S.O.S. 4: Blues For Your Soul Marc Broussard

• 1 I've Got To Use My Imagination 05:05
• 2 I'd Rather Drink Muddy Water 04:48
• 3 That's What Love Will Make You Do 04:05
• 4 Cuttin' In 03:00
• 5 Dreamer 04:22
• 6 Empire State Express 03:38
• 7 Love, The Time Is Now 03:51
• 8 I Asked For Water 05:00
• 9 I Like To Live The Love 05:18
• 10 Locked Up In Jail (Prison Blues) 05:09
• 11 Driving Wheel 03:33
• 12 When Will I Let Her Go 04:06
• Total Runtime 51:55

Info for S.O.S. 4: Blues For Your Soul

Marc Broussard -"S.O.S. 4: Blues For Your Soul" - For the latest in his S.O.S. (Save Our Soul) series, Marc Broussard has turned to the blues for inspiration. He has partnered with Joe Bonamassa's KTBA Foundation and sales from this record will help others as part of the charitable aspect that Marc has close to his heart. With production by Joe Bonamassa and Josh Smith, this is an album of blues covers (and one original) featuring Lemar Carter, Calvin Turner, Jeff Babko, with guest appearances from JJ Grey, Eric Kranso, Joe and Josh.

Long hailed as a powerhouse vocalist and king of Bayou Soul, Marc Broussard is altering his iconic recipe of classic soul, R&B, & blues with the help of renowned blues rock guitarist Joe Bonamassa, on his new single, “That’s What Love Will Make You Do,” a riveting take of the Little Milton classic.

Broussard’s dynamic, soulful vocals, combined with Bonamassa’s unmatched fretwork, deliver a knockout fusion of retro soul & modern blues. ”What Love Will Make You Do” is out today and is the first offering from Broussard’s forthcoming album S.O.S. 4: Blues For Your Soul, a stunning collection of blues and soul classics plus one original song produced by Joe Bonamassa, who contributes mesmerizing guitar solos on four tracks, alongside longtime collaborator Josh Smith.

“The deep, mutual concern and compassion for providing healing and growth opportunities for young adults through music is what connects all of us in this endeavor. Thanks to Marc, many students in Miami-Dade County will receive mentorship, recording time, and resources that they likely wouldn’t have access to in another capacity. We are so excited to be a vessel for this initiative and we’re fortunate to have an opportunity to work with Marc and Guitars Over Guns whose impact is already being noticed, rewarded, and replicated across the country.” – Shawn Gonzalez, KTBA Foundation President.

"I'm really proud of all the S.O.S albums," Broussard states. "But this one, in particular, seems really fantastic because we have some extra strength with my pal Joe Bonamassa. His stepping in by producing, playing on the record plus releasing it on his label is truly a gift. And Joe completely understood the charitable aspect of the album."

With help from so many talented friends, this is blues that arrives right on time and is guaranteed to take the soul on a new excursion. "This album seems like the culmination of a process that started when I went independent,” says Broussard. "It's based on believing in myself and the music my fellow musicians, and I make. I couldn't be more excited."

S.O.S 4: Blues For Your Soul also spotlights Broussard’s long-running involvement in charitable endeavors. S.O.S. (Save Our Soul) is his ongoing series of benefit albums that support a different cause for each album. Broussard explains. "I started doing cover records after I was released from my very first contract with a major label. I finally went independent and decided to record albums to raise funds for charity.

Marc Broussard, vocals
Joe Bonamassa, guitar
Josh Smith, guitar
Mark Douthit, saxophone
Barry Breen, trombone
Jeff Bailey, trumpet
Steve Patrick, trumpet
Matt Jefferson, bass trombone
Jeff Babko, keyboards, Hammond B3
Calvin Turner, bass
Lemar Carter, drums, percussion
Nashville Recording Orchestra
Davis Angell, conductor
Dannielle DeAndrea, backing vocals
Gaby Moreno, backing vocals

Marc Broussard
In 2004, Marc Broussard, then a precocious 22-year-old singer/songwriter, released his major-label debut; he called it Carencro, after the Louisiana town where he was born and raised, and its thematic centerpiece was a hickory-smoked slab of Bayou soul called “Home.” That album and the three that followed revealed Broussard as an old-school Southern soul singer blessed with a rarefied gift and innate stylistic and emotional authenticity, causing the L.A. Times to rave, “The guy can really sing, with power, nuance and class. Anybody got a phone book? I’d listen to him hum a few pages.” Those records also evidenced Broussard’s maturation into a songwriter of uncommon eloquence, fashioning the indigenous idioms of his native region into compelling personal testimony.

Now, a decade after his critical breakthrough, Broussard has come full circle with A LIFE WORTH LIVING his sixth studio album, a celebration of what home means to him, starting with his wife and kids, the street he’s lived on his entire life, surrounded by loved ones, and all the minutiae of everyday life that he has come to treasure.

“Home definitely has a lot to do with this album,” he confirms. “But family has a lot to do with it as well, and those two go hand in hand. The infrastructure of family is really important, especially when you have four kids. Luckily I’ve got family that I’ve been able to lean on throughout all these years. Then,on top of it all, this place is just special. There’s a different way of living, a different way of communicating and a different way of celebrating life here that is infectious. And once you realize it, you never want to leave.”

Broussard signals his intentions with the cover portrait, which pictures him with his wife and kids sitting on the steps of a neighbor’s house, instruments in hand, persuasively conveying the notion that the family that plays together stays together. That touching photograph, which recalls Norman Rockwell’s heartwarming images of home and hearth, leads the listener into a song cycle that brings those traditional American values to vivid life, a linked series of ballads and deep-gut soul-rockers with revealing titles like “Edge of Heaven,” “Another Day,” “Weight of the World,” “Perfect to Me” and “Shine.” These songs, some intimate and others churning with intensity, like the kickass blues-rockers “Dyin’ Man” and “Man Ain’t Supposed to Cry,” chart the full range of concerns and emotions of a husband, father and provider as he experiences the joys and sorrows of existence.

“Whether it’s because I’m older and a little more perceptive, or whether it was just the right time, I find myself with a set of songs that really means the world to me,” Broussard says with pride. “The lion’s share of the material on this record is extremely personal. There are decades of stories behind a single line in any of these songs. In that way alone, it’s vastly different than anything I’ve done before. There was much more attention to detail; I feel like I’ve become a more focused writer.”

From the charged metaphor of the opening track and lead single “Hurricane Heart” to the closing existential lament “I’ll never Know,” Broussard gets really close to the bone on this record—so close, in fact, that there seems to be no distance between himself and these songs, each of them drawn from the very fabric of his life; it’s as if they’re being transmitted from his heart and soul directly to the listener. That’s particularly true of the poignant title piece. “It was a rare occurrence to have a song that just kind of wrote itself,” Broussard says of “A Life Worth Living.” “It felt like I was the conduit more than the writer, that I received this thing. It happened right after the passing of my grandmother. She was sick, and she decided not to fight the cancer, which is indicative of her style—she lived by her own rules. My mother’s mother was the matriarch of this wonderful, massive family. Hurricane Isaac was bearing down on the Gulf Coast of Louisiana at the same time that she was passing away, and because it was such a sudden thing—we found out she had cancer and three weeks later she was gone—we were all left speechless. I felt like someone needed to say something and luckily the whole thing laid itself out in front of me.

“That’s one of two songs on this record that came to me this way,” Broussard continues. “The other one is ‘Give ’Em Hell.’ It’s about a friend of mine, Squirrel we called him, who was the head of the English department at a Jesuit high school in New Orleans. This guy was a brilliant writer, and one of my favorite people of all time. Squirrel passed away suddenly from a heart condition last April, and that led to another song that just hit me. I sat right up in bed and heard the first line.

“My grandmother passed away at the end of the summer of 2012, and Squirrel passed away in the spring of last year, so those two songs buttressed the entire writing process for this record,” he notes. “I felt both my grandmother and Squirrel’s presence coaxing me through every line, through every tear that rolled down my face as I wrote. Both were extremely emotional to write because I knew how gut-wrenching every line was going to be. So surrendering to the process was very difficult, but incredibly cathartic in the end.”

The album’s other linchpin song is “Honesty,” which, like “A Life Worth Living” and “Give ’Em Hell,” began with an epiphany. “‘Honesty’ was born out of an experience I had listening to a song called ‘Don’t Tell All My Friends About Me,’ by a brilliant guy named Blake Mills,” Broussard recalls. “That song had a profound effect on me in that it was so brutally honest it couldn’t be denied. For a long, long time, I’ve avoided writing about the darker side of relationships and love for fear of offending my wife’s sensibilities. But after I heard that song, I said to myself, ‘I can’t do that anymore. I’m not gonna allow myself to be stifled; I need to be able to write whatever I’m feeling.” So I had a talk with my wife and let her know that none of this stuff was really that personal, and all she needed to do was focus on how we are to each other. Then I proceeded to open myself up. So ‘Honesty’ is really the quintessence of this new spirit in my writing.

A LIFE WORTH LIVING marks Broussard’s return to Vanguard, which released 2007’s SOS: Save Our Soul, his scintillating album of covers of Southern soul classics.

“Luckily, I’m with a company that recognizes opportunities and is nimble and agile enough to make moves on it when they present themselves,” says Broussard. “All of the things that I needed to happen for me to feel confident about this project have come together. It’s put me in a really good head space. I’m really looking forward to the future, and there’s no end in sight, that’s the thing. We’ve got ideas that are fresh, and a team that’s really excited about implementing those ideas. I’m poised for some big things, hopefully, right here.”

With that, Broussard eases himself back into the unhurried rhythm of life in Carencro. The next order of business: dropping off a cookie cake baked by his wife to his daughter’s first- grade class at the neighborhood elementary school.

This album contains no booklet.