Eden Brent – Getaway Blues
Yellow Dog Records YDR 2716
9 songs – 39 minutes
It’s been a decade since two-fisted keyboard player/tunesmith Eden Brent has released an album, but she hasn’t lost a beat and returns in style with this CD. It’s a powerful set that mixes songs laced with familiar double-entendre messages and intimate ballads that will leave you yearning for more.
Based out of Greenville, Miss., where she was born into a family of riverboat captains and guitarists, Brent’s mother was a big band singer and fashion model, and Eden grew up exposed to the giants of the blues world at the city’s annual Mississippi Delta Blues & Heritage Festival. A classically trained pianist and vocalist, she was mentored by the great Abie “Boogaloo” Ames for 20 years before winning the solo/duo division of the International Blues Challenge in 2006.
A six-time nominee and one-time winner of the Pinetop Perkins Award as the Blues Music Awards piano player of the year, Brent’s also taken home trophies for acoustic artist and acoustic album honors, and she’s been a finalist for traditional female vocalist, best new artist and more. And this direct, unadorned treasure will probably put her in line for more.
Recorded in London, mixed in Memphis and mastered in New Jersey, Gateway Blues is a collaboration between Eden and her British-born producer husband, Bob Dowell, who also delivers bass throughout. They’re supported by a pair of Dowell’s former bandmates: guitarist Rob Updegraff and drummer Pat Levett.
“Getaway Blues” pulls out of the station in true barrelhouse style as Brent emulates the chugging of a railroad train and whistle with her right hand as her warm voice lightheartedly celebrates her departure from a troubled relationship. The rhythm section drives home the message, and Updegraff provides accents throughout. The languorous “Watch the World Go By” flows like the river as Eden describes feeling sorry for herself because of some unspoken affront by a lover, powers a glass of whiskey and contemplates as the water flows.
Inspired by Jimmy Reed’s “Baby, What You Want Me to Do,” “What You Want” adopts an uptempo New Orleans-flavored rhumba beat to follow and brighten the mood as Brent promises to give her man everything and anything she can to make him happy before she delivers the intimate, simple and country-flavored “You on My Mind,” a sweet ballad penned by Dowell that celebrates dark clouds and rain “as long as you’re around.”
Delivered from the standpoint of the “other woman” who realizes the man she’s with is there for a good time and nothing else, the propulsive, contemporary blues, “He Talks About You,” is up next. The singer reassures the wife that – even though her hubby’s strays – it’s impossible to take his place because the wife is always on his mind, something that will last as long as she’s wearing her wedding ring. The Big Easy beat returns in “Just Because I Love You,” which carries forward the message, stating that, as long as the couple’s together, everything will be okay.
The ballad “Mississippi River Got Me Crying” delivers the feel of life on the river on a steamy summer night before the slow-and-easy “Rust” uses metaphors to describe the closeness of her man in an environment where even rust can’t stop a train from rolling down the tracks. The album closes with the medium-tempo “Gas Pumping Man,” honoring the grease monkeys who fill tanks and keep drivers on the road.
Getaway Blues is as sweet as Eden Brent’s voice. A road trip to happiness awaits in the grooves here.
