JACKIE PAYNE STEVE EDMONSON BAND "OVERNIGHT SENSATION" Source: Living Blues Magazine Date: 10/2008 Writer: Davis Whiteis

“If a song is of a certain style,” guitarist Steve Edmonson says in Brad Kava’s liner notes for this CD, “we don’t copy it, but make it sound like it is the only thing we’ve ever played.”  That kind of statement could easily sound like hubris, but on this set Edmonson and vocalist Jackie Payne, along with their crew of blues/R&B/funk/jazz-savvy colleagues, rise to the occasion and more than justify Edmonson’s claim.

Aside from its eclecticism, one of this set’s most enduring pleasures is its originality. Most of the songs here were co-written by Payne and Edmonson; the offerings from others’ pens are either relatively obscure (Gene “Daddy G” Barge’s Mother-In-Law Blues), imaginatively reworked (the soul medley She’s Looking Good/I’ve Never Found A Girl), or unexpectedly borrowed from a different genre (Charlie Rich’s Feel Like Going Home).  Throughout, Payne’s voice, gristly and somewhat constricted, is nonetheless capable of mining deep lodes of feeling—on a breezy, funk-flavored ode to erotic bliss like Can I Hit It Again, he sounds jubilantly carnal; on a soul-baring ballad such as Feel Like Going Home, he sounds like the very personification of world-weary resignation.  The band is brawny and full-bodied, the arrangements deeply textured complements to the emotional message of the song at hand.

Oddly, the one track that falls short here is the by-the-numbers shuffle I Got A Mind To Go To Chicago—for once, Edmonson and the band sound as if they’re trying too hard to affect a style that isn’t their own; guest harpist Mitch Kashmar contributes a mix-and-mismatch pastiche of styles; and Payne’s lyrics descend too often into cliche. Aside from that one misstep, though, this is an eclectic and well-realized set of full-blooded horn-band blues and R&B, delivered by masters of their craft.