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SOLOMON
BURKE "LIKE A FIRE" Available in Ireland June 20th on SHOUT! FACTORY Also Available Digitally www.shoutfactory.com ~ www.thekingsolomonburke.com |
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FEATURING NEW SONGS WRITTEN BY ERIC CLAPTON, BEN HARPER, KEB’ MO’, JESSE HARRIS AND MORE
>>>
For Information / Interview requests / Promotional Copies contact Berube Communications
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info@berubecommunications.com or phone 0872442695 <<< Los
Angeles, CA – This June will see the release of Solomon
Burke’s highly personal new album, Like
A Fire. Burke has had a long illustrious career which
includes a Grammy® award and an induction
into the Rock and Roll hall of fame. His influence
as an artist has long reached across generations, as is evident
here on this soulful new project featuring songs written specifically
for the album by an all-star team of songwriters, including Eric
Clapton, Ben Harper, Jesse Harris, and Keb’
Mo’.
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“Songs
take a message directly to your heart,” says Solomon Burke.
“When you can’t speak for yourself, sometimes a song can
say something in three minutes that you’ve been trying to say all
your life.”
Certainly, when a song receives the honor of being performed by Burke,
the King of Rock and Soul, it is bestowed a rare and beautiful power.
On his latest album, Like A Fire, Burke gives his unparalleled
treatment to a new batch of songs that cover a wide range of emotions.
“We had an exciting adventure with these songs,”
he says. “There are songs of comfort, and there are songs of
the times. Every artist couldn’t sing these songs—not everyone
could understand and portray these messages. I just hope that I’ve
given them the right meaning and found the right definition to each lyric.”
Solomon Burke is truly one of popular music’s larger-than-life
figures. His records helped create the exhilarating celebration of pure
feeling and African-American vocal expression that came to be known as
soul. His songs, including such classics as “Everybody Needs
Somebody to Love” and “Cry to Me,”
have been covered by artists from the Rolling Stones
to Tom Petty, from the Blues Brothers
to Bruce Springsteen. “He is Solomon the resonator,”
Tom Waits has said. “The golden voice of heart,
wisdom, soul, and experience. He’s one of the architects of American
music.”
Since his 2001 induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame,
Burke has enjoyed something of a renaissance as a performer (while also
maintaining his parallel lives as an entrepreneur with a chain of mortuaries,
a bishop in the House of God for All People, and a father of twenty-one).
His glorious 2002 album “Don’t Give Up On Me,”
which was dedicated to new songs by the likes of Bob Dylan,
Elvis Costello, and Van Morrison, won
a Grammy® for Best Contemporary Blues Album. That
album’s follow-up, Make Do With What You Got (produced
by Don Was), and Burke’s most recent release, 2006’s Nashville,
both received Grammy® nominations as well.
Nashville—which featured duets with such legends
as Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris—returned
Burke to his longtime love of country music. But the theme on Like
A Fire isn’t any single musical style; instead, it focuses
on Burke’s brilliant interpretation of compositions by a new generation
of songwriters, including Ben Harper (“A Minute to Rest
and a Second to Pray”), Keb’ Mo (“We Don’t Need
It”), and Jesse Harris (“What Makes Me Think
I Was Right” and “You and Me”).
“These young writers have been listening to their moms and dads
and their grandparents, and to the old songs,” says Burke.
“And they’re combining their messages with the truth,
with reality and with the times we live in.”
Produced by master drummer Steve Jordan (who has worked with Bob
Dylan, Keith Richards, Stevie Wonder, and countless more immortals),
Like A Fire features a top-notch band that includes studio
legends Danny Kortchmar on guitar and Larry Taylor
on bass. The stripped-down ensemble seamlessly navigates the album’s
different moods, from the wry, loose “Ain’t That Something”
to the fiery “A Minute to Rest and a Second to
Pray.”
Another superstar songwriter shows his respect for Solomon Burke by contributing
not just one, but two songs to Like A Fire. Eric
Clapton penned the album’s title track, and shares writing
credit with Burke on the heartfelt, countrified “Thank You,”
which comes complete with an old-school recited breakdown.
“Eric is incredible,’ says Burke. “He’s
deep, he’s real, he’s pure. I truly respect him—his
talent, of course, but also the credibility of him as a man and as a father.”
The album closes with the only song not written specifically for this
project. “If I Give My Heart to You” was
written in 1954, and best known in that year’s hit version by Doris
Day. Burke gives the song an intimate, extremely personal reading, unique
in his recent body of work. “I told the band to leave, I just
wanted piano and drums on that one,’ he recalls. “I
was really tired, but I didn’t want to dress it up. I was talking
to my children, to the ones I love—and I have 21 kids and 88 grandchildren,
so that song has a lot of meaning to me!”
Like A Fire serves as proof that one of American music’s
towering icons remains a vital, inimitable force. “I’m
on a journey, and that journey is music,” says Solomon Burke.
“I want to give all I can to as many people as I can for as
long as I can.
“It’s difficult to do what I do,” he continues,
“because it’s serious! This is not a career or a hobby to
me, it’s my life. I don’t know anything else but to keep going,
giving, sharing, and caring. And I’m still learning—every
day. And I say to myself, ain’t that something!”
- Alan Light
Sorry this Artists photographs have not yet been up-loaded
