Billy Price

Person Of Interest

Little Village Foundation

This new Billy Price studio album was produced by the Grammy winning Tony Braunagel, of the Phantom Blues Band, and recorded, engineered, and mixed by his band mate Johnny Lee Schell. Billy Price was born William Pollak, in 1949, in Fair Lawn, N.J. In the seventies he moved to Pittsburgh where he worked for Carnegie Mellon University. Price became Roy Buchanan’s vocalist and he appears on Buchanan’s “That’s What I’m Here For” and 1975’s album “Live Stock”. Price later formed his own band, The Keystone Rhythm Band, and from 1979 until 1988 released four albums. Price renamed his band The Billy Price Band and has since recorded eleven albums including his last “Alive And Strange”. He has also recorded an album, “This Time For Real”, with Otis Clay and it won him a 2016 Blues Music Award as “Soul Blues Album of the Year”.

All of the songs were co-written by Price and Jim Britton unless mentioned otherwise. Price opens the album with “Inside That Box” as he sings “as long as we’re together…I’m not going to look inside that box”, the song about trust, features a great horn section of tenor and baritone saxes played by Ron Dziubla, and trumpet played by Mark Pender. On guitar is Josh Sklair while the rhythm section is Larry Fulcher bass, and Tony Braunagel, drums. Lenny Castro is the percussionist.

“Song I Never Heard Before”, Price’s vocal is beautiful, “I’m reckless I met something more, a song I never heard before”, with background vocalists Maxayn Lewis, Fred White, and Will Wheaton. The song written by Price, Fred Chapellier and Braunagelfeatures James “Hutch” Hutchinson on bass. “She Checks All The Boxes”, “I love that girl…the girls alright with me”, includes Shane Theriot, guitar; Reggie McBride, bass; and a tenor sax solo by Eric Spaulding; it was written by Price, Britton and Braunagel. Please let there be “Mercy” includes Jim Pugh on keyboards and another tenor solo by Spaulding.The title track, “Person of Interest” is a funky tune with another beautiful vocal as Price sings “She’s a person of interest…my refuge from the coldness of the world”; once again McBride plays bass, while Theriot plays guitar.

Price states “after Jim Britton and I wrote “Change Your Mind”, a tribute to the memory of Roy Buchanan it was suggested that we get someone to play Buchanan styled lead guitar, and recruited Joe Bonamassa, a lifelong admirer of Buchanan”. “I know you’ve been hurt many times before…I can make you change your mind…cause I got so much love, I can make you change your mind”. “They Know” was written by Price with Jon and Sally Tiven, and it features Jim Pugh on keyboards. A Latin beat opens “A Certain Something” written by Price, Jon and Sally, and Braunagel “I tried to resist her but I can’t explain, she had that certain something; Jim Pugh plays piano and takes a nice solo.

On “The Gift” Price sings “you got your hand in my pocket reaching way down deep…I’m the gift that keeps on giving…all you ever do is take”. “Crying at the Stoplight” beautifully sung “She was crying at the stoplight in the middle of the day…waiting for the light to change”; Jim Pugh decorates while playing the Hammond B-3. Pugh plays the Hammond B-3 again on “I Lose It” “when I’m in love, all day long I wonder…lost in speculation…I lose it when I’m in love”. The closer is “Damage Control” “when you explain you don’t look me in the eye…your in damage control…but the truth is gonna’ set me free”.

Billy Price thanks his seven member road band. This is a great new album from one our best Soul Blues artists.

Richard Ludmerer

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