Review: Vanessa Collier ‘Do It My Own Way’
By Hal Horowitz
Look no further than the title of singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Vanessa Collier’s sixth offering, to understand that she is something of a Renaissance artist who has earned the right to call the shots.
On Do It My Own Way, out Sept. 13, Collier not only pens the songs but plays alto and tenor sax, flute, slide and resonator guitars, along with engineering overdubs on backing vocals and various instruments at her home studio.
Her talents over the past decade have not been ignored. She has been nominated twelve times (!) for Blues Music Awards (won four) and her previous 2020 studio collection spent nine weeks on Billboard’s Blues Album Chart. The follow-up concert disc revealed her explosive live show.
This diverse recording shifts from the retro-styled, gospel inflected, hip-shaking party tune “Rosetta,” about her idol Sister Rosetta Tharpe (“I’d like to follow in her footsteps… She’s carried the torch so I can see a little bit better”) to the funky fun of “Shoulda Known Better” (tearing it up on honking tenor sax) and gets good and greasy for the swaggering title cut.
There are more slippery grooves on the opening “Elbow Grease” where trumpeter Doug Woolverton solos, grabbing some Tower of Power vibe as Collier multi-tracks her own blustery chorus singing “Put some stank on it.”
That she does.
We get a breather midway through the eight tunes as Collier displays her softer, soulful side on “Wild as a Rainstorm.” The lyrics of personal empowerment refer to the album’s title as she sings to a friend, and/or the listener “I’ve learned to stay strong/When they say that I can’t or I won’t succeed/‘Cause what do they know?” with the assurance and confidence of one who has been there and successfully emerged out the other side. The R&B vibe highlights how powerful and distinctive a vocalist she is, an ability that gets a little lost on the predominantly upbeat program.
Collier wades into the swamp for “Take Me Back,” another soulful slice with a wiry backbeat allowing her to crank out a torchy sax solo before singing a kiss-off to her ex with “Take me back to brighter days…Take me back to the beginnin’/Before I ever, I ever knew you/Before I ever… met you.” Guitarist Laura Chavez also gets a spotlight.
On the sultry “Just One More, we move into a sexy, torchy Latin mode not far from something the late Willy DeVille might have recorded. The opening lines of “I had squeezed into the velvet corner of a candlelit bar/When he asked me to dance” sets the scene as Collier recounts how she became infatuated with a stranger who “had a way about him.” Sizzling stuff.
In the closing “Warrior,” Collier begins solo acoustic telling of a woman who is out for retribution after her house is torched, letting her resonator guitar sound like the anger welling up in the protagonist’s veins. The dramatic folk-blues gradually morphs into a mesmerizing mid-tempo rocker. It’s vibrant, dramatic, and a change from the album’s generally lighter lyrical tone.
The only disappointment of the impressive Do It My Own Way is that at just over a half hour, we’d like to hear more from this wildly talented veteran who keeps getting better with every release.
Vanessa Collier website
“Take Me Back”
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