Delta Deep: East Coast Live
Delta Deep
East Coast Live
(Frontiers Music SRL)
Delta Deep presents a live party CD/DVD on East Coast Live. This band, led by Def Leppard’s guitar wailer Phil Collen, is a heavy blues four-piece. Filmed and recorded at Daryl’s House in Pawling, NY, the rest of the band, Robert DeLeo on bass and backing vocals, Forrest Robinson on drums, and lead vocalist Debbi Blackwell-Cook, complete a strong live outing.
Debbi Blackwell-Cook screams through the opener cover of Led Zep’s “Black Dog,” then the band rolls into their own “Roll The Lid,” a driver featuring Collen just blasting through, which is what we get with a lot of Delta Deep’s output. I think Collen is a great guitarist, but at times I wish he would lay back a bit.
We get a duet with Blackwell-Cook and Collen on the slow groove of “Treat Her Like Candy,” one of the better tunes of the 15. On “Bless These Blues,” they present a nasty stomper and an even better duet.
Tunes like the sly groove “Private Number,” present rather commercial choruses, and Robinson and Collen laying back soft and slow (at least at first) to allow Blackwell-Cook to get her voice round the torchy “Whiskey,” is stellar. Again Collen steps forward in full wail though, and overdoes it I feel.
There’s a requisite drum solo (and a pretty good one at that) second to last, while East Coast Live ends with the flicky, funk, mid-tempo band intros, some Robert DeLeo soloing, “hit me” drum fun that rolls into another commercial rocker, “Feelit.”