First Impressions: Wine on Venus by Grace Bowers & the Hodge Podge

The feline’s siren blared earlier than the norm this morning. I tumbled out of bed, stumbled to the door—and tripped over the cat. I landed with a thud in a smoke-filled dorm room sometime in late 1969 or early ’70, I think. Sly & the Family Stone and Santana blared from hi-fis up and down the hall, with each filling the gaps in the other’s magic. Lapsed notes swirled and twirled through the air alongside incense, peppermints and meaningless nouns.

There’s nothing better than music that, as I sometimes say, takes you there, wherever there is. Such is the case with Wine on Venus. Bowers and Co. have woven a time portal into the fabric of their tunes. Much like Muireann Bradley, a blues prodigy from Ireland, the teenaged Bowers is a phenom—but on electric guitar, not acoustic.

Wine on Venus, her debut, finds her part of a crack band—which includes Josh Blaylock on keyboards, Brandon Combs on drums, Eric Fortaleza on bass, and Prince Parker on rhythm guitar, plus Esther Okai-Tetteh on lead vocals—and produced by John Osborne of the Osborne Brothers. I’d make a (bad) joke about how Bowers is a “Black Magic Woman” except there’s nothing dark about this art. In short, the album is a Family Stone-styled delight spiced by old-soul vocals, funky rhythms, and bluesy guitar solos that conjure Carlos Santana and Jeff Beck.

In some ways, the nine-track album is a full tilt boogie from start to finish. The sly first track, “Won No Teg,” eases from a trickle to a river, for instance, while winding its way into “Get On Now.” Think vocal chorals, keyboard runs, fluid bass and funky beats. When Bowers comes in with her guitar, it’s to propel the song onward and not, as some guitar breaks do, dam the flow. (She’s in service to the song, not the reverse.) The same’s true of the songs that follow, which mix a bit of this and a dash of that into the sonic vat. The result is a tasty gumbo of blues, rock and funk, as evidenced by “Tell Me Why U Do That.”

The Sly Stone comparisons come to fruition near album’s end when they burst into a joyous cover of “Dance to the Music.” It’s guaranteed to get you on your feet and dancing about the room—and, hopefully, will send legions of youngsters into the virtual racks of their preferred streaming service to pick Sly & the Family Stone’s Greatest Hits to play next.

The tracks: