Seattle Soulgrass combo Paula Boggs Band is known for their signature blend of bluegrass, jazz, and Americana music, winning hearts across all genres. Their forthcoming new album, Janus (April 1), is a journey through the 2020s, with each song representing an aspect of life during the triple pandemics of public health, race and politics. Named for Janus the Roman god/goddess of transition, doors opening and closing, chapters ending and beginning — and Boggs’ own mother of the same name — the record includes deeply personal themes of ancestry, memory and love. The storytelling on this record will pull you in, but it’s the musicianship that ultimately takes center stage, thanks to an elegant, groove-laden soundscape crafted by an all-star backing band.
Boggs’ personal story deserves a book of its own, which is why she is currently working on a memoir. Her credentials run an impressive gamut; she is a musician, public speaker, writer, lawyer and philanthropist. She served in the military for eight years as a queer Black woman, earning Airborne wings and a congressional appointment to the US Naval Academy, one of America’s first women to do so. She served as Chief Legal Officer, Executive Vice President, and Board Secretary at Starbucks from 2002 to 2012. She also served as Board Secretary for public radio station KEXP and is currently on board of video and audio company Avid Technology. She also served on President Obama’s Committee on The Arts And Humanities (PCAH). She has spent most of her life committed to music education, veterans affairs, and civic engagement and has put in the time to make a difference.
But music has always been Boggs’ true love, and so she left the corporate world in order to focus on it full-time, recording three full-length studio albums influenced by a wide swath of music, from old time spirituals to jazz, to modern folk music like Sun Kil Moon and Bon Iver. Janus is an album that could only be written by this woman, at this moment in history.
The seeds of Janus were planted when Boggs broke her thumb in November 2019. For the first time since she was ten years old, she found herself without an instrument to write with. As she healed, she began playing songs on a ukulele which ended up heavily influencing the new album, resulting in the most sonically consistent songs of her career. She also came up with some pretty out-of-the-ordinary chords as she was writing. “Honestly I don’t know what they are,” she remarks with a smirk. “But the music theorists in the band — three of them conservatory-trained — insist they are 9th 11th and 13th chords — in other words I created jazz chords on a ukulele to write Americana songs.”
That versatility is evident on the album’s first single, “King Brewster.” Beginning with a wailing harmonica, the band sets the stage for a tale of long ago — thisone a true one, about Boggs’ enslaved (and emancipated) ancestor. Boggs and Flemons trade verses in Brewster’s heroic epic, with Flemons contributing two different banjo parts. The song is a hard-driving narrative of liberation and frustration with how little has changed. The song is a rallying cry that unites the past, present, and future.
Janius is out April 1st.
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