"Blues N' Soul " is a collection of original songs centered around the subject of love and attraction from a personal point of view. When I wrote these songs I was trying to express feelings and tell stories that I'm sure we have or will experience at some stage in life. Starting with track one "Keep on steppin' " which is all about the abilty to walk away from a bad relationship and tell a selfish hard hearted woman to step on. I wanted to create a really driving dance groove with clean and distorted guitar sounds topped off with groovy horn hits for taste. Tracks two , three and four ( "I should quit you baby ", " Spend my life with you" and " Round about midnight " ) are a little more tradional in flavor as far as the blues is defined. I wanted to lean more toward funky piano ( played by Van Cephus ) and keyboard string sounds as sweeteners.Track five is my favorite instrumental shuffle titled " Blues for Jesse ". It is a personal tribute a truly great guitarist named JesseTaylor and loosely based on Freddie King's hit, "Hideaway". Track six , "This time I really feel the Blues", I was going for slow Ernie Isley type feel on guitar while setting the background with a lush string sound . Continuing the traditional shuffle format is track number seven , " A sad day is coming "," which has more of a gospel piano feel as a background . I went to my church and got pianist Juanita Dunn to give me that baptist sound ! The need to return to the blues instrumental led me to record track eight "The Blues ain't always loud and noisy ". This tune gave me the opportunity to sit down and just play slow and dirty while Van Cephus gave that smokey bar room piano sound . The next two tracks " Nothing in the street worth losing you " " and " What's your name?" ( tracks nine and ten respectivly ) are medium and fast dance numbers with distorted guitar and funky bass lines . Finally track eleven is an instrumental reprise of track three, " Spend my life with you ". I wanted to create a Barry White string sound while mixing five different guitar tracks at different intervals . The whole idea was to put down what ever came to mind with no real regard for order and yet stay true to the bedrock of the blues.