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Marcia Ball's music—jook-joint blues—doesn't require deep scrutiny or focused analysis, and that is a compliment. What you hear is what you get. And what you hear is always excellent. Analysis would be missing the point: the point being the Ball simply plays and sings the blues, whether rollicking or relaxed, with her heart and soul on the line, every song out. She can be unfettered, even unhinged, but always soulful, always true to her game, which is to make you jump and shout and feel. Feel something; isn't that the Blues?
Her first studio release in five years, Peace, Love & BBQ (Alligator Records) is blues anarchy—the opening track, "Party Town," for example; but also blues lament, as in, among others, "Where Do You Go?" Which is to say Peace, Love & BBQ represents Marcia Ball's versatility as well as anything she has ever released. That includes Hot Tamale Baby and Let Me Play with Your Poodle, two Marcia Ball essentials.
Marcia Ball needs no support, of course, but how canny to invite certain friends to join in: Dr. John (on the superb "I'll Never Be Free"), Terrance Simien (truly an artist in need of an audience), and another blues queen, Tracy Nelson. Throw in rambunctious horn arrangements, pedal steel when you need it, accordion obviously, and you have a bluesy Cajun-like mix of holler and shout and lament that makes Marcia Ball's brand of blues timeless.
Ball either wrote or co-authored eight of the thirteen songs here. She is all over this album, especially regarding her song writing, in a way that she has not been in the last few outings. Those, sadly, have been sparse: only five discs in the last 10 years, and one of those a live recording (Live! Down the Road), also on Alligator.
Given that analysis is useless, check out her song selection and ordering. "Party Town" kicks off Peace, Love & BBQ in grand trumpet-heavy style: "Just when you think the party's over/Another one has begun…New Orleans is a party town." Indeed.
Then comes the title track, which requires no explanation. It represents, as Ball says in an introduction to the song on video, the "three things I love." Don't we all?
There's also a slightly gothic piece, "Miracle in Knoxville," penned solely by Ms Ball. It's about religion and revival and the devil intervening in, and causing, an evangelist's death. It's sardonic and subversive—whacking a little chink off our typical notions of religious fervor.
Especially notable is Ball's song "Where Do You Go," co-written with Tracy Nelson, about not only Katrina but also its devastations, which persist some three year later—homelessness and poverty and abject loss that can never be reclaimed. Where do you go, indeed?
Then along comes Dr. John and lament pursues a different path: "I'll never be free of your smile so tender/The sweet surrender in your eyes/How can I be free/When I still remember how you thrill me with a sigh?" Then Dr. John: "Each kiss I gave to you/Made me a slave to you."
If you want to hear what blues piano is all about, it's right here in "I'll Never Be Free." Listen carefully and you may never be free of Ms Ball's brand of woozy and dolorous electric piano blues: Saturday night blues when you pull someone close, smell their sweat and seduction, clutch for a slow dance, and have no idea about tomorrow or anything but that particular moment and what you feel and what you suspect will never last because how could it?
To close things out Ball covers Bill Withers' "I Wish You Well." It's a sort of "Forever Young" for lovers and friends and family. Its vibe is blues-gospel and it elevates Peace, Love & BBQ to the sublime.
Peace, Love & BBQ was produced, elegantly and light-handedly, by Stephen Bruton, who has worked with the likes of Bonnie Raitt, Willie Nelson, and Patty Loveless—a trinity Marcia Ball certainly belongs among. |
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