| CD REVIEW |
| This CD leans more towards pop with a jazz-funk edge than blues, and while "Stickshift Annie" Eastwood's vocals are pleasant enough in a Carly Simon/Diana Krall kind of way, they're certainly not typical of the blues genre. The instrumentation is obviously at a professional level but the production is fairly lightweight. The "Overdrive" section is comprised of Ian Waldie on guitar, slide and vocals, Ed Martinez on guitar, Jack Kinney on bass and vocals, Carl Jackson on drums (and percussion on the title track), and James Middlefield on harmonica and vocals. Stickshift Annie provides percussion and lead vocals. The compositions, six written by Ms. Eastwood, and four by Ian Waldie, are solid enough and actually quite catchy, especially "I Don�t Know", with the snappy harmonica and bass breaks, and "Out of Her Mind". The torch song, "Troubled Fool", is very appealing both vocally and instrumentally, with some very tasteful jazz guitar and blues harp. Annie gets saucily feminist on "Moody Woman Blues", and there's some heavy slide guitar battling going on with harmonica for supremacy on "Burning Up", Annie's barrelhouse strut about heating up other things besides food! "Miss Phyllis" is a catchy enough little shuffle but with quirky vocal phrasing about a promiscuous woman. "Stand Up for Something", also composed by Annie, appears to be about a woman leaving her family for the freedom of the highway, but the lyrics are a bit vague about what she's standing up for. There's some really nice bass guitar in "Family Matters", a heartfelt tribute to Annie's mother, which again falls more into the jazz mould than blues. The title track, "Out of Her Mind", composed by Waldie, is very entertaining for its funky chorus, and "In My Slipper" is a swingin' blues-rocker, but the lyrics don't always flow smoothly through it. Stickshift Annie has been nominated under the Best Female Vocalist category, along with Nicole Fournier, Dana Lupinacci and Patti Allen, in the Best of the Blues (BB) Awards by the Washington Blues Society, to take place on April 29/02 at the King Cat Theatre in Seattle. Should be an interesting result! By D.D. Rocker [N.B. Unfortunately for Stickshift Annie, Patti Allen won the award.] |
| OUT OF HER MIND - STICKSHIFT ANNIE AND THE OVERDRIVE |
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