Carly Harvey – Kamama | Album Review

Carly Harvey – Kamama

Do Good Records

www.carlyharvey.com

11 songs – 36 minutes

Honeyed alto Carly Harvey may be the reining queen of the Washington, D.C., blues scene but she offers up far more than the blues on this interesting, hard-to-define and deeply personal debut set.  Sharing African-American and Indigenous roots, she fuses both cultures and transports them back to their roots with a style she brands as “native scat” — a contemporary mix of blues, funk, jazz and much, much more.

A dynamic performer with a confident, sassy swagger and multi-octave range, Carly is descended from members of the Eastern Band Tsalagi and Tuscarora nations as well as a seven-time nominee in the D.C. Blues Society’s Wammie Awards, winning the organization’s band-of-the-year trophy once. She and her backing group have also come out on top in three of its annual battle-of-the-bands competition

An all-original effort chockful of pentatonic melodies common to the lullabies, flute music and dances of her Indigenous and Delta-based forebears, Harvey co-produced this CD with Mark Kenneth Williams. She’s backed by Jonathan Sloane on guitar, Wes Lanich and Daniel Clarke on keys, Mike Tony Echols, Stan Hurley and Patrick Thornton on bass and Coleman Williams, Dave Blessman, Leland Nakamura and Mark Williams on drums throughout with Danny Davis, Mario D’Ambrosio and Kevin Cerovich composing the horn section.

It’s a star-studded effort, too. Joe Louis Walker guests on guitar, Doug Woolverton on trumpet and  Dave Keller provides guitar and vocals. Annika Chambers-DesLauriers shares the mic on one tune, and Walking Eagle — best known for his appearance on The Voice — sits in on guitar, percussion, flute on backing vocals on four cuts. And Dana Nearing lends her voice to three others.

You know you’re in for something different from the opening bars of “Native Scat.” It’s a haunting number fueled by Walking Eagle’s slide-guitar work. It works in magical call-and-response fashion with Harvey’s chanting. Joe Louis comes onboard next for the driving, uptempo blues, “Mean Old Woman.” It finds Carly echoing the words of a lover, who tells her: “All I want to do is argue all the time” and that he can’t take it anymore. But, she notes, what he didn’t say was that “he was sneakin’ out the backdoor.” The stop-time section mid-tune and Joe’s discordant solo rock.

The pace slows at the open of the torch song, “Misery,” which finds Harvey still fretting over her man and feeling that “sometimes livin’ with you just ain’t livin’ at all.” Her pain is palpable – as is her commitment to leave — driven home by Sloane’s six-string, but softened somewhat by the sweet fills by the keys and horn section. The feel continues continues with “She Ain’t Me,” which opens as a medium-paced shuffle and builds in intensity as Carly deals with the loneliness she feels whenever her man’s other woman comes around.

A Latin-flavored horn flourish from Woolverton instantly changes the mood for the sweet “Please Do That to Me,” which would appeal to anyone who loves jazzy tunes that echo ’50s café society jams. While confessing she’s two different women – modest outside and something else entirely when the doors are closed, Harvey tells a lover that she knows he’s got “tricks up his sleeve, that he’s kinky and implores him: “Don’t hold out on me.”

It eases into “Let Me Go,” a bittersweet number in which Harvey finds herself moving on and shedding a “box of memories” from a failed romance. Clarke’s keys dominate the open of the ballad, “Take Your Love,” as Carly realizes she’s been played for a fool and there’s no happy ending this time. Another chant filled pleaser, “Kamama,” follows before Annika and Keller join forces for the powerful “Human Too,” which includes more chants and Native American drumbeats and wonders why some folks are so afraid of people who look different than they do.

“Worth Waiting For” finds Harvey unwilling to fuss or fight with her man because he walked out the door. But she acknowledges that the relationship was great when it was right and offers him one more chance to make it right. Walking Eagle’s flute powers a reprise of “Native Scat” to close.

Sure, there’s plenty of emotional upheaval here. But I’m sure you’ll love it. Give Carly a chance. She’s definitely a star on the rise.

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