Ladies and Gentlemen...Nigel Hall (Feel Music, 2015)

Nigel Hall (Photo: visitphilly.com)

Nigel Hall has come out with an album, long-in-the-making Ladies and Gentlemen…Nigel Hall (Feel Music, 2015). He did it in collaboration with famed producer Eric Krasno who has worked with a diverse group of people like Norah Jones, Justin Timberlake, and Aaron Neville.

When Krasno first contacted him, Nigel Hall -- originally from Washington, D.C. -- was making a name for himself as a keyboard player and vocalist in the northeast in places like Boston and Maine. Nigel Hall knew the reputation of Krasno so he didn’t believe it was Krasno on the phone and thought it was a friend playing a trick on him.

But it was Krasno; and Krasno flew Nigel into New York for the first time he ever flew on a plane. They went straight from the airport to the studio and pulled an all-nighter. Over the next few years Nigel Hall would work with groups like Lettuce and Warren Haynes and on breaks he would reunite with Krasno and continue to work on music. They brought in people like Questlove (drummer of The Roots), Adam Deitch (drummer of Lettuce), Ivan Neville (son of Aaron Neville and leader of Dumpstaphunk), Ryan Zoidis (Nigel Hall’s best friend and saxophonist of Lettuce), Charlie Hunter, James Carey and Maurice 'Mobetta' Brown.

The album was crafted and sat in the vault for years; Krasno telling Nigel Hall to be patient and wait for the right time. Now is the right time. The result is a soulful album with an old-school feel.

The album opens with Gimme a Sign, a head-bopper listeners can sing along to, with some harmonizing background vocals. Nigel Hall is a student of music and his love for Motown comes out in Gimme a Sign as it does later in Never Gonna Let You Go, and I Just Want to Love You.

I Just Want to Love You, a duet with Nigel Hall’s close friend and collaborator Alecia Chakour is actually a re-make of a Stanley Clarke-George Duke tune but it has the feel of The Temptations’ The Girl’s All Right with Me.

There are a few old-school R&B numbers that bring the feeling of a smoky nightclub in Mississippi; songs like Lay Away, Latimore’s classic Let’s Straighten it Out, and Call on Me.