Review: 'Tempting Fate' Carolyn Wonderland

Carolyn Wonderland

By Nick Cristiano

In 2018, Carolyn Wonderland took over as guitarist in John Mayall’s Blues Breakers, becoming the first woman to hold the position once filled by such luminaries as Eric Clapton, Mick Taylor, and Peter Green. With the release of Tempting Fate out October 8th, the Texan is being billed as the first female guitar hero in the 50-year history of Alligator Records.

All the accolades for Wonderland’s six-string prowess are well-deserved. But as Tempting Fate makes clear, she is much more than just a brilliant guitar slinger. The album, produced by Grammy winning roots-rocker Dave Alvin, is an earth-shaking, soul-stirring distillation of the talents she has long displayed as a multi-instrumentalist, singer, and writer. It’s a record bursting with life and personality, revealing a performer who sounds as if she’s equally at home in a roadhouse or a supper club.

“Fragile Peace and Certain War” opens the album with Wonderland taking a turn on lap steel, the bite of her playing matching the self-penned lyrics she spits out in her Texas drawl. It’s one of a few songs that offer social commentary. Her version of Mayall’s “The Laws Must Change” is similarly hard-hitting, full of thick-toned riffing. Her own “Crack in the Wall” takes a different tack: Slow and acoustic-textured, accented by accordion, it’s a quietly tender meditation.

As a singer, Wonderland can belt with the best of them, but she knows how to harness that power. Her judicious use of it heightens the drama and feeling of originals such as “Fortunate Few” and the accusatory “Broken-Hearted Blues.”

Wonderland displays a light touch on “Texas Girl and Her Boots,” a barroom blues (with Marcia Ball on piano) that has fun with her footwear obsession, while she turns Billy Joe Shaver’s “Honey Bee” into a lively Texas two-step.

With her own “On My Feet Again,” you can almost picture Wonderland trading in her beloved boots for heels and an evening gown. It’s an elegant, piano-dominated ballad that also highlights another of her talents – whistling.

Wonderland has done numbers by friend and admirer Bob Dylan before, and here she tackles “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry.” She takes it at the same languid pace as the original, but gives it new life by performing it as a duet with fellow Texan Jimmie Dale Gilmore and coloring it with lap steel by Cindy Cashdollar and her own guitar solo.

Tempting Fate closes with an epic version of the Grateful Dead’s “Loser.” It starts slow and atmospheric before building to a climax of furious riffing and Wonderland’s wailing, “I got no chance of losing this time!” It ends with her voice rising effortlessly into a falsetto, fittingly leaving her – and the listener – on a high.

Listen to “Broken Hearted Blues”