release date for B’s Expression, the new
CD from the “Bard of the Blues,” distributed nationally by City Hall Records.
Produced by long-time friend Duke Robillard and recorded at Lakewest Recording
Studio in West Greenwich, Rhode Island, B’s Expression features
13 all-original Al Basile songs, backed by a simpatico band that includes Duke Robillard – guitars; Mark Teixeira –
drums; Bruce Bears – keyboards; Brad Hallen – bass; Doug James – tenor and
baritone sax; and Carl Querfurth – trombone.
An original member of the seminal roots
music group, Roomful of Blues, Al Basile is a multiple Blues Music Award
nominee. He’s written songs for and/or appeared on over 10 Duke Robillard
albums, including the Grammy nominated Guitar Groove-a-Rama and Stomp!
The Blues Tonight. His songs have also been recorded by such other
blues giants as Ruth Brown and Johnny Rawls.
Following up the critical
success of Basile’s last CD, Woke
Up in Memphis (2014), the
tracks on B’s Expression are
firmly rooted in the blues and soul styles of the Memphis sound epitomized by
Stax and Hi Records, while offering up a palette of songs that showcase his
unique ability as a wordsmith. A widely published poet as well as songwriter,
Basile has a way with words not normally heard in roots music. A
testament to his scholarly credits, at one point last winter he had work
in five different poetry magazines, simultaneously. He’s also given talks on
songwriting and metric poetry writing at Boston University's Editorial
Institute and the West Chester Poetry Conference.
“It’s
pertinent to my branching out as a writer,” says Basile, “that aside from getting
a song on Johnny Rawls’ last CD, I’ve been writing custom songs for New Jump
Blues, a West Coast band that advertises itself as jump blues and calypso, and
has three singers, one of whom is actor Antonio Fargas (“Huggy Bear” from the
classic Starsky and Hutch TV show in the 1970s and a bunch of
“Blaxploitation” films in the ‘70s/’80s). They put out a CD a year ago and
followed it up by playing the Playboy Jazz Festival. Recently, they shot a
video of a song I wrote for them for COZI-TV, an NBC affiliated network that
shows vintage ‘60s-‘80s television fare. The stuff I write for that band is in
classic R&B style, but it’s tailored to the three singers, who assume
characters and do a kind of stage show where they sing and dance. Writing for
them is a lot like writing for musical theater, which I started doing way back
when I wrote musicals at Brown University, except in an R&B style.”
During the songwriting phase
of B’s Expression, Basile also did something he hasn’t done
before on any of his solo recordings. “While I was writing these songs, I also
came up with the arrangements for each of them that I wanted to follow once we
got in the studio,” he stresses. “In the past, I’d write the songs and take
them into the studio and work out the arrangements with all the musicians who
played on the sessions. The result is that this new CD is my most fully-
realized album yet.”
While all of the songs on B’s
Expression have a story behind their creation, it’s worth pointing out
instances for Basile’s inspiration of several of them as listed in the liner
notes:
“Answer Me” - “‘Silence is the unbearable repartee’ is
variously attributed to Chesterton, Dickens, and Alexander Theroux. Whoever
said it first, this song is an attempt to bear the silence of others by giving
a little context to a plea for a response. Sometimes it feels like no one is ever
going to answer!”
“Don't You Ever Get Tired of Being Right?” – “I wrote
this with the jump blues style of Louis Jordan in mind and then changed the
groove for this version. The lyric still sports his brand of humor, I think –
blues humor can take all kinds of stylistic changes on the musical side (see
any Johnny “Guitar” Watson remake, for example).”
“I Didn’t Come Here to Lie” – “Some straight talk to a friend
who needs to hear it – but stopping short of judgement. There is always
something we can't know about another, no matter how much we do know. We sure
like to draw conclusions, though – with or without sufficient evidence.”
“It Wasn’t That Good” – “You could say this was inspired by
James Brown's After You Done It. Sometimes songs really do inspire other
songs. But sometimes even someone you’ve chased for a long time turns out to be
what Gertrude Stein said about Cleveland. Romantically speaking, of course.”
“Somethin’s Missing” – “This is my take on the Ellington It
Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing) theme. Swing is a groove,
the first one I ever really loved. But there are others that have come along
since, and if you don't have one – you better have another. Can’t even make
coffee without one.”
“Whole Lot of Good Good Lovin’” – “No, it's not Good
Lovin’ and it's not Whole Lotta Love. It’s not even Fats’ Whole
Lotta Lovin’ or JB's Good Good Lovin’. But there’s been bragging in
blues since forever, and if the shoe fits....”
“You Know – You Don't Know” – “The idea for this started back
in the Roomful of Blues days; when we first worked with Cleanhead Vinson, he
looked at us thoughtfully one day and murmured, ‘You know...you don't know. You
know...you don't know.’ Exactly what he meant is anybody’s guess, but I took
the phrase and applied it to the dramatic situation that's described in the
lyric. This is an example of a song allowing someone to say something he
couldn’t otherwise put into words.”
