Album Notes

Park House Jam is a six-member band that "walks a crooked line between blues and jazz, falling off to one side or another." They perform "original material and sophisticated arrangements of cover tunes" featuring Marianne Matheny-Katz's "riveting vocals." Evolving from their birth as a local house band, which occasionally performed for friends, they have developed a loyal and enthusiastic regional following because of their unique, danceable sound."

We hope you like what you hear.

REVIEWER: JAMES NASH
PUBLICATION: MUSIC MONTHLY - FEBRUARY 2004

This is the maiden effort of Park House Jam. The first tune put me in a "Dangerous Mood," ecstatic with expectation. This number jumped off the turntable. What an excellent opening song. There was a good balance of singers, songs, players, tempos, and moods throughout the CD.

Ms. Marianne Matheny-Katz riveted my attention from her first line reading. Like many memorable jazz singers, her voice has the flexibility of a beautiful horn. Think Billie Holiday and Bessie Smith. Where others try to affect a blues-jazz persona, she nails it naturally, and feels it to the bottom of her diaphragm. Dennis Casey matched her stride for stride when his vocal and guitar turns came. Larry Boy Pratt's harmonica choruses and accents helped set the special mood. This might have been one of the best leadoff tunes of a regional recording I've ever heard - a band in full boogie bloom, selling their stuff for all it's worth.

"Passion Song" featured Ms. M-K in fine voice. She has a lovely instrument, at moments here like a slightly higher-pitched Sarah Vaughn. Larry Boy had a good harp solo, and Dennis Casey's acoustic guitar was superb

The upbeat "Kidney Stew Blues" featured Larry Boy singing and playing the kind of old blues swing that best suited his harp tone.

"Green Blues" is an original, penned by Casey and Pratt, and a wonderfully witty tune, with lines like: "You know my baby loves the environment more than she loves me..../She'd rather go outside and hug a tree." What a great, funny line. This tune rocked me slowly, with a fully realized interplay - from Dennis' vocal, to his acoustic guitar, to McCormick's piano-tonk, to Larry Boy's perfect tone.

"Late At Night" featured some superb vocal weavings, along with McCormick's accordion accompaniment complementing Casey's slick slidework.

"A Little Sugar" was Marianne's horn-herald call for some gen-you-whine "sweetness down in my soul." But how that woman could be lacking anything in her soul, I don't know.

The opening to a cover of "Runaway" gave me chills. It began with a beautiful organ passage, followed by the harp piping like Sidney Bechet, and then a relentless, pulsing guitar riff. I again have to note the wonderful uniqueness of Ms. M-K's voice. She has infused some recognizable influences, and rather than mere mimicry or vocal plagiarism, she has incorporated them as shadings and colors of herself, not like many others trying to sing like a clone of someone else.

Billie Holiday's "Fine and Mellow" ended the CD on a pleasant note of afterglow; guitar, piano and harmonica solos in fine (and mellow) form.

I'm glad and grateful Park House Jam evolved from a limited to full exposure. Having now been "fully exposed" to them on record, I must say that I am better and happier for it. And the musical region is richer and stronger for having their real, not imitation, rhythm and jazz blues among us. Park House jams!