Product Description
SOUTHERN HOSPITALITY
Yard Sale
Southern Hospitality
Supergroups in music are much like dream teams in sports. Bringing them together is tangibly difficult, but actually achieving the lofty aspirations that typically kick such experiments into gear is usually an undertaking that is way more elusive. Whether it comes down to egos, playing styles, philosophies, or whatever else, getting there is never a guarantee.
However, if/when it does jell, it can seem as natural as drawing a relaxed breath, and those lofty aspirations – scaled in one simpatico step – become the easy pickings of low hanging fruit. That’s what it’s like listening to Southern Hospitality here.
The group – fronted by singer/songwriter/guitarist Damon Fowler, singer/songwriter/guitarist JP Soars, and singer/songwriter/pianist Victor Wainwright – played its first gig in 2011 and went on to release Easy Livin’ to much public acclaim and professional notice back in 2013.
Yard Sale is their follow-up album, and – despite the more than 11 years in between the two – it really does sound like these three frontmen have been playing together for their entire lives. When the band was first coming together, Fowler had envisioned something like the Traveling Wilburys – where he, Soars, and Wainwright would bring their own songs in for everyone to work on and make the group’s own. That is pretty much how Yard Sale plays out.
The album kicks off, appropriately enough, with Wainwright’s rollicking “Together Again,” and its 11 tracks are split up and rotated nearly evenly between the three, with the pianist generating the good times, Soars raising the prickly sweat, and Fowler offering up some deep reflection.
A three-song stretch illustrates this nicely. On the steady rolling but weary sounding “Hard Times,” Fowler prays for good times to get better and the hard times to fade away, after which those prayers are answered by Wainwright (handspringing down the center aisle style) in “Boogie With Jesus,” followed by Soars’ grooving back county philosophy in “Going Fishin’.”
That segment – and the album – unfolds in such pure ensemble style that nothing about it seems forced; everything just ebbs and flows along with a naturally unfolding, self-fulfilling purpose.
Album changeups include the laid back “What I Feel In My Heart” (with Fowler’s Hawaiian guitar backing delicately countering Soars’ gritty vocals), and a thoughtful, subdued Wainright on the Allman/gospel (subtle but very important ingredients on this album) tinged “Wildfire.”
So, if you’re looking for a great time, try some Southern Hospitality at the Yard Sale.
– Matthew MacDonald