Zac Harmon - Floreada's Boy (2024)

It amuses me and disappoints me in equal measures when I read a bio like Zac Harmon’s and find he’s been making music for 50 full years and I’ve not heard of him until now … and it appears to be my loss; if these twelve songs are anything to go by.

Babe & Ricky’s Inn introduces us to Harmon’s smooth as velvet voice and in the names he saw along the way at Babe & Ricky’s Inn (the oldest blues club in Los Angeles) which double as a list of his influences too.
A son of Jackson, Mississippi the album is named after his Mother, Floreada which is a nice touch on a a disc full of very personal and seemingly mostly autobiographical songs.
Even though he has several albums under his belt, with two being on the same Catfood Records label; Harmon sounds like he’s singing from the very centre of his heart in stories from his life and that of those around him.
Glass Ceiling is a prime example, as he alludes to the ‘glass ceiling’ that effects people of colour and not just women and like so many songs here, neatly combines his oh so soulful voice with a dark shade of the Blues from his band.

Harmon had a hand in ten of the songs here, and it proves that he can not just write a really good and listenable song, but guide a story to keep the listeners’ attention, which is exactly what you get with the razor sharp songs Sugarman, Never Forget and Let It Slide which are all intrinsically different in style and content; but unmistakeably from the same pen.
Then you get songs like Stress; which is a song exactly like you’d expect from a title like that as Zac pours his heart out about the problems of juggling finances many of us face on a day to day basis.
He can also dig deep into the Blues too, using some scintillating guitar work alongside a brass section on the sleazy and slinky Big Dog Blues, which sounds uncannily like someone like Bobby Womack or Jeffrey Osbourne singing alongside George Benson on a sultry night in a downtown Juke joint.
Before I go into my Favourite two songs here, there are a couple of subjects Zac Harmon sings about in a way that will bring a tear to your eye and your heart close to bursting; first out of the traps is Track #2, Fake News a sordid tale of a man caught cheating on his wife; but lying his way out until she doubts her own eyes.
The other is the final song on the album; Stop The Killing, featuring the legendary guitar of Caleb Quaye and is such a very topical subject this song could have come from Stax in the 1960’s but will sadly also be something important and vital for generations to come.
I’ve just mentioned Bobby Womack, and there’s a stunning song of his here that ties as one of my two Favourite songs; That’s The Way I Feel About Cha (alongside SueAnn Carwell) is the sort of ‘late night Soul/Blues combo’ that you don’t want to tell your friends about as you want to keep it a secret, for those sad and lonely times when you want to curl up in a dark room with no contact with the outside world.
The other, and possibly my actual Favourite song is the metaphor laden, breathy and sexy, Never Had a Better Night which takes us deep into Marvin Gaye and Smokey Robinson territory but with a Stax cutting edge via the superb guitar playing and amazingly cool rhythm section.

I don’t know if I need to dip further back into Zac Harmon’s back catalogue as these twelve songs surely can’t be bettered … or can they? ~The Rocking Magpie