Chris O’Leary Band – Wait­ing For The Phone To Ring
Viz­ztone
www.thechrisolearyband.com
13 tracks; 54.11 minutes

The leg­ends of “the dif­fi­cult sec­ond album” album are well doc­u­ment­ed but the Chris O’Leary Band has tak­en it in their stride. First album “Mr Used To Be” won many acco­lades and helped the band to win a Blues Blast Award for best new artist debut release (against some strong oppo­si­tion) but the new album may be even stronger. Pro­duced by Dave Gross, Chris wrote all the songs and the core band remains unchanged: Chris on vocals and harp, Chris Vitarel­lo on gui­tar and vocals, Frank Ingrao on bass, Willa McCarthy on vocals, Sean McCarthy on drums, Chris de Francesco on tenor and Andy Stahl on bari­tone. Addi­tion­al musi­cians include Jere­my Baum on key­boards, Dave Gross on gui­tar, drums and per­cus­sion, Michael Bram on drums and per­cus­sion, Scot Hor­nick on upright bass and Vin­ny Nobile on trombone.

Chris is a a strong harp play­er and a good singer whose voice adapts well to dif­fer­ent styles. The band sets out its stall on open­er “Give It” with its insis­tent drum beat, ring­ing gui­tars and harp well sup­port­ed by the horns and back­ing vocals. “With­out You” opens with a strong horn back­ing and a stop-start rhythm that presents Chris’ vocal very well. “Louisiana Woman” has a touch of the swamps in its tone and a despair­ing lyric about how down on his luck Chris is: “No mohair suit, spec­ta­tor shoes; tat­toos across my knuck­les say­ing ‘born to lose’; I got a $5 dol­lar hair­cut, a dol­lar 50 comb, a half can of cof­fee, but I’m going home alone”. That Louisiana woman is not play­ing ball!

The pace drops for “Pic­tures Of You”, a bal­lad in New Orleans style with plen­ty of piano and low horn riffs. Chris does a great job on vocals here and Chris Vitarel­lo deliv­ers an excel­lent solo spot on gui­tar. “Hole In My Head” is a well-writ­ten song with amus­ing lyrics — “First time you left me, shame on you; sec­ond time you left me, shame on me too; third time I hear the door slam I know what to do, get myself a good girl, for­get about you, I need you like a hole in my head” — and an excel­lent tenor solo. The title track has a funky NO beat and a spo­ken vocal which affords the oppor­tu­ni­ty for Chris to sound a lit­tle like Tom Waits.

“Jeal­ous Heart­ed Man” sounds like a lost Mud­dy Waters song with a per­sis­tent harp riff and anoth­er strong vocal per­for­mance. “Pock­ets Are Full” again cap­tures that NO feel, par­tic­u­lar­ly the horns on a song that exem­pli­fies the old say­ing that mon­ey can’t buy love: “It’s been a year today since you been gone. All the mon­ey I made ain’t gonna bring you home. My prospects aren’t good ‘cos our love has end­ed. Our pock­ets are full but our hearts are emp­ty.” There then fol­lows a run of sin­gle word titles: I par­tic­u­lar­ly liked “Trou­ble”, an uptem­po stom­per with every­thing going on: hot horns, rock and roll gui­tar, strong vocals and har­monies and an excit­ing harp solo to top it off. “Ques­tions” returns to NO with a gen­tle paced rock­er: piano led with great horn accom­pa­ni­ment and sec­ond line drums, but spe­cial men­tion to Chris Vitarello’s shim­mer­ing slide gui­tar. “His­to­ry” is the longest cut on the album and has a very nice, funky horn riff at its core, includ­ing a great trom­bone solo. The ‘his­to­ry’ in ques­tion fol­lows sev­er­al famous lovers of the past, start­ing with Adam and Eve and con­clud­ing that Chris and his cur­rent lover will them­selves make his­to­ry! Chris’ vocal here is excel­lent, remind­ing me of Room­ful Of Blues’ for­mer singer Mac Odom.

“377‑9189” is one of those late night num­bers, all qui­et horn riffs and tin­kling piano. Chris stretch­es out on an extend­ed harp solo tak­en at slow and melod­ic pace. Final track “The Prince” brings the pace back up with a swing­ing num­ber which lyri­cal­ly repris­es the old fairy tale about kiss­ing a frog to return him to his prop­er state as a prince.

When I reviewed “Mr Used To Be” in 2010 I said that Chris O’Leary was a name to watch. This time round I can be sure that this CD will con­sol­i­date the ris­ing rep­u­ta­tion of this band on the cur­rent scene. Recommended.

–Review by John Mitchell in Blues Blast Mag­a­zine, Octo­ber 26, 2012. Review­er John Mitchell is a blues enthu­si­ast based in the UK. He also trav­els to the States most years to see live blues music.