Vaughn - Soldiers And Sailors On Riverside

Dave’s Favourite “Danny Vaughn” album

Details: 2000, Z Records, CD

The news that the Tyketto trio of Danny Vaughn, Jaime Scott and Michael Clayton Arbeeny were teaming up and recording again, was certainly met with great excitement in our household. Uncomfortable with using their original moniker without Brooke St James, they settled on the name Vaughn and welcomed new members Kyle Cummings on keyboards and guitarist PZ Ziterosa. What were we going to get though? Would it be hard rocking AOR from their Tyketto days, or a much more blues direction such as that taken by Danny on “Blues For Daze”?

In fact, it ended up being a rather tasty amalgamation of both, with plenty of identifiable Tyketto moments, a healthy dose of blues references and easily exceeding expectations. Poetic as ever in the lyrics, opener “Bad Water” deals with alcohol addictions, building through the first verse into a fine blues rocker. By far the most commercial sounding track here is “Is That All There Is?” and quite rightly it was lifted as a single. With Danny in full voice, a situation familiar to many is dealt with by a clever lyric and driven along a pace by an acoustic guitar, quite simply an AOR classic.

Laid-back, yet catchy “Healing Hands” has gospel singers providing backing vocals over a heavy bass line and keys. Next up is a track I can almost hear Thunder playing, “Handful Of Rain“. A bluesy acoustic driven ballad, which has Mr Vaughn in fantastically, restrained mode, whereas the blues funk sound of “Stone Monkey” sees him reveal a rougher edge to the vocals. “Shadowland” is perhaps my favourite track on here, one that would have fitted quite nicely and reputedly written around the time of “Strength In Numbers”. The sight of a military graveyard inspired the title track, an easy on the ear keyboard led ballad, “Soldiers And Sailors On Riverside“, however the lyrical content takes it to a more personal level. Sounding remarkably like a John Cougar Mellencamp track “Paradise Ain’t Home” impresses with mouth organ, a sweet guitar solo and more superb female backing vocals bolstering this ballad.

Perhaps the only song on the album, which doesn’t quite strike a chord with me, is “Gandy Dancer“. It’s more than likely the distant beginning which distracted me, unfortunately something it’s never recovered from. Whether “The Voice” was inspired by his recognition of his given talent for singing or not is open to interpretation. Either way, as an album closer, this is an absolute barnstormer of a ballad with arguably the finest blues guitar solo saved for last. As was quite common around this time a hidden track appears some 20 seconds after the album closer. A humorous untitled little ditty, just acoustic guitar and voice, if the smile wasn’t broad enough before, it just broke into a grin.

Overall, a very accomplished album, maybe more in tune with British blues rock in subject matter as well as direction, than with the pure AOR of the Don’t Come Easy era. But this isn’t Tyketto after all, it’s Vaughn, times and people change, in this case for the better. Besides, for me, it was all about “the voice”

Highlight : Handful Of Rain

Score : 4/5

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DH

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