Blind SHELLEY - "Tenderly"
– A review by Charlton Wiggins
When I saw on Facebook that Kevin Jones, a friend from my college days at Freed-Hardeman College (now University), was working on a new album I was intrigued. I contacted Kevin to have him put me down to buy one when it was released. Fast forward a few months and the CD for Blind SHELLEY, titled Tenderly, appeared in my mailbox.
The group name is born of the tradition instituted by other artists (such as Blind Willie Johnson, Blind Willie McTell and The Five Blind Boys Of Alabama) of including their handicap in their name. Even though Kevin is not blind he does have a significant vision impairment which he choses “to regard as a feature and not a flaw.” While “Blind” references Kevin’s sight issues, the SHELLEY comes from his middle name and one inherited from his grandfather.
I couldn’t wait to hear the album so I popped it into my car’s CD player and gave it a listen as I drove about town. What I heard was beautiful music, mostly a more refined blues sound with a folk flavor to it, yet a hint of nostalgia too that reflect myriad musical influences.
The collection of mostly original songs is a fun listen. Kevin either wrote or co-wrote all the music and lyrics on the album with the exception of musician Walter Gross’s 1946 hit “Tenderly,” and an excellent cover of the Beatles “Dear Prudence.”
Tenderly opens with “Mean Molly,” a tune flavored with a Tom Petty vibe as is another song titled “Mary Margaret.” Other highlights on the album include the eponymously titled “Blind SHELLEY,” a heavy blues instrumental with a very haunting harmonica, and “Woke Up Dreaming” also with a harmonica, though very wistful and lonely.
Bringing to mind a sound of the 80’s akin to the likes of the Squeeze, “Out of Luck” is one of those tunes with a hint of another musical era.
Probably my favorite song on the album from the title alone, “Wiggle Giggle” just made me smile and how can you not with a lyric like “she got a wiggle when she walks, she got a giggle when she talks.”
Where “Wiggle Giggle” might make you smile it is followed by the very somber, plaintive song in “Agnus Dei” with a sound which would be perfectly at home in some dramatic film-noir flick. Almost chant like in tone the song is one of redemption and going home, taking its inspiration from the ancient Latin Mass.
As the album closes out we’re treated with the up-beat number “Up, Down, Sideways,” a happy little song that just makes you feel good. Kevin began writing the song several years ago as a wedding song inspired by the marriage of his wife’s niece.
Throughout the album each song is unencumbered with frivolous lyrics. Instead the lyrics are descriptive without being directly so. The lyrics create an imagery, a technique Kevin describes as “show, don’t tell.” When Kevin sings “Mean Molly” we can actually see in our mind the subject being lost “like a lizard on a limb, in a fire.” Not only do we see that loss but we feel the hopelessness of the loss.
Kevin Jones has indeed crafted a fine collection of songs on this album, songs which may be different and far afield of each other in subject matter and feel, but all have a thread of connectivity in their seeming simple manner and the mastery with which Kevin’s lyrics are “understated and whimsical.”
To purchase your copy email sacul24@me.com with your shipping address and payment preference. Put Blind SHELLEY in the subject line. You’ll have to pay the $20 (which includes shipping) by PayPal or CashApp. Plans are being made to make the album available on both iTunes and Spotify so if digital downloads are your preference keep checking there.
Blind SHELLEY is: Kevin Jones (vocals, guitar, piano, Hammond organ, harmonica); Mark-Aaron Hilliard (Drums)
