Showing posts with label Lil' Red & The Rooster. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lil' Red & The Rooster. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 27, 2025

Lil' Red & The Rooster with Bobby Floyd - 7

Album: 7
Size: 89,9 MB
Time: 38:57
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Released: 2025
Styles: Blues, jazzy blues
Art: Front

1. Wild's Rising (5:48)
2. Stack 'Em Up Baby (4:42)
3. Is This Heart Taken (3:28)
4. Melancholy Mood (6:34)
5. Midnight On The Rocks (3:18)
6. Between The Lines (5:48)
7. Mr. Saboteur (aka Do The Donut) (3:48)
8. Same Old Blues (Feat. Jeff Morrow) (Bonus Track ) (5:27)

The international duo of Jennifer “Lil’ Red” Milligan and Pascal Fouquet have long walked their own path, and 7 finds them at their most adventurous. The record opens with a cinematic sweep, carrying a spy-noir atmosphere that threads throughout the album. It’s blues at its root, but stretched and reshaped into something fresh with Pascal’s guitar lines bending between fire and subtlety, and Lil’ Red’s voice radiating intimacy and power.

The album’s backstory adds to its weight. What began as a jazzy instrumental envisioned around Bobby Floyd’s Hammond B3 has blossomed into a collaborative journey spanning Paris, Columbus and Chicago. Floyd’s playing is central – warm, commanding and lifting the arrangements skyward – while the rhythm section locks into grooves that are equal parts classic and unexpected. There’s a pulse of gospel in one moment, a cinematic noir edge in the next and then the familiar ache of blues, grounding it all.

7 shifts into deeply personal territory. Lil’ Red writes with fierce honesty, using themes of self-empowerment, loss, healing and freedom to anchor the songs. But perhaps the album’s greatest strength lies in how it was recorded — live in the studio, with all the risks and rewards that entails. The result is a record that breathes, full of tiny sparks of communication between the musicians. You can hear the smiles, the raised eyebrows and the spontaneous swells of energy that can’t be scripted. When Lil’ Red sings about freedom, or when Pascal lets his guitar twist into an unexpected phrase, you believe it because you can feel it happening in real time.

By the time the record closes, you’re left with something that instinctively stays with you. A mix of smoky late night atmosphere, gospel shout energy and heartfelt blues storytelling. It’s a collection of songs that map out grief, joy and connection in seven fully realized chapters. Here, Lil’ Red & The Rooster have created a work that honors the roots of blues while bending it into new shapes, a record that invites you to listen closely, feel deeply and maybe even heal a little along the way. 7 cements the duo’s place as one of the most daring and soulful acts performing today.

7 mc
7 gofile

Friday, October 21, 2022

Lil' Red & The Rooster

Size: 108.8 MB
Time: 46:33
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Released: 2017
Styles: Retro Electric Blues
Art: Front

01. Soul Burnin' Wrong (Feat. Ricky Nye, Abdell B. Bop & Denis Agenet) (4:53)
02. Catch The Train (Feat. Ricky Nye, Abdell B. Bop & Denis Agenet) (5:50)
03. Listen (Feat. Dave Specter, Shaun Booker, Ricky Nye, Abdell B. Bop & Denis Agenet) (4:05)
04. Narcissistic Blues (Feat. Dave Specter, Ricky Nye, Abdell B. Bop & Denis Agenet) (4:58)
05. Coq A Doodlin' (Feat. Dave Specter, Ricky Nye, Abdell B. Bop & Denis Agenet) (2:46)
06. Black Cat Fever (Feat. Ricky Nye, Abdell B. Bop & Denis Agenet) (3:39)
07. Respect Your Sisters (Feat. Ricky Nye, Abdell B. Bop & Denis Agenet) (4:32)
08. Tic Toc (Feat. Ricky Nye, Abdell B. Bop & Denis Agenet) (3:32)
09. Hey Mister Mister (Feat. Shaun Booker, Jeff Morrow, Abdell B Bop, Denis Agenet & Ricky Nye) (2:22)
10. Big Boy Boogie (Feat. Ricky Nye, Abdell B. Bop & Denis Agenet) (2:33)
11. Chicken Scratch (Feat. Ricky Nye, Abdell B. Bop & Denis Agenet) (3:29)
12. Occupy My Mind (Feat. Ricky Nye, Abdell B. Bop & Denis Agenet) (3:48)

Splitting their time between Ohio and France, Lil’ Red & The Rooster are an interesting duo who deliver a classy take on traditional, jazz infused blues in this collection, which was produced and recorded by Chicagoan Dave Specter.

The duo features Westerfield, Ohio, native Jennifer “Lil’ Red” Milligan on washboard and vocals. She’s a multi-talented artist who’s been performing since childhood with careers in theater and choreography as well as music. At 22, she traveled the national as a lead artists in a national touring company presentation of Hair.

Influenced heavily by Ella Fitzgerald, Etta James and Dinah Washington, she’s also taught jazz vocalization under the direction of the late Michelle Horsefield, who worked with Fats Waller, Eddie Condon and Cliff Jackson, and her blues training has come under the tutelage of both Diunna Greenleaf and Teeny Tucker.

This is Lil’ Red & The Rooster’s second CD, a follow up to 2013’s Out Of The Coop. Two years after that release, they represented the Columbus Blues Alliance at the International Blues Challenge and also were finalists in a French competition.

Her partner in this venture is classically trained guitarist Pascal Fouquet. Raised on a farm in France’s Normandy region, he plays traditional, baritone and banjo axes. His background includes three CDs with in the early 2000s with the famed The Hoodoomen, with whom Lil’ Red also recorded, and several more with band leader Drew Davies, one of the top saxophonists in Britain. A 40-year veteran of the music business, Fouquet won back-to-back honors as French blues guitarist of the year.

Recorded in Chicago at Blaise Barton’s JoyRide Studio, all of the tunes on Soul Burnin’ were written by the duo in full-band arrangement aided by boogie keyboard player Ricky Nye, who splits his time between his native Cincinnati and Paris, and the French rhythm section of drummer Denis Agenet and upright bassist Abdell “B. Bop” Bouyousfi. They’re augmented by Specter, who contributes guitar on three tracks, as well as vocalists Shaun Booker, Caroline Rau and Jeff Morrow.

Lil’ Red channels blues singers of the ‘30s and ‘40s as she opens “Soul Burnin’ Wrong,” a highly topical original in today’s world that speaks out against rape, senseless murder of innocent blacks and more acapella as she preaches for cross-cultural love and understanding. She’s a powerful, expressive alto. Fouquet joins in guitar after the first few bars before the rhythm section starts swinging to join the action. Nye takes you to church with a brief organ solo, and Pascal’s touch on the strings is light and breezy throughout.

The subject lightens for the Delta and slide flavored “Catch That Train,” a tribute to chance meetings on the rails that lead to lasting friendships, while “Listen” offers up some sound advice: Fighting your obstacles doesn’t always work; often it’s best to separate yourself from the action and pay attention to what’s truly going on. Next up, “Narcissistic Blues” features Specter and Nye as it slams self-involved people with a true Chicago mid-tempo shuffle feel. Fouquet stretches out on the six-string for the pleasing instrumental “Coq A Doodlin’” next, giving the rhythm section space to shine, while “Black Cat Fever” – a tune that would have fit comfortably in a high-society saloon in the ‘50s — puts an interesting spin on being doomed after biting the apple and letting the serpent win.

“Respect Your Sisters” delivers a funky warning to lady friends who talk behind Lil’ Red’s back before the jazzy “TicToc” sings about a man who’s late in arriving for a date with Lil’ Red discovering much too late that he’d simply fallen asleep at home. The theme continues with “Hey Mister Mister,” who’s bringing the lady down, before the instrumental guitar bonanza “Big Boy Boogie,” “Chicken Scratch,” which describes Lil’ Red’s first meeting in France with Pascal with a Howlin’ Wolf tune playing in the background, and the ballad “Occupy My Mind” bring the action to a close.

Relaxed and sweet throughout, Soul Burnin’ is totally enjoyable blues with a cabaret jazz feel. ~Marty Gunther

Soul Burnin' MP3
Soul Burnin' FLAC

Thursday, October 20, 2022

Lil' Red & The Rooster - Keep On!

Size: 98.8 MB
Time: 42:10
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Released: 2022
Styles: Electric Blues, Jump Blues
Art: Front

01. Cool Trap Boogie (2:54)
02. Whiskey Sip Of Time (4:20)
03. Keep On Lovin You (Feat. Billy Branch) (5:15)
04. Love The Hell Right Out Of Ya (2:51)
05. Shakin' Em Up (2:45)
06. Bootstraps Break (4:29)
07. Nobody's Fault But Mine (2:59)
08. Back Of The Bus (4:10)
09. American Made (4:25)
10. Little Girl (5:10)
11. Step It Up (2:47)

A deep calling lead them both to the Blues, and the Blues brought them together in 2010. For over a decade Jen “Lil’ Red” Milligan and Pascal Fouquet have been fine tuning their style and living and breathing their music. Decades of knowledge and experience ring through Pascal’s tasteful touch and the sparkle in Red’s sassy smile. Retro modern blues, is how they describe this style, it’s constantly evolving as the artists themselves, but the roots remain in the Blues. Their songs are as diverse as the many different styles of Blues because the couple finds all of them intriguing. Onstage they’re intimately real and at times hilarious. They exude a contagious charm that guarantees you’ll feel good no matter how haunting the song or biting the message. It all comes from a place of love and respect for the Blues and humanity. They both know the power of its healing and want to share it.

They call France & the US home and are multi-linguists in music and Franglish. In 2018, they self-released their album, Soul Burnin’, produced by and featuring Dave Specter and recorded by Blaise Barton at JoyRide Studio. In 2019, they were finalists as a duo in the International Blues Challenge in Memphis. You can find them regularly as a duo for the acoustic dinner set at Buddy Guy’s Legends, when visiting Chicago or headlining festivals as a combo or playing restaurants and cafes as a duo.

Keep On! MP3
Keep On! FLAC