Before she was a member of the Grateful Dead, vocalist Donna
Jean Godchaux was a session musician in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, playing on
sessions with the likes of Elvis Presley and Percy Sledge. Godchaux was
prominently featured in the recent documentary on Muscle Shoals, and returned
to her roots on her latest band recording, Back Around, which was
recorded in Muscle Shoals’ Nutthouse Studios with her touring band (including
ace DSO guitarist Jeff Mattson) augmented by a crew of the town’s best players,
including the legendary Musche Shoals Horns.
The result is an irresistible blend of San Francisco jam looseness
and tight Alabama soul groove. The Godchaux-penned opening track, “Don’t Ask
Me Why,” is a simmering minor key soul ballad with Godcahaux’s sultry vocal
augmented by a lush chorus. The band’s
punchy cover of Steve Cropper’s “Don’t
Fight It” is given the full Swamper treatment with some muscular guitar from Jeff
Mattson, tasty accents from the Muscle Shoals horns, and a powerful
call-and-response vocal.
The Youngbloods classic “Darkness, Darkness” builds slowly
from a muted keyboard and guitar introduction to a powerful instrumental
interlude back into the final chorus. The
group’s reinvention of “Crazy Fingers,” one of the Dead’s most challenging
ballads, is sung powerfully by Godchaux and features creatively rippling horn and
piano textures, a bit of banjo, and a brilliantly understated guitar passage
from Mattson. “19th Nervous
Breakdown is rendered as a sprightly shuffle sung as a duet by Mattson and
Godchaux over an infectious “Mystery Train” guitar figure. The album closes
with is the moody “Stranger Things,” which is built around a terse, stuttering
drum and piano and expands into full
blown choruses featuring the horn section, wrapping up with a jazzy flute coda
from legendary horn/reed man Jim Horn.
Back Around is a thoroughly entertaining effort that finds Godchaux and
company successfully blurring and pushing stylistic borders.
