Laura Rain and the Caesars from Detroit-
performing at the Murray Bar inside the Historic Murray Hotel
201 W Park St, Livingston, MT 59047
Friday 8/12 9pm
Here is a little about us:
Motor City Soul-Blues-R&B dynamos Laura Rain and the Caesars have released their 3rd record entitled “Gold.” A collection of 13 original songs penned by vocalist Laura Rain and guitarist/producer George Friend, “Gold” harkens back to the golden age of soul, funk and r&b…a world where the song, emotion and performance come first. Echoes of Motown, Stax, Royal, United Sound and Muscle Shoals permeate the sonic landscape, while Rain flourishes in her fiery soulful delivery.
Cut to 16 track TAPE in a giant room in downtown Pontiac, MI. ”Gold” is the culmination of Rain and Friend’s latest songwriting foray. Starting in November 2014, the two wrote for months between tours and gathered up their favorites to bring to the studio. Recording commenced in May 2015 with a who’s who of Detroit’s finest players, all bringing their own unique sound to the sessions. Live performances, real people, one room…just like the classic vinyl records. Rain and her band roll uptempo funk, fuzzed- out guitar blues, vintage dance grooves, soul ballads and Motown stompers into a retro-modern mix of style that defies eras.
The Caesars are veterans of the Motor City’s R&B, jazz, rock, and blues scenes. For more than a decade, the classically trained Laura Rain has been singing in Detroit and Los Angeles with an absolute freedom of expression, permitted by her wondrous voice, an instrument of infinite shadings in timbre that avails itself to effortless glides between registers. Often compared to Aretha Franklin, Rains’s fire, feeling, and expressiveness are all her own. Producer, co-writer, and guitarist George Friend, another Detroiter returned home from L.A., has made his mark in multiple genres–rockabilly (Robert Gordon), R&B (The Sun Messengers), and blues (Janiva Magness)–and released a hip solo album of West Coast blues, Looka Here!, in 2004. The band is rounded out with players rich in the tradition of Detroit R&B with long resumes including Bettye Lavette and George Clinton.
Tom Hyslop of Blues Music Magazine says Laura Rain is “a force of nature…While clearly informed and inspired by soul and R&B styles dating, roughly speaking, from the years between 1965 and 1985, Electrified is vital music for these times.” Blues Junction’s David Mac calls Electrified “a super charged soul shot that generates enough energy to light a small town and ignite a fire under the ass of all of its inhabitants.” Reflecting a bygone era when songcraft and spine-tingling vocals outranked guitar solos, Laura Rain and the Caesars have waxed a superb retro-modern sound that falls squarely in the tradition of great soul music, and raised the bar significantly for their peers in today’s blues scene.
