BILLY PRICE: PERSON OF INTEREST

  Billy: “There’s a wide range of music on this album. The thing I’m most proud of is that this is the first time I’ve ever released a recording, where I had a hand in writing every song. I’ve been a big fan of soul music all my life, so I’ve always included cover songs – songs that I wanted to do by some of my favourite artists. This is the first time I tried to do an album with exclusively my own material, and I think it holds up very well.”

  If you listen to those thirteen songs on Billy’s new CD, you can rest assured that it certainly does. Titled Person of Interest, the official release date of this album is June the 7th and it comes out on Little Village Foundation. “The album was produced by Tony Braunagel, and Tony assembled the musicians in Los Angeles for the recording. The keyboard player on this recording and also on my two previous recordings – the ones I did with Kid Andersen - was Jim Pugh. He played with Robert Cray for many years, and Etta James. Now he’s playing with the Phantom Blues Band with Tony on drums. Jim really liked this recording a lot, and at one point - after we had finished recording - he mentioned to Tony that ‘maybe we’ll put this out on Little Village’, because Jim is the executive director of Little Village Foundation. I’m thrilled to be on Little Village, because the roster is wonderful. They have many of my favourite artists – Candice Ivory, Alabama Mike, D.K. Harrell…” On our Soul Express site you can read feature articles on some of the artists on Little Village, such as Diunna Greenleaf, Sonny Green and Marcel Smith (https://littlevillagefoundation.com/).

L to R: Josh Sklair, Jim Pugh, Tony Braunagel, Larry Fulcher, Johnny Lee Schell

  With 4 up-tempo, 5 mid-tempo and 4 down-tempo tracks, the album is quite balanced, and it adds up to 20 in total number of the sets Billy has released, including a DVD as well. You can read shortly about Billy’s earlier career up till 1999 in my first interview with him at https://www.soulexpress.net/billyprice.htm.

INSIDE THAT BOX

  The opener called Inside That Box is a mid-tempo, easily swaying toe-tapper, and here already on the first track the heavy horn sound comes strongly across. Ron Dziubla does the jazzy sax solo. “Mark Pender is on trumpet. He’s a well-known trumpet player, who has played with Southside Johnny and Bruce Springsteen, and I think he plays in Conan O’Brien’s band in his television show. I’m doing a video around the song Inside That Box.”

  Song I Never Heard Before is a dynamic and a bit bluesy up-tempo beater, which gets more sonorous towards the end. “There’s a wonderful guitar by Josh Sklair on that one, and that was co-written by Fred Chapellier, with whom I’ve been working for many years. Fred and I always write songs together. He has a new album out. It’s a double-album, Live in Paris, and six of the songs on that album Fred and I wrote together.” Live in Paris was recently released on DixieFrog Records (DFGCD 8845).

  “And the beat goes on…” The song number three is titled She Checks All the Boxes, and it’s a chunky and steadily hammering energetic number, with Shane Theriot playing the guitar this time. “I don’t often do songs that have a Motown feel, but I think this is the closest I’ve come in a long time. It really sounds like it could have been recorded at Motown. Then on the end I give a little hat-tip to the Temptations and sing a little bit of The Girl’s Alright with Me.” The tenor sax solo on this track is blown by Eric Spaulding. “Eric is the tenor player in my regular band.”

MERCY

  The moving and passionate Mercy is the first ballad on the set. Co-written by Mike Karr, on this melancholic song Larry Fulcher is on bass as well as on four other tracks, and Reggie McBride (6) and James Hutchinson (2) play bass on the rest of the eight tracks.

  “A woman came to one of my shows a couple of years ago and she’s a really big fan of mine. She told me that during the 1980s she used to smuggle in a very high-quality recording equipment so that she could make recordings of the band. She asked me, if I would be interested in hearing some of those recordings. Of course, I was interested and it was that recording that reminded me of this song Mercy that I had been considering recording way back in 1988, when I did my Free at Last album. It was the last album I recorded with Billy Price and the Keystone Rhythm Band. But for whatever reason I didn’t include Mercy on that album. I listened to it and said ‘I really want to resurrect that song’, because it got a good reaction, when we performed it live. I did a version of it with Tony and the other guys in the studio and it came out great.”

  On the title track, a mid-tempo beater named Person of Interest, Jim Pugh is on keyboards and Tony Braunagel on drums as well as on all the other tracks on the set, and Lenny Castro is on percussion. “Tony played the drum tracks and we were talking about that we wanted to add a little bit of the Meters into it, almost like a Cissy Strut kind of feel.”

  The fast and funky Can’t Get Enough includes a guitar solo by Johnny Lee Schell. “That was written by my keyboard player in my band, Jim Britton. We’ve been fooling around with that song for many years and now finally decided to record it.” In addition to that song Billy and Jim co-wrote also Inside That Box, She Checks All the Boxes, Person of Interest and five other songs on this album.

CHANGE YOUR MIND

  The slow and poignant Change Your Mind is an emotional tribute to Roy Buchanan. Billy and Roy worked and recorded together in the early 70s. Roy passed away in August 1988 at the age of 48. “After some incident, when he had been drunk, he hung himself with his belt in an overnight cell. With Jim Britton we wrote the song, and it started to remind me of some of the songs that I had sung with Roy Buchanan, when I was younger, so I got the idea: let’s dedicate this to Roy Buchanan. I asked Tony to try to find a guitar player, who was a fan of Buchanan and who could do a guitar solo that would invoke his style a little bit. Tony thought of Joe Bonamassa, and Joe agreed in a matter of minutes. I think he did a great job on the solo, because it does have a lot of elements of the style that Buchanan would have done on a solo like this.”

  They Knew is a mellow and melodic mid-tempo number, which Billy wrote together with Jon and Sally Tiven. I’ve written with them for many years. We wrote some songs together on my East End Avenue recording (in 2006). Whenever I start to write songs, I always contact Jon and say ‘send me some tracks.’ Jon and Sally, I guess, have a home studio, and they just do instrumental tracks. I work with the tracks and turn them into songs by adding melodies and lyrics and so forth.”

  “Actually, this is a song that we had written years before and I just reconsidered doing it. We went into the studio on this one and on take one or two I said ‘you know, this doesn’t really sound like a Billy Price song, sounds like a Rolling Stones song.’ Jim Pugh said ‘well, give it a little time, let me fool around and come up with something different.’ And he came up with this entirely different sound and feel for the song and I really loved it – and it ended up being on the album.” Johnny Lee Schell plays the guitar solo on this track.

  Jon Tiven has produced albums for Wilson Pickett, Freddie Scott and Don Covay, among others, and also many tribute albums. “Jon produced the last Steve Cropper album (Fire It Up on Provogue in 2021), and there’s also a new album coming out on Steve Cropper.”

  The second song co-written by Jon and Sally – and Anthony Braunagel, for that matter - is called A Certain Something, and it’s an easily flowing toe-tapper. “It has a little bit of rumba feel. I like this song a lot. This is the one I wrote with Jon and Sally more recently.”

  From one mood and style to another, The Gift is a mellow beat-ballad. “I would say this is a soulblues song, through and through, and it has a really wonderful guitar solo by Shane Theriot. Shane is the musical director for Daryl Hall.”

CRYING AT THE STOPLIGHT

  A poppy and bouncy finger-snapper named Crying at the Stoplight includes once again a wonderful tenor solo by Ron Dziubla. “There’s a story behind that song. I was living in Baltimore, Maryland, at that particular time. I was just starting to write songs for this recording. I was at a stoplight and I looked at the car next to me and I saw this woman crying, and I felt badly. A little while later I thought I could probably write a song about this.”

  I Lose It is a soft and smooth – and a bit sorrowful – beat-ballad. “I really love that one. That one is different again from anything else on the recording. I love sweet soul music and that style, so this sounds like it could be a Spinners song or a song maybe by Al Green.”

The concluding Damage Control is a punchy mid-tempo beater. “…more of a funk thing, and again another one I wrote with Jim Britton. The band is really great on that one, and the background singers, and another great saxophone solo by Eric Spaulding.” The background vocalists on this set are Maxayn Lewis, Fred White and Will Wheaton.

L to R: Fred White, Maxayn Lewis, Will Wheaton

  Person of Interest is really up there alongside Billy’s 2015 album with Otis Clay named This Time for Real (https://www.soulexpress.net/deep4_2015.htm#billyprice). However, this new CD was initially scheduled for release not earlier than in August. “Little Village released it to radio stations and reviewers, and we were starting to get a lot of radio airplay and coverage. We thought that by August radio might already be moving out to other things and – since there was no reason not to release it – so we did.” They have also moved the date of the release party near Billy’s home base of Pittsburgh, PA, to June 7, at the Pittsburgh Shrine Center in Cheswick, PA. Considering the high quality of music on this album, I’d say that the party is well worth visiting.

https://www.billyprice.com/

(Interview conducted on May 26 in 2024; acknowledgements to Billy Price and Kevin Johnson).

© Heikki Suosalo