Joanne Lurgio sings and plays a heartfelt collection of honky tonk roots tunes on her latest CD Nothing Remains The Same. Lurgio not only has a beautifully strong voice to display. She is a crafty songwriter with a knack for keeping country roots music fun while also stepping out into classy, meaning of life ballads that make you feel what she was feeling when she wrote it.
“Drink It In” finds Lurgio strutting herself stuff, her voice swinging with verve around the country beat. She sings with a forceful personality and when her steel guitar player John Heinrich picks off his notes, you’re inside a heavenly sound where all the musical colors have just the right place in the song.
“True Love” gets some of its swagger from saxophone playing Heinrich’s unfurling bursts of talent. It his hard to tell which instrument, steel guitar or sax, is Heinrich’s main passion as he plays both with complete mastery. Lurgio is lucky to have this man on board. Yet, Lurgio keeps things in her own personality by mustering up a gust of voice from seemingly out of nowhere. It’s quite pleasant just to listen to her voice ride its rangy possibilities.
Title track “Nothing Remains The Same” gets its lift from Lurgio’s vocal oomph that starts up right out of the gate. She doesn’t need to build a momentum to get to a place of power. She has a zero to 60 in two seconds accelerator. As songwriter, Lurgio lines up the backbone of drums, bass, and piano into one push. From there, she can let her vocal heft catch the right vibe and ride it all the way home.
“One Day More” moves like a two step shuffle through a tasty tapestry of piano, mandolin, and guitar. Uncanny, Lurgio has a snap, crackle, and pop vocal delivery that fits her lyrics like a glove.
“Would You Mind” has a mournful pedal steel melody conjuring a feeling of forlorn memories and emotions. Lurgios’ voice wrings a lot of effective melody out of her lyrics. It’s heavenly when she holds a note, uplifting when she hits the chorus with determined fiber.
“Stone Walls” is a straight forward ballad made beautiful simply by Lurgio’s voice and her steel guitar player. Lurgio can breathe life into any song at any tempo on sheer lung power alone. It is hard to imagine a dry eye among her live audiences during her sadder songs. There’s a sharpness in her voice that brings home the truth of her songs with an emotional directness.
It helps to have a crack band behind any singer. Drummer Fred Satterfield and bass player Mike Dunbar provide a solid bottom while guitarist Mike Baker and steel guitar player John Heinrich pull these tunes along with effective melodic flourishes. Keyboardist Willie Rainsford lavishes these songs with solid chord progressions and tasteful tinkling. Dunbar produced this disc, and he got a hell of a sound out of the voice and the instruments. Everything here pours out of the stereo speakers with personality and oomph.
“Something New” gets its finesse from Heinrich’s steel guitar. Yet its Lurgio’s voice that becomes the locomotive pushing it down the tracks, drawing her voice and emotion up from some place deep inside, letting it out with a very educated self-control.
“Red Crescent Moon” takes its time unfurling its gusty vocal beauty and exuberant guitars.
“I’m Letting Go” has a melodic backbone that can’t be denied. Guitars and piano are so solid here you can almost picture the players laying down their tracks in the studio. The steel guitar whistles beautifully and the electric lead guitar is snappy and zesty. The piano builds like a hillock and could stand on its own.
“Walking On Sacred Ground” is a country waltz that makes you want to dance, an appealing shuffle, with heavy piano chords making you move your shoulders while the rhythm section makes you move your feet.
“Tremble” is a peppy, upbeat work of joy. Saxophone melody swings around the beat with a smooth allure. But again, it is Lurgio who makes one of the strongest impressions. She doesn’t just sing the chorus, she scales it, making you feel her voice as something that moves upward with muscular grasp.
“My Heart Has A Crazy Mind Of Its Own” reminds me of Dolly Parton in the perky, vibrancy Lurgio brings out in her timbre. Charming lyrics get a gentle affectionate caress from Lurgio’s inflection. It’s also a fun shuffle with the band letting their hair down a little. Guitar chords jump up and down like playful children and give an extra bump to that moving shuffle.
There is just so much to love on this CD Nothing Remains The Same. Joanne Lurgio is a force to be reckoned with. No matter which genre you favor, Lurgio should go over well with anybody who just loves to hear a beautiful voice backed by a crack honky tonk band.
