Bonnie Raitt – Dig In Deep (Redwing Records, 2016)
She’s piled up recordings like Give It Up, Takin’ My Time, Sweet Forgiveness, Nick of Time, Silver Lining and Slipstream. She earned double digit Grammy Awards, made Rolling Stone Magazine’s list of 100 Greatest Singers of All Time and their 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time and earned a Lifetime Achievement award for Performance from Americana Music Honors and Awards and place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
If that weren’t enough she’s stretched her fame to influence fans by being a founding member of Musicians United for Safe Energy, donated a song to Aid Still Required’s CD to help victims of the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia, worked with the pro-environmental organization Reverb and is part of the No Nukes organization. She’s the blues singer, slide guitarist and songwriter Bonnie Raitt and she’s still kicking music in the proverbial gut with her brand of the rocking blues on her latest release of Dig In Deep out on the Redwing Records label.
Ms. Raitt says of Dig In Deep, “I’m feeling pretty charged, and the band and I are at the top of our game. I think all these years together pay off, and the best part is that we know how lucky we are to still get to make our livings doing something we love this much.”
Joined by bandmates George Marinelli, James “Hutch” Hutchinson, Ricky Fataar, Mike Finnigan, Jon Cleary and Ryan Freeland, with some help from guest artists like vocalists Arnold McCuller and Maia Sharp, electric guitarist Bill Frisell, acoustic guitarist Greg Leisz and keyboardist and arranger Patrick Warren, Ms. Raitt delivers the goods on Dig In Deep that rings with the magic of her own slide guitar work and swoon worthy vocals. Bluesy rock and rocking blues ratcheted up by a healthy measure of R & B proves potent on the 12 searing tracks of Dig In Deep.
Dig In Deep also sports some surprises for fans, including her version of INXS’s “Need You Tonight.” She explains, “I can’t wait for people to get wind of that. You know I’m such a music fan. I play “Magic Carpet Ride” and Jimi Hendrix song and I love “Highway to Hell” by AC/DD. There are a lot of unusual choices of things that I play in sound checks that I’ve secretly wanted to record. From the first time I heard (“Need You Tonight”), I knew I could just kill it.” She adds, “That sounds egotistical. I knew I could wrap myself around it in a way that would be fresh. It’s a very sexy song.”
Opening with the kickass “Unintended Consequence of Love,” Ms. Raitt and company find a groove that’s both familiar and infectious. Ripe with delicious slide guitar, sassy keyboards and thrumming rhythms, Dig In Deep is all about letting it all hang out and pure enjoyment.
Fans get the sizzling “Need You Tonight” (and yeah, she does kill it), the smooth and silky “I Knew” and the fast and furious “Shakin’ Shakin’ Shakes.” Smooth and easy tracks “All Alone with Something to Say” and “Undone” find the tender spots by way of Ms. Raitt’s achingly lovely vocals.
Other goodies include “If You Need Somebody,” “Gypsy in Me” and the melancholically delightful “You’ve Changed My Mind.” Closing with the poignant “The Ones We Couldn’t Be” proves to be personal and powerfully spare with just vocals, piano and keyboards.
A string a losses, her mother in 2004, her father in 2005 and her older brother in 2009, sparked “The Ones We Couldn’t Be.” Ms. Raitt says of the song, “I don’t think I could have written that song without having gone through what I went through, losing so many family members. It’s been awhile. But in time you take a look at the relationships that either had some edges in them or were painful.”
She adds, “And with time and wisdom, you start being aware of your part in what made things happen the way they did in a relationship. That’s what this song is about. I just came to this wrenching awareness that I couldn’t have been a better this or that.”
Dig In Deep is raucous, soulful and utterly Bonnie Raitt.
Buy Dig In Deep
Author: TJ Nelson
TJ Nelson is a regular CD reviewer and editor at World Music Central. She is also a fiction writer. Check out her latest book, Chasing Athena’s Shadow.
Set in Pineboro, North Carolina, Chasing Athena’s Shadow follows the adventures of Grace, an adult literacy teacher, as she seeks to solve a long forgotten family mystery. Her charmingly dysfunctional family is of little help in her quest. Along with her best friends, an attractive Mexican teacher and an amiable gay chef, Grace must find the one fading memory that holds the key to why Grace’s great-grandmother, Athena, shot her husband on the courthouse steps in 1931.
Traversing the line between the Old South and New South, Grace will have to dig into the past to uncover Athena’s true crime.
Yeah, this one’s been my go to favorite so far this year, I love the new and last Bowie as well but when I’m in the mood to kick back and listen to something that’s both fresh and way back in the playbook, Bonnie Raitt and that voice and slide just kill on Dig in Deep, it may take some time to dig its way into the public’s fickle music ear’s but I think it will, there is just to much good stuff on here to ignore, so many grooves, Bonnie gives us the best of what she does and its a fierce, honest look at life, love and the road we all take on, this is one of the best of the year without a doubt check out the killer take on a fav of mine from INXS late 80’s gem, “Need you tonight”, the rockin’ Shakin, Shakin, Shakes, slowin it down and knockin your socks of “Undone” , Bonnie covers allot of ground here, Funky, Bluesy, Rockin, Ballads and R&B all wrap’d up, love this one!