Greg Nagy – The Real You
Self-release
11 songs – 43 minutes
Listening to The Real You is a curious experience if, like this reviewer, you haven’t come across Greg Nagy before. It’s a superb collection of 11 classy blues, soul, R’n’B and rock songs, beautifully recorded, with top drawer musicianship, all under-pining Nagy’s gorgeous blue-eyed soul vocals. Appreciation for and enjoyment of the music is counter-balanced by an insistent question: how the heck isn’t this artist better known?
The Real You is Nagy’s fourth release and is an absolute belter. Featuring a great mix of five originals and some wildly unexpected covers, the album is a delight from start to finish. It opens with the uplifting soul of the title track, written by organist Jim Alfredson, who used to play in Root Doctor with Nagy, before leaping into Willie Brown’s “Mississippi Blues” that features Nagy on acoustic guitar, Ray Goodman on Dobro and Peter Mudcat Ward on harmonica. Nagy’s soaring vocals take center stage on a stunning re-imagination of Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” that seizes and illuminates the soul at the heart of the song. It also contains an object lesson in how to craft a short, memorable yet melodic guitar solo.
Larry McCray’s always on point lead guitar is a highlight of the Robert Cray-esque blues-soul of “Never Mine”, before Bob Seger’s “Come To Poppa” is given a stripped-down, slowed-down, groove-focused re-awakening and The Beatles’ “Something” becomes a moving duet with Thornetta Davis while Josh Ford lets George Harrison’s original guitar melodies serve as a launch pad to fire off a series of potent solos that are all entirely his own.
Nagy uses a variety of musicians on The Real You with a core band of Nagy himself on guitars and vocals, Ford on guitars (and sometimes percussion and vibraphone), Dale Gris on organ, clav and Fender Rhodes, John Barron on bass and Todd Glasson on drums. They are joined at various times by Lynne Calloway on backing vocals, Keith Kaminski on saxophones, Walter White on brass, Richard Curran on strings, and Larry McCray and Bobby Murray on lead guitar.
Nagy’s instrumental shuffle “Cornell Ala King” is a loving tribute to both BB King and the great Cornell Dupree whilst another original, “Baby, What Took Your Love From Me” mines from the heart of the apparently inexhaustible seam of great soul-blues songs. “Where Do We” starts out as an acoustic blues before cleverly morphing into a blues-rock song with hints of Led Zep (albeit with less sloppy guitar from Bobby Murrary) and an ear-worm of a falsetto verse closing line.
Nagy accompanies himself on just a finger-picked acoustic guitar on “All I Need (Is You)” before the album closes with Brandi Carlile’s uplifting ode to society’s marginalized, “The Joke” with aching piano.
Produced, recorded and engineered by Nagy and Ford at Sound Shop Studio, Macomb MI, The Real You is an absolute delight from first note to last. Greg Nagy really should be better known. Highly recommended.
