date: 16-Oct-2003
'GIMME SOME SWEET JELLY ROLL' ALBUM LAUNCH AND BLUESWAX REVIEW
Fiona's award winnning solo album, 'Gimme Some Sweet Jelly Roll' will be officially launched on Thurs. Oct. 16th at the newly refurbished Manchester Lane Jazz & Blues Bar, 234 Flinders Lane, Melbourne. The album was released in April and already has earned Fiona Album of the Year, Song of the Year, and Female Artist of the Year awards at the 2003 Victorian Blues Music Awards. Fiona will be joined by special guests Chris Wilson, Nick Charles and Alison Penney.
Bookings essential, doors open 7.00pm for dinner, show starts at 8.15pm. Tickets $40 dinner/show or $15 show only. Bookings ph. 9663-0630 or 0418 320103 or email backporch@fionaboyes.com
BLUESWAX REVIEW
BluesWax is the world's largest blues ezine, with over 70,000 subscribers.
Gimme Some…Sweet Jelly Roll, (09/03/03)
The Blues were born in the South and most of the masters of the genre come from the South. Now out of the South once again comes some of the purest, sassiest and smartest Blues yet. The Deep South. No, deeper, Melbourne. No, not Florida. The freshest smile in the Blues is on the face of Australian Fiona Boyes. And she has reason to smile, her music reeks of Delta Blues and she is amassing a massive resume culminating in her most recent release Gimme Some...Sweet Jelly Roll. This is old time, gut-busting acoustic Blues played by an attractive blond woman from way beyond the other side of the tracks. And boy does it work!
Fiona Boyes has literally burst onto the Blues scene. In 2001 she was named the "Female Blues Player of the Year" in Australia, in 2002 she stepped past gender to be named the "Blues Performer of the Year," and in 2003 she won the International Blues Challenge winner in the acoustic category. One listen to Sweet Jelly Roll will show that the acclaim is justified.
Boyes wrote or co-wrote most of the fourteen songs on this disc. Somehow it seems that if a young Ann Rabson had stuck with the guitar that she might playing and writing like this. Boyes' songs ring of authenticity and covers the gambit of Blues emotions and subjects: love, sex, drinking, relationships, leaving, the road and just plain having a good time, which it feels like Boyes is having on every single cut.
And while her voice gets amazingly down and dirty (while somehow seeming wholesome in a way that the masters kind of missed) it is Fiona's guitar playing that is the backbone of this fine disc. Boyes fingers pick out the familiar classic licks and then add enough ornamentation to fill a Christmas tree. Boyes delivers her music in relaxed, confident way that is way beyond her years. She is living proof of the universality of the Blues experience coming from around the world to give us back the raw blues of the Delta in a fresh personal way. The set opens with Boyes ripping on the resonator guitar and singing an autobiographical song, "The Preacher (and the Yellow Haired Girl)." "There ain't nothing but a yellow haired gal/Make a preacher lay his Bible down." This is followed up with Boyes on six-string acoustic accompanied by the big harmonica of Chris Wilson on "Devil Says...," a song about a woman taking things into her own hand.
Boyes adds mandolin (Nick Charles) and percussion by Paula Dowse to roll out "Ain't No Jelly Roll In Heaven." As with many of Boyes' songs, this one has a timeless nature that wouldn't cause surprise to find them on a collection of hundred-year-old acoustic Blues classics. There is often some of the double entendre of Memphis Minnie and her peers in the lyrics. In fact she throws in Minnie's "I'm In Love Again" next and another instrumental, "In Love Again" later. Another fine cover is Walter Bullock's and Richard Whiting's classic "When Did You Leave Heaven."
Boyes gets a little down with the upbeat lounge Blues piano (Alison Penney) and guitar duet "Drink To Your Health." "I'm gonna drink to my health, baby-until I ruin my own." In the same vein we go back to the piano lounge on "It's You."
One of Boyes' fun compositions is the rollicking story of a guy with some problems in "How'd You Want Your Business Done?" Some of the best playing comes on the instrumental cuts, the first with harmonica by Kaz Dalla Rosa on "Harmonica Rag" and the second on with percussion on "Catfish Fiesta."
The album closes with a couple of the best cuts. Boyes delivers how own "Young Rider Blues" in large style. "Your mama bound to kill me/If she knew what I was doing round here." The closer is a resonator and harp duet, "Light At The End Of The Road." "The blues gonna set you free/There's a light at the end of the road."
Fiona Boyes is wonderfully refreshing and her down-home Blues style carries on the torch of Country acoustic Blues in fine fashion. This writer cannot wait to see one of the her live shows which I have heard so much about. It would seem that the future of this old-time music is in good hands in the South. The Deep South.
Michael Flynn is a writer and musician in the Baltimore area.