BILLY PRICE - RANDOM MADNESS... OR MUSICALLY DELIBERATE SANITY

On a new album titled Random Madness (https://gethip.com/,  GH‑1195), Billy Price and his band show plenty of “reasonable consistency” and “mental stability” as they deliver a set of eleven new songs—ending with the slow, melancholic Random Madness. Billy explains: “Random Madness is about today’s situation, but it is also about the vulnerability of never knowing when and for whom bad luck is going to strike.”

For this album, Billy reunited with the producer of his previous release, Person of Interest (https://www.soulexpress.net/billyprice2024.htm ). “For my last album my producer Tony Braunagel organized the session near his home in Los Angeles with studio musicians. This time I wanted to use my own band for the recording, and Tony agreed to come to Pittsburgh where I live so we could do that. In addition to producing, Tony played drums on 7 of the 11 songs. It was good to be able to sleep in my own bed during the recording sessions, and I felt comfortable working with the same musicians I always work with at my gigs. Everyone knew the songs well going in, and that helped us to be more efficient in the studio.”

Billy’s band features Dave Dodd on drums, Tom Valentine on bass, Ian Arthurs and Steve Delach on guitar, Jim Britton on keyboards, Joe Herndon on trumpet, and Eric Spaulding, who contributes tenor or baritone sax on many tracks. Still, this album also brings in a few guests: Sean Jones plays the trumpet solo on Random Madness, Reggie Watkins handles trombone, and Lenny Castro adds percussion. Background vocals come from Delana Flowers, Willa Katy Cotton, and Carmen Miller.

The Get Hip label isn’t widely known in the R&B world, as it leans more toward garage punk, surf, pop, and psychedelia. “The people at GetHip, Gregg Kostelich, who plays guitar with the well-known garage-rock band the Cynics and his wife Barbara Garcia-Bernardo are friends of mine, and they run a successful operation that includes a great retail vinyl record store. GetHip handled a previous release for me, my 3-CD compilation 50+ Years of Soul, and I enjoyed working with them, so I approached them about releasing Random Madness on GetHip and they agreed to do so.”

All songs are written by Billy Price and Jim Britton, with some contributions from Tony Braunagel—and on the down-tempo, relaxed Curiosity, also from Jon and Sally Tiven, who have collaborated with Billy before. The previous Person of Interest album included two of their songs. Exit Strategy is a song that Billy co-wrote with Tony and the French guitarist Fred Chapellier.

This new set opens with the lively, dynamic I Was a Fool, featuring one of Eric Spaulding’s piercing sax solos. It’s also the first single off the album. Joe Herndon delivers a jazzy trumpet solo on the driving mid-tempo track I Got That Dog in Me. Hungry Ghost is a laid-back mid-tempo jogger, where Eric’s sax is joined by a guitar solo from Ian Arthurs. “Hungry Ghost is a song about longing and unfulfilled desire, borrowing a term, ‘Hungry Ghost’, from Buddhist literature. The term ‘bardo’ (‘you wander through the bardo like a hungry ghost’) refers in Tibetan Buddhism to the interim state between death and rebirth.”

I Said What I Said is brisk and bouncy, while Rent Free slows things down with a lingering, atmospheric lounge‑jazz feel. “Rent Free is about the way former lovers exert a presence long after relationships end.” Creature of Habit brings finger‑popping swing with a boogie‑woogie undercurrent. “In Creature of Habit, I make fun of myself a bit.”

Exit Strategy is a groovy stomper, while Dirty Knee Revelation is slow and poignant, almost turning inspirational by the end. “Dirty Knee Revelation is about the need for faith at certain times in life.” Next to last song on the album is Stickers on My Suitcase, a mid-tempo tune with a hint of Latin flavour. Once again, Eric Spaulding handles the sax solo and Steve Delach takes the guitar spotlight.

Leaning slightly more toward jazz, the album is well balanced: three upbeat tracks, four mid-tempo numbers, and four slower ones. “I particularly love Rent Free, Curiosity, and Random Madness.” And here’s a fun detail: no fade-outs. “I think if you asked Tony, we would tell you that he prefers real endings to fade-outs.” The album came together fairly quickly. “We did do the basic tracks in a week with some overdubbing and fixes here and there during the following few weeks. Tony and I have now done two albums together and have found that our musical tastes are similar and that we work easily and well together. We have also become good friends.”

https://www.billyprice.com

(Acknowledgements to Billy Price and Kevin Johnson)

© Heikki Suosalo