Russ Green – Stone Cold
Overton Music
10 songs – 50 minutes
Stone Cold is Russ Green’s sophomore effort, a long-awaited follow-up to his acclaimed 2018 debut, City Soul. Long story short: let’s hope we don’t have to wait eight years for his next release. Stone Cold is a serious statement of intent, a muscular, powerful slab of modern Chicago blues and blues-rock, centred around Green’s soul-soaked voice, his edge-of-abandon harmonica playing and his inventive, intelligent songs.
Interestingly, the album opens with “Lint Redux”, a dirtier, grimier, updated version of “Lint In My Pocket” from his debut album. And it’s immediately apparent that, while Green is rightly acclaimed as a harmonica maestro, his voice is as important as his harp on this release. Soulful, deep and powerful, his vocals imbue his songs with a rare emotional depth and complexity. It helps that his band is so good, so kudos to guitarists Giles Corey and Vince Agwada; Vic Jackson on bass; Felix “D-Kat” Pollard on drums and Joe Monroe on keyboards.
Given that Green cites Jimi Hendrix as a primary influence, it is perhaps not surprising that Stone Cold has some rockier moments. The title track is a roaring tale of infidelity, with Munroe’s organ nodding towards some of Jon Lord’s work in early Deep Purple, on which Green sings “Early one Sunday morning, I went down to the river to see what I could see. I heard my baby tell the preacher man that she loves everybody but me….” This is however balanced against the likes of “Waitin’ On You”, where Monroe provides a neat cod-reggae backing that blends perfectly with Corey’s Steve Cropper-esque guitar lines on one of the album highlights.
Green writes well-structured songs which are burnished by his harmonica playing, rather than the songs being an excuse for Green to show off. His playing on the minor key slow blues of “I Believe” is especially outstanding. The primarily acoustic, “Nobody Knows”, is a relaxed shuffle with an unusual chord progression with a lovely message of love, while “Need You So Bad” has just a hint of jazz in some of Monroe’s chords and Green’s harp lines. “Troubled World” is a classic Chicago uptown shuffle while the wild closing track, “Boogie Joint” does exactly what it says on the tin as Green recalls “Thinking about how blues used to be, seven nights a week and all night long.” Agwada’s dirty slide guitar meshes perfectly with Green’s harp.
Stone Cold was produced by Green and superbly recorded, mixed and mastered by Rick Barnes at Rax Trax Recording, in Chicago. It’s a cracking release and well worth investigating.
