Artist:     Ghalia Volt

Album:     One Woman Band

Label:     Ruf Records

Release Date:     1.29.2021

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In some ways this is a strange offering. Volt is a Belgian lady who now has her roots firmly fixed in the USA. After a time in Nashville where she worked with Luther and Cody Dickinson, among others, she moved to New Orleans where this album owes its genesis. That said, with One Woman Band’ we have an album that is clearly inspired and influenced by the pioneers of North Mississippi Hill Country music. JB Hutto shimmers in the background, together with shades of RL Burnside, Cedric Burnside and Junior Kimbrough, all of whom also appear to feature strongly. On front stage, Volt is helped out by Monster Mike Welch—who turns out some great guitar chops—and Dean Zucherro on bass.

Volt wrote nine of the eleven tracks here, and recorded them in Memphis. She works hard with guitar and thumping, at times too-rigidly regimented drum beats throughout the album, a genuine one-woman-band of sorts, with all the limiting factors that format can produce. Nevertheless, she manages to put her own stamp on proceedings with an offering that is raw, visceral and entertaining. The old, familiar twelve-bar blues format underlies virtually everything here, and rough, rebellious slide cigar-box fretwork with a fiery rock-edge explodes from the mix at times while Volt’s voice is wonderfully powerful and well-packaged to fit the material. Anyone with an interest or love of the late pioneering blueslady Jesse May Hemphill is likely to find Ghalia Volt and her One Woman Band an enjoyably frothy cuppa much to their taste.

—Iain Patience