Ex-Stone City Straggler Allison Flood Shines on Solo Debut “Blackbird”

Good things are worth waiting for, especially debut solo albums nearly a decade in the making.

Nine years after her band Stone City Stragglers delivered its third and final album, Allison Flood has released her solo debut on the Flipside Works label. “Blackbird” is a five-song collection of beautifully crafted originals delivered with ethereal harmonies, expert instrumentation and exquisite production by John Condron with assistance from Bill Aldridge of Third City Sound in Joliet, Illinois.

She was known as Allison Moroni back when she was in the Stragglers with five bandmates, including Brent James, who continued his career with The Righteous Hillbillies. Since then she’s had two kids with musician/firefighter Chris Flood, who says, “I loved her music so much I married her. (Her) first solo record is delayed because I keep getting her pregnant.”

The songs on “Blackbird” are about relationships, though they also work as precious stories told by a young mother re-entering the music business after an absence. In the opener “Harbor” she sings, “I’ve been lost and I’ve been found, I’ve been somewhere in between, now I call this house a home, still feel like I’m lost at sea.” And when she sings in the chorus, “Won’t you find your way back to me?” she could easily be addressing the Stragglers’ extensive following, asking old fans to rediscover her music.

The Stragglers were a big regional draw a decade ago. A Chicago Reader preview of the band’s appearance at the 2005 Chicago Country Music Festival noted, “This Joliet sextet stands tall among this year’s Taste Stage acts thanks to the sweet harmonies of Brent James and Allison Moroni, whose voices casually intertwine a la Gram and Emmylou.”

Harmonies are the highlight of “Blackbird,” though there’s nothing lacking about the musicianship, either. The backing vocals and accompaniment on “Ties That Bind” create a Fleetwood Mac-like vibe; sounds created by guitars, harmonium and other instruments are appropriately woven among Flood’s sparse acoustic guitar. There’s not a note or sound that seems out of place in the 20-minute collection.

Yet it’s the vocals on “Blackbird” that stand out, which speaks to the strength of the songwriting and lyrics in particular. When, on “Things Dead & Gone,” she sings, “It isn’t easier to lie when no one’s listening to you,” is she saying that during her hiatus she remained true to her musical calling? And in “Come To Me,” when she sings about distance between people she’s surely telling a story about estranged lovers, though read another way she could just as easily be talking about the fans who loved her in the Stragglers.

In the closer “Easy” she sings, “I never knew it would be so easy to forget me.” 

Fans of Allison Flood’s music are about to discover how wonderful it is to hear new music from her again.

The release of “Blackbird” will be celebrated with a performance featuring appearances by Brian Motyll, Matt Biskie and others on Saturday, Feb. 28 at Chicago Street Pub, 75 N. Chicago St., Joliet, IL. 

— By Ted Slowik