Verve Forecast
2009
Mama Rosa
About This Album
Given the state of the music business in 2009, it would seem a terrible decision to allow an award-winning jazz drummer, composer, and bandleader -- not to mention an in-demand session musician -- to record what amounts to a "pop" album. Yet that's exactly what Verve's Forecast imprint did when it let Brian Blade, leader of the Fellowship Band, one of its premier showcase acts, record Mama Rosa. And thank God they did. Blade has been writing and recording songs on two-track and four-track demos for decades. He's been singing them for friends and family members for about as long. Blade is a natural born storyteller with an evocative singing voice, an individual and polished guitar style, and real estate with enough fine musicians to bring them into his projects. This is music that has heart, melody, and sophisticated and well-intentioned lyric poetry, and these songs are concerned with what it means to try and live alone and with others in the light each day. Produced by Blade and Adam Samuels, this lovely, understated, 13-song set (ten vocal tracks, three instrumentals -- two of them brief ambient pieces -- and a lone cover) is staffed by great players: Daniel Lanois, Greg Leisz, Daryl Johnson, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Jon Cowherd, and Chris E.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3 and 4)

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