Tag: Mary J . Blige

Kyshona on 50 Years of ‘Rags To Rufus’

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

(Editor’s Note: 50 years ago this month, Rufus released what would become a seminal album in American roots music, soul, and funk, Rags To Rufus, which featured Chaka Khan. To mark the 50th anniversary of this iconic recording, singer-songwriter Kyshona ponders the personal meanings of the project and how it relates to her own brand new album, Legacy.)

My mother is battling dementia, so car rides with her are the perfect time to play music from her younger years, when she was carefree, childless, and she and my Dad hosted an abundance of house parties for their friends and family. I have a playlist of songs from the late ‘60s and ‘70s I’ll put on when we’re shuttling her between doctors’ appointments.

On one of these car rides, I turned on Rags To Rufus. My mom was in the passenger seat, playing “brain games” on her phone to, in her words, “Exercise her mind and hold on to what she’s got.” I noticed she was singing, under her breath, the melodies and choruses of the first three tracks on the album. She turned to me and said, “I’ve never heard this before, who is this? I like it!” This got me thinking beyond personal family legacy and more about musical legacy.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Rags To Rufus, the album that transformed the trajectory of funk band Rufus and propelled Chaka Khan into the spotlight. Chaka Khan’s music is a soundtrack that has woven itself into the fabric of not only my work as an artist, but also into my personal life.

There is an expectation to conform, to try to categorize and compartmentalize music; I can’t imagine enduring the pressure from the industry, and even society as a whole, as it was nearly a half a century ago, artists and bands trying to squeeze themselves into arbitrary molds. To my ears, Rags To Rufus is the sound of a group of friends hanging out and having a good time – there is a sense of celebration, camaraderie, a sonic journey of Black joy. It feels like an album made for the thrill of being creative, for the sake of unbridled artistic freedom. I have always wanted my music to feel like this, telling stories, playing around with sounds and ideas. When I’m creating, that’s my goal. I write in the style that serves the story that I’m telling, without regard to genre constraints or others’ expectations.

The record begins with empowered swagger and affirmation – “You Got The Love,” which I interpret as, “You belong here.” The sentiment is carried through in “Walkin’ In The Sun,” a song that brings a comforting sense of nostalgia. I can hear my “aunties” in the hook: “Even a blind man can tell when he’s walking in the sun.”

The title track is a funked-out jam session, and then the band brings out old-time fervor in “Swing Down Chariot.”

Think about it – Rufus takes an old gospel song, adds Chaka Khan’s powerhouse vocals, blends it with blues, jazz, funk, soul, and takes it to an entirely new dimension! Forget genre, industry rules, or album cycles. Back in the day, it was just music that made you feel good, it was about that vibe.

As a music therapist, I recognize the profound impact music has on those grappling with conditions like Alzheimer’s and dementia – it encourages lucidity and presence of self. As a daughter, I see how music bonds me to my mother.

In the past, when I’ve done music therapy in nursing home settings, I’ve used songs from the early 20th century – like “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” “Heart And Soul,” and “Sentimental Journey.” But now, the memory care songs I reach for are songs I grew up listening to in our house, at family reunions, on road trips. How fantastic is it that Chaka Khan’s work throughout her 50-year career can provide a generation-spanning conduit for a mother and a daughter to connect? We can experience that freedom in her sound as we listen together, regardless of the chaos happening around us.

I can’t begin to put into words how much I admire Chaka Khan; with my new album, Legacy, I tell the stories of my ancestors and my family. Chaka Khan’s legacy is intertwined with generations of music-makers.

Over the last 50 years, Khan has been a major influence on pop artists like Whitney Houston, R&B artists like Erykah Badu and Mary J. Blige, and on myself – and so many of my peers in the roots and folk scenes. I learned of her musical magic as a child, listening to my parents’ favorite radio stations, so being able to sing backing vocals for her at Newport Folk Festival a few years ago was absolutely surreal. I can’t imagine the journey she’s been on, but I hope she knows that her existence alone encourages artists like me to keep on being true to ourselves and our art.

Rags To Rufus is a part of my journey. For me, it’s the sound of “blackness.” I hope that 50 years from now, someone will listen to the music of myself and my peers and hear that same resonance of joy, love, and celebration of culture.

We all dream to leave a lasting musical legacy as deep and profound as Chaka Khan and Rufus.

Photo Credit: Anna Haas

Roots R&B Group The Shindellas Blend Innovation and Tradition

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

There’s no group around who either looks or sounds like The Shindellas, a trio who’ve shown they can charm audiences in every setting – from a New Year’s Eve party hosted by Nashville’s top urban contemporary radio station, 92Q, to a Grand Ole Opry crowd on a Tuesday night. Kasi Jones, Tamara Chauniece, and Stacy Johnson exude confidence, charm, and poise with very specific and thoughtful outlooks not only about their music, but also the messages they want their fans to get from their songs.

“We embrace the term girl group,” Kasi said, when asked if they found the term outdated or demeaning when used in 21st century conversation. “We’re always been about empowering women and girls, expressing strength and unity in our songs about love and life, and telling the truth. We view ourselves as expressing the term in every positive sense.”

They’ve been operating since 2017 in the town of Franklin, 20 miles south of Nashville. The trio arrived to become part of Weirdo Workshop, a company started by the writing/production duo of Claude Kelly and Chuck Harmony, Louis York. Their versatility and flexibility in working with artists – such as Mary J. Blige, Miley Cyrus, and Bruno Mars – and in particular women artists, all who come from vastly different places, has worked well. The Shindellas credit Kelly and Harmony with, among other things, providing them their unique name.

“It was definitely Claude and Chuck’s idea,” added Tamara. “We wanted a name that sounded fresh and generated excitement, as well as one that didn’t sound like anything else out there at the time.”

The Shindellas also emphasize and celebrate the collective, both as performers and songwriters. There is no lead vocalist by definition and each one doesn’t even consider that possibility. This is the ultimate trio, one whose harmonies and polish are pinpoint, yet there’s no hint of the tedium or boredom that might come from a group who’s overly rehearsed. The emphasis and focus on originality in performance, ethos, look, and viewpoint is also a reflection of the fact that all three have their own backstories of dissatisfaction – with things that they’ve witnessed and/or encountered, in terms of the music business. Stacy Johnson once worked with a family-operated music company in Chicago, before moving on to doing vocals on dance tracks, plus a brief tenure in a girl group where she quickly departed over concerns about how she was being asked to present herself. She was intrigued by Harmony’s idea of creating a trio whose members valued respect in every aspect of their treatment and presentation.

Jones had seen some of the worse aspects of predator behavior in Los Angeles after she’d previously done musical theater and booked her own overseas tours as a contemporary soul artist. When she made a visit to the Workshop and was impressed by the treatment and attitudes, she knew she’d found what she wanted. Chauniece had been a child gospel singer working on the Texas circuit with her mother managing her. She got a temporary boost in exposure and stature from being on the fifth season of The Voice, but was uncomfortable with the notion of getting lost on a major label. Both the Workshop and the trio’s other two members proved an ideal fit.

The Shindellas have definitely been expanding their fan base and earning more acclaim over the past few years. Their 2019 EP Genesis created some buzz and more followed their 2021 full-length debut, Hits That Stick Like Grits. In addition, their elegant and elaborate stage shows drew raves for being classy, yet also enticing. But their latest, Shindo, which was released in October, has given them the industry boost always vital for acts that are still building a base. It’s given them their first radio hit with “Last Night Was Good For My Soul,” an energetic, superbly sung party tune that reached the Top 10 on the Billboard Adult R&B airplay chart. It was also the first one where they got an assist from an outside partner, as the Nashville indie label Thirty Tigers helped propel the single forward.

Shindo is also a great spotlight for the group’s stylistic versatility. While their links to such vintage girl groups as The Supremes and The Pointer Sisters can clearly be heard, they’ve also got their own vibrant, engaging, and special sound.

For instance, the single “Up 2 You” demonstrates their ability to excel within a groove-dominated work, while “Kiss N’ Tell” has an edge in its discretion-demanding narrative, and “Juicy” has a sassy, naughty tone. The “Juicy” video also generated plenty of attention for its inclusion of Kasi Jones reading Angela Davis’ volume, Women, Race & Class.

Still, while they never expressly embrace the notion of a lead or front vocalist, at times, some songs do spotlight individual members talents. Jones’ facility with verbal improvisation emerges in “Last Night Was Good For My Soul” as one example. Yet, the notion of any one vocalist exiting the unit – in the manner that Diana Ross did the Supremes or like Bonnie Pointer departing her sisters – doesn’t seem on the horizon.

While Nashville has long had a reputation for not exactly welcoming artists of color that don’t fit into very specific genres or formats, the Shindellas are quick to praise Music City as being highly supportive of their music. “Nashville has welcomed us with open arms,” Johnson says. “We’ve never been treated with anything other than warmth and respect, and that’s whether we’re talking about the Opry, urban contemporary radio, fans, it’s just been wonderful.”

The trio has some ambitious plans and hopes for 2024 and beyond, our interview being completed just before the end of 2023. Most notably, they have some potential European and international tours upcoming. “I’d love to see us get some of our music into some films down the line,” Johnson continues. “We’d love to do more shows around Nashville,” chimes in Tamara. “Especially the Ryman, and we’re also thrilled to be appearing at the New Year’s Eve Party sponsored by 92Q!”

“We also are going to be doing more songwriting and collaborating [in 2024],” concluded Jones. “We really want to not only build a lasting legacy as performers, but also contribute as songwriters. We’ve all got backgrounds in other styles and we bring those influences into our performances. We’ve also got ideas for songs that we’ve been working on. I predict that people are really going to be pleased with what they hear from us, and we’re determined to make 2024 an even bigger year for the Shindellas.”

Photo Credit: Ezelle Franklin

BGS 5+5: Boo Ray

Posted on by Editor

Name: Boo Ray
Hometown: Western Mountains of North Carolina
Latest album: Sea of Lights
Personal nicknames (or rejected band names): “During the few-years span that I just couldn’t seem to stay out of jail, the other incarcerated guys that I gambled with on Spades and Tonk called me ‘Boot-a-rang.’ I didn’t ever bother to correct ‘em. In grade school, my very first band was also called Rhythm & Booze; it was a 4 piece band and Marshall Tucker’s “Can’t You See” was a feature of our set.”

What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc — inform your music?

Ahh that’s a cool question… Well, it might could be that Southern writers like Harry Crews, Ron Rash, and Mark Twain make me think it’s important to have a writing voice, and that there’s something powerful and magic about the just right combination of words used to tell the truth of our human experience.

I knew this guy everybody called Mr. Jack that ran a sawmill-–an old V-Twin Harley motor bolted to a 12″x12″ post frame and a great big 15-foot 2″ bandsaw blade that pitched and twisted so wildly when it ran that it just seemed impossible it could have ever made a straight cut. But it did cut 18-foot-long, perfectly straight slices off the huge logs he used to run through that mill. He’d cut some 1/4″ thin cedar for me to use as lining on chests. The way Mr. Jack cussed at and about his sawmill, the logs, the lumber and his equipment, expressed his passionate care, deep affection, forgiving humor and humble mastery of his industry. I suppose my affection for the way Mr. Jack carried on about his sawmill might be responsible for my cussin’.

My great buddy, artist James Willis, is constantly teaching me about perspective and how to use detail and lack of detail as creative storytelling devices. Sean Brock’s amazing passion, depth of knowledge, agrarian approach, his wood coal cooking and his completely inclusive use of information, style, technique, perspective and philosophy, have certainly influenced me.

If you had to write a mission statement for your career, what would it be?

The point of the spear is compassion, inspiration and empowerment. I’m compelled to express to my fellow man that the troubles of life are not for nothing. The singer-songwriters that have moved me the most write songs that are part of the classic American songbook. So the purpose of my endeavor as a singer-songwriter is to land some songs, or a song, in the classic American songbook, whatever that is. I think that songbook includes songs by Lowell George, Leon Russell, John Hiatt and Fiona Apple. My favorite Grateful Dead record is the one that Lowell George produced, Shakedown Street. The word “Pop” ain’t necessarily blasphemy to me, unless it’s in front of the word “country”…

After writing the songs my mission is to perform the songs with my badass guitar-slingin’ band and build a dynamic, powerful and unique live sound around the character and nature of each of the songs. Live performance is more important to me than recording records, but I use the records as templates, stylistically, and to suggest possible arrangements. For me, the style itself demands that the records are exciting soundscapes, and experimental in the recording and engineering. If my records sound like someone else I’ve fallen short.

For me the singer-songwriter/guitar band-sound bar is set by acts like: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Little Feat, ZZ Top, Marty Stuart & His Fabulous Superlatives, any of John Hiatt’s bands (from The Goners and Little Village to his Trio), and Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit. So what’s my mission statement? I want to be Jerry Reed.

Boo Ray & Sean Brock

Which elements of nature do you spend the most time with and how do those impact your work?

I don’t spend enough time on/in the water lately. As a kid, I was at the river every week and in the woods all summer long. Sunrises and sunsets are important to me. I really tried to get up to my buddy Sean Minor’s for spring branding and spend some time roping, riding and working cattle this year, but had shows and sessions I couldn’t get out of. I like to do tractor work, eat homegrown tomatoes, negotiate the price of a late ’50s step-side GMC truck or dispute the shape of the taillights on a ’68 Chevelle while cracking pecans against each other, and get caught in a torrential downpour and soaked to the bone after doing some farm work.

Since food and music go so well together, what is your dream pairing of a meal and a musician?

Agreed, and I totally dig a supper club-type show. How about Sean Brock doing some kind of Low Country spread with Ossabaw pork sock-sausage, rice peas, Geechie Boy Grits with a fresh catch, and some kind summer vegetables, with Billy Gibbons giving his take on Hill Country Blues. Billy and Sean are both great historians, passionate technicians and intuitive as hell. That’d be the dream pairing.

How often do you hide behind a character in a song or use “you” when it’s actually “me”?

The artists I like definitely seem to have character-driven numbers in their repertoire: Tom Petty’s “Break Down” and “American Girl,” Eddie Rabbitt’s “I Love a Rainy Night,” and Don Williams “Tulsa Time,” written by Danny Flowers. Those kind of songs hold you up as a performer and don’t require you to emote and be so intimate, at least for three or four minutes at a time anyways. Sometimes I might jokingly introduce “Redneck Rock & Roll” as a song that I wrote first-person as Kenny Powers. But I certainly do keep a few of those songs in my set: “I Got the Jug,” “Johnny’s Tavern,” “Six Weeks in  Motel”, even “Sea of Lights” is that way now, most of the time. There’ve been a few times that singing “Sea of Lights” made me involuntarily weep and cry…

On the “you”/”me’ thing; I saw this Mary J. Blige performance once, she was singing this devastated lovesick number and my heart was just broken for her, you know? Then in the last chorus, nothing left but ashes and pain, she flips the script on the “you”/”me” switch and starts singing “bye bye” and waving as she left, and I realized she was singing my blues, and she was the one that was leaving. I was leveled. It was like a damned magic trick she’d just performed. I’ve tried variations of that writing device in my songs “Constantina,” “Six Weeks in a Motel,” and the “Hard to Tell” collab with Lilly Winwood all have a moment where they pivot or twist like that a little bit.

Photo of Boo Ray: Courtesy of Sideways Media
Photo of Boo Ray with Sean Brock: Price Harrison