Zac Harmon

The Blues According to Zachariah

This CD was sent by British ex-pat Betsie Brown of the Memphis, Tennessee based company Crows Feet Productions. This a very agreeable CD from Zac Harmon, an undiscovered gem in the world of blues.

Zac has a wonderful voice and is also a very accomplished guitarist. This CD is a highly recommended album of quality songs from both Zac's pen and other high quality and more well known songwriters. This is what we found......

The album opens with That Mighty High, a bright and breezy good-time feeling song with Zac's slightly chanted lyrics and jaunty organ giving way to Zac's real singing voice with plenty of locomotion." You gotta ride...ride that Mighty High!" go the lyrics with a fast tempo harmonica beneath Zac and the backing singers harmony. Good opener! The CD continues with a song called Sugarman. Sounding uncannily like Carl Weathersby, with maybe a touch of Robert Cray thrown in, it's a really pleasant song vocally. The addition of some beautifully toned guitar provided some super licks and some organ peaks illustrating the excellent stereo effects of this high quality production. This CD reaches beyond the human calling as the door knocking effect beneath the song Who's Knockin had my own hound-dog barking during the song! This song has some nice slide guitar, excellent vocals and has a healthy slice of humour added. This composition would not go amiss on a Shemekia Copeland CD, it has that jaunty, comical feel. Credit is due to the harp player too. Brilliant!

Eddie Cotton's It's Cool With Me starts with a cool bass and drums groove with a fat cushion of Hammond B3 and Zac's classic sounding blues guitar. The medium/slow tempo 12 bar sound is a luxurious wallow in the blues with Zac's magnificent guitar and vocal combination with some amount of Buddy Guy kinda phrasing throughout. Wonderful! I had to pick up my guitar to jam as I listened to the introduction! The song's in B-flat by the way! "Have Mercy" sings Zac at the end of this song!

A real treat is the fifth track That's Why. This Zac Harmon composition has a Robert Cray feel to it. Zac's vocals are beautiful, he's a great singer, and I mean G-R-E-A-T. The phrasing is superb throughout this modern blues masterpiece and has some excellent blues guitar, full of feeling and meaning. The song is a full production and of top quality right out of the studio.

Muddy Water's classic Mannish Boy is next up and in B-Flat again to suit Zac's vocal pitch, this is a very tight production with all the essential ingredients, the classic riff, the hollering after the "I'm a Man..." with a very unique phrasing on the "I'm a Mannish Boy". What a marvellous blues. Mel London had a part in writing Mannish Boy and he also takes the credits for It Hurts Me Too. Zac duets with Miss Mickey Champion and the song has a superb harmonica intro. This slow tempo blues takes you back to thoughts of duets in the Juke Joints with Zac and Miss Mickey's smoochy, smouldering blues style. Zac doesn't let us down with the guitar either, there's some really tasty licks too. Marvellous!

The song Comfort of a Man is an emotional roller coaster ride with gut wrenching guitar, which is thought to be Greg Wright the left-handed superstar, and Zac's neo Solomon Burke vocals. This deserves more words written about it but lets just leave it by saying this is one of the best songs of it's genre I've ever heard. It's truly beautiful. The album closer, A Hole In My Heart, is a superb song with a nice guitar intro giving way to a BB King phrasing style on the vocals. Zac gets pretty close to Riley B with the vocal style and this helps the style of this excellent slow blues. There's elements of Solomon Burke in there too, it's that good! Halfway through the song Zac says "Pass me my guitar man" and proceeds to rip through another face-contorting guitar passage with what seems like a lot of tone rolled off the treble. Nice tone too! Zac comes back in with the emotionally charged lyrics to take the song to it's conclusion and close the highly satisfying album.

This CD is the best blues CD I've heard for some time. Zac is a great performer, vocals, guitar and songwriting, he's got it all. My thanks go to Bluestone Records and Betsie Brown of Crows Feet Productions for bringing this superb album to my attention.

Steve Lally