Root Doctor - "Change Our Ways"

I just received the new CD from Root Doctor Band a couple of days ago, so this morning I gave it a "test drive" so to speak on my way to work.

It was a fairly normal day today, with moderate traffic as I got onto the highway. But of course, the laws of "Carma" - the cosmological laws of driving and traffic, have a way of balancing out your experience sometimes. What you gain in a break in traffic at one part of your journey, you certainly will lose as you encounter a minor jam somewhere further on up the road.

Root Doctor are an interesting band of mostly young Blues musicians fronted by a more veteran vocalist named Freddie Cunningham. Cunningham has one of those soulful voices that have a rich rounded tone and deep vibrato or sustain in his technique. He wouldn't stand out that much among old style R&B/ Soul singers, but in the Blues idiom it adds a breath of fresh air and a different take on the Blues.

Root Doctor are a tight band with a good dose of Soul and Funk in their playing, but they can certainly prove their mainstream Blues roots as well. Their previous album from last year (Been A Long Time Coming - Big O Records 2406)impressed me as a fresh new band on the scene, and this new CD just keeps up that good feeling with a selection of original tunes, and some interesting covers.

One such cover, "Soul Shine" by Warren Haynes, is a very pleasant surprise since I am a very big fan of Warren and his band Gov't Mule, and Root Doctor do a fine cover of this inspirational song.

Well, I finally made it through that last surprise traffic jam just 800 meters from the office, and managed to slip into the parking lot without event as I flipped to the first track on the CD - "Blues Will Take Care of You", written by their keyboard man Jim Alfredson, a very nice Blues song to carry with me through my day...

Bill Withers - Acoustic Soul!!!

Sunday morning traffic is always the heaviest around the greater Tel Aviv area, as well as other parts of the country. A large number of traffic jams seem to be unnecessarily caused by drivers who simply don't know how to use lanes properly - they hesitate too much, block exit lanes that could easily flow faster if they were surer of themselves or decisive in any way.
To compound all that, there is a fanning out or widening funnel effect caused by assholes who try to cut in further down the line and block additional lanes that are not part of the exit, this causes a chain reaction that slows down the rest of the lanes, causing a traffic jam backup of a few miles...So I wanted a mellow album to help me be patient, and also to try to wake up. I took along the new Bill Withers Super Hits compilation that I picked up last Friday.

Sundays are hard days to get back to work, the one and a half day weekend is short, and I'm quite often still very tired - the body wakes up at 6:30 in the morning, but the brain sometimes takes it's sweet time in fully waking up 'till around one hour after I arrive at the office...

I was just starting high school as Bill Withers began hitting the charts with songs like "Ain't No Sunshine (When She's Gone)", "Use Me", "When I'm Kissing My Love", and the following year, "Grandma's Hands" and his all time classic "Lean On Me".
I consider Withers to be a real crossover artist - someone with true R&B sensibilities - he started his career teamed up with Booker T. Jones.
Withers played acoustic guitar and wrote very catchy pop-oriented tunes, so it's not surprising that he made it big at the time as part of the Pop-Folk-Singer/Songwriter scene. Many of his songs are timeless, standing up today as well as they did back then when I would hear them on Boston radio stations all the time, and I have performed his classic "Lean On Me" quite a few times on stage over the years.

Well, maybe it was the karma of Bill Withers' music, and maybe it was sheer luck, but once I got past the unnecessary jam in the Sheraton City Towers area of the highway, the rest was smooth sailing, and I was in the office trying to wake up in no time...