Northwest icon Duffy Bishop is back without missing a beat, with her first new album in over ten years, Find Your Way Home, which was released in April of 2014. Based in Portland, Ore., Duffy is in the Cascade Blues Association and Washington Blues Society Hall Of Fame. She has won the CBA’s Female Vocalist Award so many years in a row that they renamed it the Duffy Bishop Female Vocalist Award. The opening track, “I Don’t Wanna Know about It” — an edgy shuffle in the vein of Albert Collins — shows us exactly why, as she rips into the melody with her signature rasp and full-throated fire.
Bishop and her partner in crime, Chris Carlson, wrote the majority of the album’s new tunes. They impart some of their hard-won wisdom during the jumpin’ rumba swing “Get Up And Move,” and the low-down blues tune “Growing Old,” which features some nasty slide guitar from Henry Cooper and wailing harp from Jim Wallace. Bishop gives us a dose of her patented irreverent humor during the New Orleans-styled “Monkey Pants,” bolstered by a spicy horn section.
The mood heads even further south for a haunting ode to the everglades, “Black Mangrove,” and an extra greasy take on the Little George Sueref tune “Fingerlickin’.” The two other covers are a groovy take on Max Schwennsen’s “Back Out On the Road,” that features her old bandmates Dave Jette, Keith Lowe, and Henry Cooper, whose slide guitar is reminiscent of Lowell George. Then she slows down the Percy Sledge classic “It Tears Me Up,” in order to milk every ounce of emotion from the tale of heartache and betrayal. The closing track begins simply, building until Bishop is bellowing from a French Quarter rooftop, as the band parades down Basin Street.
Rick J Bowen
