Ms. Carolyn never strays far from the blues and Moon Goes Missing is another tasteful chapter in that story. This effort includes five compositions by Carolyn on her own, two more that she shares writing credit with someone else and four covers of some fine blues classics. She also included some duets with Ty Taylor and Guy Forsythe and Shelley King kicked in some harmony vocals as well. Of course, Bobby Perkins and Kevin Lance were included as Carolyn’s regular rhythm section.
The disc kicks off with the title track played as some spooky New Orleans style blues anthem. “Open Eyes” is a traditional blues number performed with crowd noises near the beginning giving the feel of a smoky barroom gig. Ty Taylor and Carolyn trade vocals on a cleanly produced, “Hellfire Bitters”.
Carolyn reaches way back for the Blind Willie Johnson gospel blues tune, “Can’t Nobody Hide from God” and serves it up with a liberal helping of slide. “Swamp” speaks of being bogged down in life and features a nice harmonica contribution from Guy Forsythe. Guy and Carolyn turn Dylan’s “Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat” into a two way conversational blues number with some stretched out solos that puts the original to shame. She also does a fine eight minute cover of Little Screaming Kenny and the Hightailers, “She Wants to Know”.
Carolyn sings some pretty awesome scat on the socially conscious “To Be Free” and there is some blues rocking going on with “Every Time You Go”. She and Ruthie Foster have been performing their co-written, “Come Together” for some years now and this disc finally includes Carolyn’s version of it. Carolyn closes this production with a country blues version of George Thorogood’s “Bad to the Bone” accompanied by Guy Forsythe on the resonator.
This CD is a must for any Carolyn Wonderland fans. Guy Forsyth’s fingerprints are all over it and the two of them push out some fantastic guitar and harmonica blues riffs. I’ll be driving this one around town for a while.
For instance, this performance of “Georgia Blues,” features the guitar icon’s former bandmate Lonnie Youngblood’s squall of a sax solo. And Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock,” with Stephen Stills on vocals and organ (and Hendrix on bass), was recorded the same day in 1969 as the former Buffalo Springfielder’s modified-blues “$20 Fine. ” Both Sides of the Sky also carries the distinction of a complete take documenting Jimi with the late blues great Texas native Johnny Winter: “Things I Used to Do” was once available only in part on a now out-of-print box set, and while it does to some degree intimates the proverbial scraping of the bottom of the vault, the sound of the ‘West Coast Seattle Boy’ playing blues here is also revelatory on a purely practical musicianly front: the contrast is quite clear between his inimitable style of playing and the albino’s slide.