“Tempered in Fire” CD review in the Lee County Courier out of Tupelo, MS – Elvis Country!Dec 01
December 1, 2011
Mississippi native belts out sultry blues
A lot of the best voices out there are hidden, waiting to be discovered. Many are from the south, and of those, several from Mississippi like the sultry blues singer, Lisa Mills. She grew up in Hattisburg. Her dad lis- tened to Hank Williams. Mom prefered Elvis.
“Church,andElvis. Prettygoodstuffhuh!Oh,andmyDadof course. He played a bit of guitar and he sounds like the real honky tonk deal when he sings Hank Williams and Johnny Cash and the old stan- dards like Fraulein, Fraulein,” Lisa said and smiled.
Her new album, Tempered in Fire, is one of the best CDs to land on my desk in a while, a set of songs reared in gospel, saturated in the blues and sprinkled with rock.
A friend with connections sent some of her tunes to Sam Andrew, the guitar player for Big Brother and the Holding Company, who wrote two of their biggest hits “Call on Me” and “Combination of the Two.” He was so impressed with Lisa that he hired her to tour three years with the band, filling some very big shoes – Janis Joplin.
She actually has a major following in Europe where they mostly toured. And that’s where she met Roy Williams (Robert Plant’s sound engineer) who saw her potential as a solo artist.
On Tempered Lisa goes through a range of tunes, a couple originals, Otis Redding’s “These Arms of Mine,” and two of my favorite Wet Willie numbers “Keep on Smiling” and “Countryside of Life.”
All 10 of the songs have a blues edge to them, and she clearly has both a love and understanding of the genre.
“When it’s (the blues) good, it’s good. I don’t think it’s ever gone anywhere and I don’t think its ever going away and it’s just a wave of love and appreciation. It’s timeless, it’s about human emotion, it’s the good stuff man, the good stuff!,” Lisa said.
Jim Clark