Review: Larry McCray ‘Heartbreak City’

Review: Larry McCray ‘Heartbreak City’

By Hal Horowitz

In 2022, bluesman/guitarist Larry McCray was in danger of being an also-ran. The Michigan by way of Arkansas musician hadn’t released an album since 2014s ‘The Gibson Sessions.’ That one though featured only covers of rock songs McCray liked. He had also taken time off to beat a 2013 cancer diagnosis.

Along comes Joe Bonamassa to rescue him from likely obscurity. He knew McCray from a clutch of four terrific soul blues recordings released sporadically in the early 1990s and 2000s, enticing him to a professional studio for 2022s vibrant ‘Blues Without You.’ Bonamassa co-produced the sessions with Josh Smith, inviting Warren Haynes, Joanna Connor and others to assist. The final product did exactly as intended; return McCray to the spotlight and on the road supporting what was called the finest album of his career.

This follow-up, ‘Heartbreak City,’ three years later, might even be better.

The tag-team of guitarists/producers Bonamassa and Smith are back for another 10 tensile tracks, 53 minutes of sizzling soul blues. McCray co-wrote seven of them, Smith co-penned three more, all shots from the heart energized by the singer’s husky voice, somewhat similar to that of Albert King, and restrained yet sharp guitar lines.

“I said hello to you/I said bye bye blues,” bellows McCray on the disc’s first single “Bye Bye Blues” as horns and female vocalists provide the down-home sentiment. The opening “Try to Be a Good Man” revs up the rhythm with a song that would have fit on any classic Stax set from the 70s as McCray advises a friend on how to treat women correctly. He sings “You got to let her spread her wings,” holding on to that last word without any accompaniment, then kicking into a roaring, goose-bump raising guitar solo at 2:20. The backing vocals and brass close it out on a gospel vamp that gradually fades. It alone is worth the disc’s price.

The title track takes us to the swamp, crawling like Hooker’s king snake on a slow R&B shuffle that finds the ensemble pouring out a slower “Pretzel Logic” riff as McCray admits “I guess I’m here to stay” about the titular heartbreak city location. It crackles like a lit fuse and features another heart-stopping guitar lead; nothing too fast or showy, just perfectly played notes splattered over a throbbing foundation.

A lone electric piano opens “I Know What I’ve Done,” organ joins in and McCray testifies over a measured groove “I was jealous and always angry” he confesses about the song’s title with the kind of emotion that can’t be faked. It’s topped by gospel vocals and extra guitar from Bonamassa as the singer promises to do better.

He shifts to full blues for the charging Chicago shuffle of “Keep on Loving My Baby” propelled by Reese Wynans’ pounding piano and Lemar Carter’s in-the-pocket drums pushing the song through the dirt and muck, then into a Josh Smith guitar solo. We take a stroll on the funky New Orleans streets for the Little Feat-inflected “Crazy World” that also taps into Albert King’s Stax sound.

When he wraps his booming voice around the brokenhearted lyrics of “Stop Your Crying,” (“If I can’t make it with you, I don’t want nobody else” he declares) it’s hard to imagine a better contemporary singer/guitarist.

Larry McCray is back in a big way on the magnificent ‘Heartbreak City.’ And it seems he’s here to stay.

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