Mary Lane - Travelin' Woman (2019)

The 83-year-old chanteuse’s new album Travelin’ Woman, produced by Jim Tullio and released on the freshly minted Women of the Blues imprint, promises to take the blues world by storm, featuring guest appearances by Gene “Daddy G” Barge, Billy Branch, Dave Specter, Corky Siegel, and the late Eddie Shaw.

Apart from one selection, Travelin’ Woman is a 50/50 collaboration between Lane and Tullio — he created the sumptuous, marvelously evocative musical backdrops with a skin-tight group of studio musicians, and she supplied the deeply moving lyrics and vocals. “I just came up singing as the music played,” said Mary. “I just come up with lyrics in my head, and go with the music. So that’s the way I did all of them.”

Several of the album’s selections push the boundaries of Lane’s bandstand-honed approach. On “Make Up Your Mind,” she’s backed only by Colin Linden’s acoustic slide dobro (he co-wrote the theme with Mary), and “Let Me Into Your Heart” is a soul-steeped blues ballad. “It took me a while to fit some words into it that fit with the music,” she notes of the latter. “But I came up with it.” Mary released her first full-length CD, Appointment with the Blues, two decades ago on the Noir label. ~Bill Dahl