JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Mary J. Blige’s 54th birthday.
Category: Soul Music
Throwback: R.I.P. Sam Moore
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the live and music of Sam and Dave’s Sam Moore.
Throwback: Happy 110th Birthday, Pops Staples!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 110th anniversary of Pops Staples birth.
Throwback: Happy 83rd Birthday, Maurice White!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 83rd anniversary of Maurice White’s birth.
New Video: Homer Teams Up with girl named GOLDEN on Mischievous, Wes Anderson-Styled Visual for “Wishing Well”
Acclaimed New York-born and-based drummer, songwriter and producer Homer Steinweiss has a storied career that started in earnest when he was just a teenager. He has been instrumental in helping bring the raw-but-receptive soul sound back into the mainstream through his work with Amy Winehouse, Sharon Jones and Charles Bradley. Steinwess has also been behind the kit for nearly every contemporary soul outfit that has mattered.
The New York-born and-based musician is now one of the most in demand drummers in the world, playing with the likes of Clairo, Solange, Adele, Silk Sonic and Bruno Mars, among a lengthy list of others. And much like his longtime bandmate Dave Guy, Steinweiss is stepping into the spotlight as a both a musician and producer with Ensatina, his first solo album released under the moniker Homer.
Released last month through Big Crown Records, Ensatina is reflection of who Steinweiss is now and a testament of how struggle often brings about much-needed changes. He was dealing with considerable emotional turbulence; at the same time that his band Holy Hive broke up, a long-personal relationship fell apart, putting him in an uncertain place mentally. The fallout was significant enough for him to seek professional help. “I was going through these super manic highs and then very depressive lows,” Steinweiss explains. “And being in all that, it’s just so tough to imagine that the other side is there, that it’ll be ok.” But, with time, professional help, and support from friends and family, Homer made it through and has been forever changed. This album is a product of that period of his life.
For Steinweiss, creating the album was a refuge, and it put him back on track. Creatives across the world have an innate understanding of that. But the album is also a glimpse into the different energies that influences that make the man and the artist tick. And fittingly, the album is the beginning of a new, interesting chapter of Steinweiss’ life and career.
In the lead up to the album’s release I wrote about three of it’s released singles:
- “Deep Sea,” feat. Hether, a slow-burning and woozy love song set over a hypnotic back beat, a gorgeous, dreamy trumpet line and a strummed acoustic guitar line. The lush and meditative arrangement compliments Hether’s dreamily romantic delivery and lyrics, which includes a sweet nod to Steinwess now wife. The song seems to suggest that when we’re struggling in life’s deep sea, love — in all of its forms — can be the lifeline.
- “Rollin‘” a lush and swaggering Quiet Storm-like soundscape with skittering and plinking 808s, broodingly regal horns, bursts of strummed guitar and KIRBY’s ethereal delivery, which alternates between scatting and cooing lyrics over the lush production.
- “So Get Up!,” a strutting and swaggering bit of hook-driven genre-blurring funk anchored around dusty and skittering boom bap, twinkling synth oscillations and glistening and arpeggiated synth melodies serving as a lush and euphoric bed for MINOVA’s and Michael Rault‘s ethereal and expressive deliveries. Sonically resembling a slick synthesis of 80s synth funk, Rush Midnight and Tame Impala, “So Get Up!” reveals an artist with an adept production style.
Ensatina‘s fourth and latest single “Wishing Well” featuring girl named GOLDEN is a brooding track anchored around a trippy yet soulful groove that’s influenced by late Miles Davis-like jazz, electronic music, soul and trip-hop paired with skittering and chugging drums and glistening synths serving as a woozily lush soundscape for girl named GOLDEN’s sultry cooing. Much like its immediate predecessor, “Wishing Well” reveals an artist with a unique, playfully genre agnostic sound.
Directed by Ben Steiger Levine and Jordan Fein, the accompanying video is a Wes Anderson-inspired romp shot in and around one of the most gorgeous buildings in NYC, the New York Public Library, that captures the pair’s mischievous misfit-like energy.
Throwback: Happy 92nd Birthday, Little Richard!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 92nd anniversary of Little Richard’s birth.
Throwback: Happy 91st Birthday, Lou Rawls!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 91st anniversary of Lou Rawls’ birth.
Throwback: Happy 85th Birthday, Tina Turner!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 85th anniversary of Tina Turner’s birth.
New Video: Homer Teams Up with girl named GOLDEN on Woozy “Wishing Well”
Acclaimed New York-born and-based drummer, songwriter and producer Homer Steinweiss has a storied career that started in earnest when he was just a teenager. He has been instrumental in helping bring the raw-but-receptive soul sound back into the mainstream through his work with Amy Winehouse, Sharon Jones and Charles Bradley. Steinwess has also been behind the kit for nearly every contemporary soul outfit that has mattered.
The New York-born and-based musician is now one of the most in demand drummers in the world, playing with the likes of Clairo, Solange, Adele, Silk Sonic and Bruno Mars, among a lengthy list of others. And much like his longtime bandmate Dave Guy, Steinweiss is stepping into the spotlight as a both a musician and producer with Ensatina, his first solo album released under the moniker Homer.
Slated for a November 15, 2024 release through Big Crown Records, Ensatina is reflection of who Steinweiss is now and a testament of how struggle often brings about much-needed changes. He was dealing with considerable emotional turbulence; at the same time that his band Holy Hive broke up, a long-personal relationship fell apart, putting him in an uncertain place mentally. The fallout was significant enough for him to seek professional help. “I was going through these super manic highs and then very depressive lows,” Steinweiss explains. “And being in all that, it’s just so tough to imagine that the other side is there, that it’ll be ok.” But, with time, professional help, and support from friends and family, Homer made it through and has been forever changed. This album is a product of that period of his life.
For Steinweiss, creating the album was a refuge, and it put him back on track. Creatives across the world have an innate understanding of that. But the album is also a glimpse into the different energies that influences that make the man and the artist tick. And fittingly, the album is the beginning of a new, interesting chapter of Steinweiss’ life and career.
So far I’ve written about three of Ensatina‘s singles:
- “Deep Sea,” feat. Hether, a slow-burning and woozy love song set over a hypnotic back beat, a gorgeous, dreamy trumpet line and a strummed acoustic guitar line. The lush and meditative arrangement compliments Hether’s dreamily romantic delivery and lyrics, which includes a sweet nod to Steinwess now wife. The song seems to suggest that when we’re struggling in life’s deep sea, love — in all of its forms — can be the lifeline.
- “Rollin‘” a lush and swaggering Quiet Storm-like soundscape with skittering and plinking 808s, broodingly regal horns, bursts of strummed guitar and KIRBY’s ethereal delivery, which alternates between scatting and cooing lyrics over the lush production.
- “So Get Up!,” a strutting and swaggering bit of hook-driven genre-blurring funk anchored around dusty and skittering boom bap, twinkling synth oscillations and glistening and arpeggiated synth melodies serving as a lush and euphoric bed for MINOVA’s and Michael Rault‘s ethereal and expressive deliveries. Sonically resembling a slick synthesis of 80s synth funk, Rush Midnight and Tame Impala, “So Get Up!” reveals an artist with an adept production style.
Ensatina‘s fourth and latest single “Wishing Well” featuring girl named GOLDEN is a brooding track anchored around a trippy yet soulful groove that’s influenced by late Miles Davis-like jazz, electronic music, soul and trip-hop paired with skittering and chugging drums and glistening synths serving as a woozily lush soundscape for girl named GOLDEN’s sultry cooing. Much like its immediate predecessor, “Wishing Well” reveals an artist with a unique, playfully genre agnostic sound.
The song is accompanied by a trippy video featuring the album’s namesake lizard Ensatina, done in 3D animation by Alex Cascone.
Throwback: Happy 76th Birthday, Charles Bradley!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 76th anniversary of Charles Bradley’s birth.
Throwback: R.I.P. Quincy Jones
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the life and music of Quincy Jones.
New Audio: Charles “Wigg” Walker Shares Optimistic, Two Step-Inducing “(Feels Like) Things Are Comin’ Our Way”
Tracing the origins of his nearly eight decade-long career back to when he began singing at an early age in church and then later in school, Nashville-born and-based soul singer/songwriter Charles “Wigg” Walker released his first single back in 1959 through Ted Jarrett‘s legendary and beloved Champion Records.
Walker relocated to New York, where he became a frontman for the J.C. Davis Band, an outfit that shared bills with James Brown, Jackie Wilson, Etta James, Otis Redding and Sam Cooke. His first group, Little Charles and the Sidewinders because a New York nightclub scene staple in the early 1960s, and would then go on to record and release material through Chess and Decca Records.
After spending over a decade on the road, Walker took a staff writing role with Motown in the 70s. By the start of the 80, Walker relocated to Europe. where continued to find enthusiastic audiences. But the blues, R&B and soul revival movements that started in the 90s ultimately brought Walker back to Nashville.
This Love Is Gonna Last is the first album from the Nashville-born and-based soul artist in over a decade, while also being the first album since his stint fronting The Dynamites in the early 2010s. Recorded with longtime organist and collaborator Charles Treadway, the album’s material reportedly shifts seamlessly between different and distinct ears of soul, bouncing from Philly to Motown, to Memphis and more. The album’s richly lush arrangements are owed to Walker’s chemistry with his core backing trio — Treadway, along with Chet Atkins‘s and Lyle Lovett‘s Pat Bergeson (guitar) and Average White Band‘s and Tom Jones‘ Pete Abbott (drums).
While superficially joyous, thematically, the album’s material is underpinned by the wizened and insightful recognition of our own impending and inevitable morality, of time’s inexorable march, and the lessons and losses that come with all of it.
Underneath the album’s joyful truce, there’s the wizened recognition of time’s inexorable march, of our own mortality and the lessons and losses that come with it. In fact, the album is a dedication to Walker’s late wife, who died earlier this year.
Ultimately, the album reportedly is the sort of album he’s been building towards for his entire lengthy career, and a showcase not only for his vocal, but also for the unparalleled emotional range that’s defined his work for over 50 years. Now, with his unflagging faith and dedication as the bedrock of This Love Is Gonna Last, Walker may finally be getting his due. “I feel more appreciated now than ever,” he says. “There’s something different about this album. It just feels right.”
This Love Is Gonna Last‘s first single “(Feels Like) Things Are Comin’ Our Way” is the perfect tune for your grandma and grandpa or your uncle and auntie to sweetly sway and two-step together at a Black barbecue or a Black wedding. Those of y’all, who know, know what I’m talking about and can immediate picture it in your mind’s eye. Sonically resembling a slick synthesis of Luther Vandross‘ “Never Too Much,” Keni Burke‘s “Risin’ To The Top,” The Isley Brothers‘ legendary 70s output and gospel, “(Feels Like) Things Are Comin’ Our Way” is a sweetly earnest and school declaration of the sort of love that we all long for — the love that’s there with you, through the ups, downs and everything in between.
“This song sums up this whole album for me really,” says Walker about the new single. “After all the places I’ve been and all the bands I’ve performed with and all the recordings I’ve made, it feels like things are finally starting to come my way.”
New Video: SUNSAY Shares Soulful and Introspective “Papa’s Song”
Andrey Zaporozhets is a Ukrainian singer/songwriter and musician, whose career started in earnest back in 2000. Zaporozhets first captured audiences as one-half of 5’nizza. With bandmate Sergey Babkin, the duo gained recognition for a unique and authentic sound that paired acoustic guitar with soulful vocals and harmonies and thoughtful lyrics.
5’nizza went on hiatus in 2007. Zaporozhets stepped out into the spotlight as a solo artist with his solo recording project SUNSAY. Through the release of seven studio albums, two EPs and a handful of standalone singles, the Ukrainian artist has firmly established a sound that pairs soulful vocals and expressive and introspective lyrics that reflect his personal journey and experience. Thematically anchored in a message of finding common ground within and around us, Zaporozhets believes that his work has the power to create and inspire unity.
SUNSAY’s latest single “Papa’s Song” is the first bit of new material from the Ukrainian singer/songwriter and musician in over two years. Anchored around a classic, cinematic soul-inspired sound featuring a glistening Rhodes, shuffling rhythms, soaring strings, a supple bass line and soulful backing and lead vocals, “Papa’s Song” recalls What’s Going On-era Marvin Gaye and contemporaries like Monophonics and others. Lyrically and thematically, the new single is arguably one of the Ukrainian artist’s most personal to date. Written as a tribute to his father, the song explores the complex and conflicting emotions between fathers and sons, while reaching a point of understanding and accepting his father for the complicated, flawed, whole person he was with a sense of forgiveness.
Directed by Sam Bagdasarov, the accompanying video for “Papa’s Song” is shot in a gorgeous, cinematic black and white. We follow a young boy and the grown Zaporozhets but their roles are reversed, almost like the movie Big: The boy, wearing a false mustache for a significant portion of the video, plays the role of the parent with Zaporozhets playing the role of the child. Through this view, and the wisdom he’s earned through his life, the grown Zaporozhets comes to a deeper, empathetic understanding of his father; an understanding that he wouldn’t have come to when he was younger.