When it comes to soul Barth Beasley has abundance. It’s there in his voice. He sings life his life depends on making his way from verse to chorus then back all over again. It’s there in his playing. Beasley pounds the keys of his electric piano like it owes him money. It’s there in his songwriting. With lyrical lines like “It might have been a gun or a knife/But he knows who saved his life/Lives another day won’t let it die/Runs up the score for more time” you know this brother has seen some messy sh*t go down in his day.

Barth Beasley also knows how to rock. His accentuated phrasing is the sound that any major dude who fronts a rock & roll band from behind a microphone strives for. The voicing of his chord structures is stretched so widely across the keyboard that the muscles in his fingers and hands have to hurt after playing a long set on stage. His compositional skills leave know doubt that he not only knows what a back beat is all about, but that he knows how to use it to its fullest potential.

What he doesn’t appear to posses is a bountiful abundance of more material. After hearing his single, Run On To Detroit, a few times I spent some time searching the internet for more of his songs. I’m sad to say that search went unrewarded. Perhaps this is just a temporary lapse that we can hope will soon be remedied in the near future. We can all certainly hope so because once an artist like this whets your aural appetite with a tasty tidbit like Run On To Detroit (www.reverbnation.com/rpk/barthbeasley), you should know we’ll be back for some more. It’s just human nature. To quote one of my favorite fictional literary characters, the ever-so-hungry Olive Twist, “Please sir, I want more.” Now gives us a bit of pudding, won’t you, Mr. B?