“The band has stewed up a rolicking good time…”
Blue Marquee is the Canadian duo of A.W. Cardinal on vocals and guitar and Jasmine Colette on vocals and upright bass. They are joined on this effort by New Orleans based musicians including B. C. Coogan on piano, Danny Abrams on baritone sax, Jon Atkinson on harmonica, and Nicholas Solnick and Brett Gallo on drums. This disc follows the band's massively successful Scream, Holler & Howl, which took home the prestigious JUNO Award for Best Blues Album of the Year and ran the table at the Maple Blues Awards for album of the Year, Songwriter of the Year, Acoustic Act of the Year, and Entertainer of the Year.
Recorded over the course of only two days with the sessions separated by a year, the disc has an immediacy that belies its long gestation. With tracks by the likes of Memphis Minnie, Black Rat Swing, Leadbelly, Ain't Going Down, Charlie Patton, Shake It and Break it, and Bo Carter, Let's Get Drunk Again, as well as several originals, the band has stewed up a rollicking good time: witness the saucy sax solo on Black Rat Swing and the driving piano on Ain't Going Down.
Elsewhere they get into a jump/swing jug band groove that would fit neatly on a Squirrel Nut Zippers or Tuba Skinny disc. Cardinal and Colette alternate vocals from track to track and often harmonize and trade verses with the ease that comes from years performing together.
The original Trickster Coyote and Lonnie Johnson's Got the Blues So Bad hue closer to the blues than some of the other cuts with Cardinal's tough vocals and guitar setting the stage for Atkinson's harmonica fills. The lights get turned low on What I Wouldn't Do where Coogan and Abrams trade slinky solos. The oft covered Saint James Infirmary finds Cardinal channeling Tom Wait's gravel infused vocals over a spare instrumental backdrop that frees the tune from its familiarity. A nice change up from the guitar centered blues rock that makes up much of today's blues scene.
- Smitty. AKA Mark Smith, Capital Area Blues Society News