Dede Priest & Johnny Clark’s Outlaws – Best Pieces
Creeping Fig Records
10 Tracks – 45 Minutes
Dede Priest started writing her own songs and singing as a very young child. She also studied classical violin, but frequently strummed it like a guitar. As she grew older, she started singing and playing guitar and violin. She moved to Austin, Texas to attend the University of Texas where she received a degree in Philosophy. But the active music scene of Austin drew her in. She started performing regularly and was quickly recognized as a “Modern Day Blues Queen”. She released her first solo album, Candy Moon in 2007. She has shared the stage with Clarence Gatemouth Brown, Leon Russell and Tommy Shannon from Double Trouble and has gained international recognition from her subsequent releases and touring.
In 2019, she joined with Johnny Clark’s Outlaws as her band, resulting in the album, Crocuses from Ashes. This album is their third collaboration. Dede continues to perform the lead vocals and plays guitar and violin. The band consists of Johnny Clark on vocals and guitar, Ray Oostenrijk on bass and Leon Toonen on drums.
The album consists of nine original songs and one cover starting with “Desert Garden”, Dede describes a place “out in the desert, under the red sun in the hot sand on the cliff with red rock ashes”, where there are red flowers blooming. Dede and Johnny discuss that it is “Never Too Late to Go to Nashville” as he says, “I am just a lonely cowboy with the blues”. “Boat In the Attic” has a slightly psychedelic fuzzed guitar backing Dede as she sings “Jesus is my Saviour” and moves into an interesting guitar run.
“Best Pieces” opens with a slow instrumental and moves into Dede declaring that she is “going out into the wilder and I feel without hate, I’m going to hide myself” and going to find a “perpetual state of positivity… my best self”. Johnny’s growling vocal leads a song that seems fresh out of an old time western where he declares he is going to break my “Rusty Cage” “and run”. Dede pulls out her violin for the story of “Desdemona & Othello”.
Dede’s violin blends with Johnny’s slide guitar on “Blade of Grass”. A cover of Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s 1956 song, “99-1/2 Won’t Do” lets Dede provide the vocals in a facsimile of the original, but then moves into Johnny’s growling vocal and Dede shifting to a haunting violin. “In This Lifetime” moves into a soulful blues as Dede declares that all she needs to do “is to be good to you”. The album concludes with “Tender Rain”, a soft, soulful song with an acoustic guitar accompaniment and Dede’s crying violin as Dede sings, “I am alright as I am on this fast train…I have left everything behind”.
The album shifts and turns from soul, gospel, country, or blues all with a mix of psychedelia and the appealing sound of Dede’s violin. Johnny’s guitar shifts to the mood of each song. Dede moves into differing vocal styles meeting the lyrical direction of each song utilizing a touch of Dolly Parton, a slightly higher pitched Janis Joplin, or a drop back to a 1960’s style soul.
