Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Once you have taken the High Road, all there is to do is phone ahead and notify every one of your progress and confirm detours and deviations aside, that you are on your way.
The journey is one to savour, the sense of ticking off the various mile posts, researching the beauty spots along the way, relishing the company or the solitude which inspires the senses, and then when you reach the next motel, the pit stops where the heart and soul write down all they have experienced, and only then does the phrase On My Way hold the gravitas that such a declaration deserves.
Katie Henry’s deeply sounding second album. On My Way, speaks volumes for the native New Jersey musician and her application to the Blues, the desire to see the road as an aide-memoire and not just as the part of the concrete and asphalt that stretches from the other side of the Hudson down through towns and places such as Barnegat Beach, Bargaintown, Wildwood, before finishing at the ample beauty that cradles Cape May and the lighthouse that shines its beacon up and over towards Delaware; such is her determination that the Blues be seen as a fluid but time honoured account of her industry, and all she has observed.
Moving up a gear on those back roads or on the specially built highway that skims the Atlantic Ocean as if it were a courageous Cape May Warbler on the wing, looking down on the rushes and the pale dots of fish below, On My Way speaks of aiming true for what really thrusts the heart forward, adventure, honesty, the realisation that some things and events cannot be changed, but that you can own them just the same, and as tracks such as Empty Cup, Bury You, Got Me Good, Blessings, Running Round, and Catch Me If You Can all frame the narrative, and with superb accompaniment by Ben Rice, Antwar Goodwin, Kurt Thum, Greg Wieczorek, and Giles Robson, so to does the journey evoke the meaning of ‘on my way’, for this is not a final resting place, nor is a meander off the beaten track, this is dynamism and drive captured in melody and pushing the Blues onto its next scheduled refill of the tank.
An album of great sincerity, of drama, and joy, Katie Henry is not just on her way, she is full engrossed in providing the listener with a detailed and enlightening observation of her voyage.
Katie Henry releases On My Way on January 28th via Ruf Records.
Ian D. Hall