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guitar and vocals combine with Cheek’s sax, BettySoo’s harmonies and Mr. Goodrich on diddley
bow and it has humorous lyrics – “Don’t pay him any money bring him beer instead, he looks a
little strange, that ain’t a possum on his head, that’s his chapeax…” In contrast ‘In the Bardo’ is a
thoughtful, reflective song – ‘bardo’ is apparently a Tibetan word meaning the gap or transitional
state between lives (so now you know!).

‘Close the Deal’ is a typical Smither bitter/sweet song but if you listen to the lyrics it’s a scathing
commentary of ‘the new reality’ i.e. fake news or lying, in both private and public life - “Nobody’s
playin’ by the rules now, you can order the truth to go, have it your way”. On the reflective
‘Completion’ Chris’s guitar combines with Goodrich’s delicate piano to great effect and finally we
check out with Chris’s version of the Tom Petty song ‘Time to Move On’ – it’s not a song that I
know but here it sounds like one of Chris’s own songs, complete with a lovely Goodrich guitar
solo.

Sometimes I feel that Chris’s albums can be a bit too samey and you feel that you’ve heard it all
before but this one has lots of variety courtesy of the additional musicians and also lyrics that
move from the tongue-in-cheek the profound to the openly humorous. This is an album by
someone still at the top of their game and as good as Chris himself is (and he is very good in his
own understated way) the production by David Goodrich is also excellent, as are the other
musicians and let me single out drummer Zak Trojano who, while he doesn’t exactly stand out,
he does subtly underpin everything here.

Graham Harrison
Jennifer Lyn & The Groove Revival Live from the Northern
Plains J and R Collective

In the 60s and 70s guitar playing women were a rarity in both

blues and also rock and pop, thankfully things have changed since
then and particularly in the last twenty years or so we’ve seen a
plethora of excellent youngish guitar totin’ female blues singers.
We can now add Jennifer Lyn to the list, she’s from Minneapolis
but is now based in North Dakota and this live album was recorded
at the Belle Mehus Auditorium in Bismark and features Jennifer
on guitar and vocals with her band The Groove Revival. The band
are Richard Torrance (guitar), Barb Jiskra (keyboards), Nolyn
Falcon (bass) and Jim Anderson (drums). The lead track is ‘Gypsy Soul’ an original song with
Jennifer’s strong vocals and biting lead guitar from Torrance, next up they cover Bonnie Raitt’s
version of Chris Smither’s song ‘Love Me Like a Man’ and as a big Bonnie Raitt fan I’ve got to say
this version is good, with Jennifer not copying Bonnie’s vocal parts too closely and there is also
great piano from Jiskra. We then get rocking versions of the Allman Brothers’ ‘Midnight Rider’
(with great harmonies) and CCR’s ‘As Long as I Can See the Light’, while the original ‘I Hope We
Make A Change’ reminded me of 60s bands from San Francisco.

The band also tackle the Allman Brothers’ ‘Whipping Post’ with Jennifer joining in on the tracks’
distinctive dual lead guitar parts while also belting out the vocals. The bands’ own songs aren’t
out of place beside these classics - ‘Going Round in Circles’ is a slow blues with great lead guitar
and rolling piano and Jennifer again howling the blues, ‘Low Down Dirty Shame’ is a rocker with
more dual lead guitar and closer ‘You Can Take It All’ is a lovely melodic soul ballad – I particularly
liked Jennifer’s more laid-back vocals here. Apparently the band used to do a ‘British invasion
tribute show’ and the version here of ‘House of the Rising Sun’ is from that, I can imagine it would
go down well in live performance but for me it’s an over-played song and I’m not convinced that