Review: J.P Soars ‘Brick By Brick’

Review: J.P Soars ‘Brick By Brick’

By Jim Hynes

When the Little Village label began, they made a practice of giving the spotlight to overlooked and underrecognized artists. That’s changed in the past couple of years. Their mission statement reads “Our day-to-day programming consists of recording and producing underground artists whose music has not yet been discovered outside their community.” That statement is loose enough to include artists such as Curtis Salgado, Billy Price, Phantom Blues Band, Diunna Greenleaf the subject of this review, J.P. Soars. The label is reaching out toward more widely known blues artists as well.

Soars is the epitome of the artist who has paid his dues. In 2009 he and his band won the IBC with his self-released album Back of My Mind. He won the prestigious Albert King Guitar Award. Through five more albums and sharing the guitar chair with Damon Fowler in Southern Hospitality, Soars has accumulated six BMA nominations. His performances with violinist Anne Harris have been all over YouTube. His career seems to be on a upward trajectory yet, he garnered no nominations at this year’s BMAs. Perhaps this recording, Brick by Brick, his first since 2019, will get back on the fast track. The title alone attests to how his career has unfolded “one brick at a time.”

As that distinction some fifteen years ago, the Albert King Guitar Award attests to the fact that Soars can wield the axe with the best of guitar slingers. Yet, his penchant for diversity, on full display here, may be holding him back somewhat. His songwriting doesn’t take a back seat to any either, having penned ten of these eleven tunes. Playing various guitars, Dobro, banjo, bass, lap steel, two string guitar box guitar, Merlin Stick dulcimer and jaw harp, Soars weaves his way through gypsy jazz, country, blues rock, Latin, flat out rock, and even metal. It’s a lot to absorb in just one album. That kind of versatility cuts both ways. His band includes drummer Chris Peet (drums on all tracks, bass on four), Bob Taylor on the B3, and percussionists Raul D. Hernandez and co-producer Jeremy Staska. Other contributors are background vocalists Paul Deslauriers and Annika Chambers, Harris, harmonicist Rockin’ Jake Jacobs and tenorist Terry Hanck.

The power drenched blues rocker title track equates building his house brick by brick to his career approach with his guitar raging and his vocals full of spit and fire. “Jezebel” takes a hard left turn into gypsy jazz about being unable to shake the obsession of a woman. Soars handles a variety of strings here including Dobro, banjo and acoustic (maybe more). Slashing syncopated blues rock returns on “Keep Good Company,” an admonition about who one surrounds himself with, buoyed by the husband-and-wife team backgrounds of DeLauriers and Chambers. Soars unleashes one of his fiercest solos here, though there’s a mid-section that just hangs there suspended, until he and the band return with fury. His delivery of Little Milton’s “That’s What Love Will Make You Do” is far more consistent and his stomping version hits the mark.

Soars picks the banjo with abandon, teaming with Harris’s boisterous fiddle on the bluegrass tinged “Can’t Keep Her Off My Mind,” a standout track. His acoustic guitar and Dobro gleam brightly on the instrumental “In the Moment” and he gives his Merlin Stick Dulcimer a sweaty workout on “Merlin Stomp.” His lap steel burns through country blues on “The Good Lord Will Provide” while the up-tempo “Honey and Hash,” with a denser accompaniment of harmonica and sax plies similar turf. Another standout track, played with the two-string cigar box guitar is the ornery “Things Ain’t Working Out,” again featuring the background vocal duo.

A focused straight-ahead blues rock album it is not although Soars is masterful in that style. Instead, Brick By Brick is purposely uneven, showcasing his many skills. In basketball parlance, he doesn’t ‘brick’ his shots. If you’re a fan of eclecticism and stellar picking in many forms, this one’s for you. The blues rockers will clearly latch on to some tracks here too.

“Brick By Brick”