It’s probably smart of David Egan to release a self-titled album at this point — because despite his having written a trunk-load of songs for famous people, he’s hardly a household name. David Egan shows what a crime that is.
Egan, who’s played in series of bayou-rocking outfits from A-Train and Jo-El Sonnier to File and Lil’ Band o’ Gold, is joined by guitarist Joe McMahan, bassist Ron Eoff, drummer Mike Sipos and guest artists including zydeco legend Lil’ Buck Senegal and childhood friend and long-time musical partner Buddy Flett.
Filled with tasty lyrical digs, and even tastier riffs, they help transform this Rhonda Sue-released deep-soul project into a testimonial to everything that Egan can do — and has been doing for years. He’s an unheralded master of the gruffly conveyed modern blues line, both lyrically and at the keyboard, like Randy Newman’s words coming out of Boz Scaggs’ mouth over an Allen Toussaint groove.
There’s the humid grooves of “That’s a Big Ol’ Hurt,” the country ramble of “Outta Mississippi” and then the broken-hearted cadence on “The Outside,” and David Egan isn’t half finished. “Funky Dreams” ramps up from a devastated moan into a grease-popping groove commiserate with its title. “Dead End Friend” is as riffy and right, as “Every Tear” is bruisingly sad.
And all of that is to say nothing of Egan’s witty lyrical asides.
From “That’s a Big Ol’ Hurt”: “I walked in on you and Freddy, and I knew that I was ruined. You gave me that stinkin’ grin and kept right on what you was doin.'” From “Outta Mississippi”: “Once you start to get a little older, you won’t be no belle in lace. You won’t make twenty-one ‘fore that Mississippi sun’s burned forty years onto your face.” From “Blues How They Linger”: “Luck runs hot and cold, people, empires they rise and fall. But the blues, how they linger, since she packed her bags and walked.”
For careful liner note readers, none of this is much of a surprise. Along the way, Egan’s written songs for Joe Cocker, Solomon Burke, Irma Thomas, Percy Sledge, Marcia Ball, Johnny Adams, Etta James, John Mayall and Mavis Staples. Of course, any track on this album could just as easily find a home with artists like those again. But, in a just musical world, David Egan would finally propel him to fame under his own name.
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