10/1/2006

Lisa Blue

Having released eight albums since 1990, Fiona Boyes is well known in her homeland of Australia. Now she’s ready to take the plunge into the deep waters of the American blues scene. And on Lucky 13, her American debut, she proves she can swim and not sink.

After winning 1st place in the Solo Acoustic competition at the 2003 International Blues Challenge, Fiona Boyes spent 3 months in 2004 playing 75 club and festival dates in the U.S. When Lucky Dog Records asked her where she wanted to record the project that would become Lucky 13, her experiences in the states led her to choose Austin.

A 16 year veteran of the Australian electric blues scene, Boyes is also an accomplished acoustic guitar player and a prolific songwriter. (She wrote 10 of the CD’s 13 songs.) With her earthy, rough-hewn voice, she is a force on the rise, lifted even higher here by the appearances of her American blues friends including Derek O’Brien, Larry Fulcher, Riley Osbourne, Barry "Frosty" Smith, Marcia Ball, "Steady Rollin’" Bob Margolin and Kaz Kazanoff. Kazanoff not only contributed harp and tenor sax, but produced the project as well.

The songs are well written with intelligent, often humorous lyrics. On the rollicking "Chick Wants Corn", where Fiona shares the advice of a wise man, ‘If you know what you want, you got to go out and get it' and she knows she wants that man ‘like a chicken wants corn’.

Boyes is joined by Marcia Ball on piano and vocals on the ode to the natural female form "Celebrate The Curves", where she proclaims proudly "I’m built like a woman’s meant to be built, with a belly, butt and boobs".

Sounding sad and weary, but ever the wiser on "Stranger In Your Eyes", she laments the deepest of emotional wounds, the cut made by the lies and deception of the one you trust the most; the one you love.

Fiona Boyes has delivered a powerhouse of an American debut in Lucky 13. Get it, and get lucky too.