In the tradition of female trailblazers such as Katie Webster and Marcia Ball, 17-year-old 2020 Boston Music Award Winner, pianist and vocalist Veronica Lewis comes across as anything but precocious on her debut, You Ain’t Unlucky. Lewis absorbed all those sounds not only from her female idols but it’s clear she owes to Otis Spann, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Pinetop Perkins as well. She’s even confident enough to have produced the album herself. Working in duo and trio formats, Lewis is the pianist and vocalist on all tracks supported by drummers Ben Rogers, Mike Walsh or Chris Anzalone and saxophonists Don Davis or Joel Edinberg across eight tracks, six of which are originals.
Lewis rocks the piano and sings expressively, using common blues structures for her original story-telling songs, sprinkled with some witty lyrics. Surely, it’s a throw-back sound, the kind she was aiming for. “I imagined I only had one shot to lay it down in the studio, as if I walked into a recording studio somewhere back in time, like Sun or Stax, and the producer just pressed the record button and says ‘Ok, kid, let me hear what you’ve got’. Then, if I’m lucky, the roof lifts off the studio, and the rest is history.”
That’s the theme for the opening vivacious title track, a reminder for all the good things that life brings. She ratchets up the boogie-woogie piano for “Clarksdale Sun.” A steady rolling groove underlies “Put Your Wig on Mama,” a tune she wrote for her mother, one that would be right at home in any juke joint in the South or in Chicago. In one of true standouts, she takes her own arrangement, a rather radical remake really, of the Louis Jordan chestnut “Is You Is My Baby,” showing a gift for phrasing and sustained vocal notes in the process. “Fool Me Twice” is the voice of the wise woman, who knows when to put her foot down, packed with singalong hooks and some surprising rhythmic changes.
Rather appropriately she nods to two heroes, first with a modern take on Katie Webster’s “Whoo Whee Sweet Daddy” and then with her instrumental for the Killer in true rocking style. In the closing “Memphis Train,” also an instrumental rave-up, Lewis, imagines herself on a symbolic train of dreams and opportunities surrounded only by her piano heroes.
Remember her name. She’s going to be here for a while with a career that’s already off to an outrageous start. Not only did she win the 2020 Boston Music Award as Blues Artist of the Year (in a town that boasts the likes of Ronnie Earl, Diane Blue, Anthony Geraci, and Dennis Brennan to name just a few), she also won the 2020 Boston Blues Challenge and was named 2020’s Best Young Artist by the New England Music Hall of Fame. She is also the four-time Granite State Blues Challenge Winner and recipient of the 2018 W.O.W. Rising Star Award. She has toured across the county and played numerous high-profile festivals.
If there’s one quibble, it’s just the brevity of the set, clocking in at just over 30 minutes. Nonetheless, assuredly we’ll get more next time out and it will be fun to follow her already climbing trajectory.
