This highly anticipated album brings together Christina Gaudet's music backed by her phenomenal band and featuring new songs by Allen Toussaint!
Christina Gaudet - Born in New Orleans, grew up in the famous French Quarter, listening to the funky soulful sound of Louis Armstrong, Fats Domino, Professor Longhair, Allen Toussaint, Dr. John, Irma Thomas, The Neville Brothers and Wynton Marsalis, to name a few. It was that "gumbo" of musical spice that seduced her into an unending love affair with music.
Known for their fiery performances and commanding stage presence, 'GAUDET' captivates audiences with a compelling fusion of excitement and great music. The Music is rooted in a gumbo of magical musical spice from New Orleans with a dash of New York salt for taste! A combination of searing guitar solos, great vocal melodies and lyrics, 'GAUDET' takes song presentation to new heights! "A Breath of Fresh Air..... Raw, like music should be."-The Project, NY
Christina Gaudet - Lead Vocals, Songwriter, Producer
John Zych - Keys, Organ, Percussion, Engineer
Eric Johnson - Drums, Percussion
Nate Stevens - Bass
Scott Thomas Ferreira - Lead Guitar Solos, Rhythm Guitar
Jim Seeley - Trumpet and Flugelhorn
Khalil Curtiss - Flute, Tenor and Soprano Saxophone
Shenole Latimer - Alto and Soprano Saxophone, Flute
Allison Rae Carlson - Backing Vocals
Gloria Carpenter - Backing Vocals
Daisuke Kodama - Art Director and Design
Matt Hanlon - Photography
Featuring: Songs by Allen Toussaint (Storyville, Go Girl Go, It Stopped)
Featuring: Gaudet/Strayblue Colloborations: (Yes) Guitar: Nick Anastasakis / Bass: George Athanasiadis / Drums: George Papazoglou
Produced by: Christina Gaudet/John Zych
Executive Producer: Christina Gaudet
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Review by Nick DeRiso
For all of her wandering, Allen Toussaint remains this touchstone for New Orleans-born vocalist Christina Gaudet. But Gaudet doesn’t let her lasting affinity for a hometown soul legend pigeonhole her wider ambitions on Solid, though it’s subtitled “Featuring new songs by Allen Toussaint.” She’s particularly adept at engrossing Cocteau Twins-inspired dream pop, an ethereal landscape that couldn’t be further away from the aromatic musical gumbo of the Big Easy’s famous French Quarter. If anything, Toussaint’s trio of oh-so funky compositions seems to gird Gaudet for this ongoing journey away from her native environs.
They met when Gaudet, having moved to New York City, shared the stage with Tony winner Ruth Brown in the Toussaint-penned 1986 Broadway production “Staggerlee.” Later, they recorded together at Toussaint’s Sea Saint Studios. Each time, Toussaint seemed to trigger something in Gaudet, whose theater work had taken her as far away as Denver, CO. She began exploring the rhythms and colors of her childhood, and found herself working with soul-stirring songwriters like Leiber and Stroller and Randy Newman in separate stage productions. When Hurricane Katrina roared ashore in 2005, devastating their native city, Gaudet decided to issue some of the 1990 Toussaint recordings from Sea Saint as a benefit effort. She’d come back around to Toussaint once more.
Their duet “Bring It On Home To Me” was a top iTunes seller in 2007, both in the U.S. and in Japan. Three albums later, Gaudet revisits that successful formula on Solid, her seventh full-length release. Toussaint contributes “Storyville,” “Go Girl Go” and “It Stopped.” Named for a turn-of-the-last-century red-light district in New Orleans, “Storyville” opens with a bawdy trumpet blast by Jim Seeley that sets a high-stepping tone for this fun story song. Drummer Eric Johnson and bassist Nate Stevens add a loping beat that strongly recalls the best moments from Toussaint’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame career, notably “Mother-In-Law.” Meanwhile, “Go Girl Go,” pushed along by a tick-tock piano signature from John Zych, echoes Gaudet’s own inspirational journey from the Deep South to the bright lights and big city stages of New York.
Gaudet flows effortlessly out of these grease-popping grooves into more contemplative numbers like “Waterfall of Tears” and “Free Life.” The first sounds at times like a mainstream crossover record in the style of Faith Hill, while the second echoes the sweetly empowering R&B of Donna Summer. “Finding My Soul” could be a 1970s-era groove-band jam, while Gaudet brilliantly updates the familiar slow-jam template for brokenhearted lament on “Mad as Hell” with a vocal that’s laced with wintry shimmer. This kind of compartmentalized variety would seem too mannered in the hands of a less-skilled group of musicians, but Gaudet’s group pulls it off. They are just as adept at the billowing rock opener “Alice” as they are with the ethereal, Cocteau-esque “Dreaming.”
That said, what sets Solid apart remains Gaudet’s deeply felt root system back to Louisiana.
The record finds its most consistent groove in a middle passage that begins with Toussaint’s “It Stopped,” a strutting tune that emboldens Gaudet with an uncommon swagger. Her repeated verse, in the style of a great old blues, underscores a resolute tale about the last lingerings of love after a surprising betrayal. From there, Gaudet cuts loose with her own “Carnival Mardi Gras.” She can do many things well, but here Gaudet sounds like she’s having fun, too.
A polished performer, Gaudet is goosed into this hooting grocery-list of signature elements from the New Orleans culture by a swaying second-line sound straight from the streets of her hometown. For all of her successes away from him, Toussaint remains a center point, like a family dinner table, where Gaudet can be true to her unvarnished self. There’s a reason their collaborations have produced many of the creative, and commercial, highpoints in Gaudet’s career.
She’s back home again.
Review by Nick DeRiso
Nick Deriso
Genres: Pop, Classic Rock, Jazz, Blues, Deep South, Cajun, Zydeco, Country, Gospel, Bluegrass
Nick Deriso, writing from various kudzu-covered locales across the Deep South, has explored jazz, blues, roots and rock music for Gannett News Service and USA Today, the Louisiana Folklife Program, AllAboutJazz.com, Blogcritics and for his own SomethingElseReviews.com. Over that 20-year career, he’s interviewed B.B. King, Terence Blanchard, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, Marcus Roberts and Aaron Neville, among many others. His live-music venue once hosted the likes of Guy Clark and Rick Danko of the Band. (James McMurtry stopped by, too.) He’s also been programmer and host for a series of programs across the same genres, both on public and commercial radio. So, you could call it an obsession.
Read more...