Jeffrey Halford & The Healers burst onto my radar back in 2015 when I became hooked by their album "Rainmaker." I didn't know then that Jeffrey Halford had made 6 albums before that one, and I didn't know anything about his background. All I knew was that the music on Rainmaker sounded authentic. That was enough for me--I made room in my life for a real good band. Well, here comes a new release from these guys. Lo Fi Dreams is all I have come to expect and even more.
The band here is Halford on vocals and guitar, Bill Macbeath on bass, and Adam Rossi on keys and drums. Guests include Jimmy Dewrance on harp on two songs, and Tom Heyman on steel and guitar on two tracks. The album was recorded in San Francisco.
Let me say this up front: This is a real good album. The songwriting is top-notch, and the guitar work, while sometimes a bit less flashy than it could be, is very solid. While this music may not be textbook blues-- i-tunes even calls it country--the music here strikes my ears as an example of "Cosmic American Music", a hybrid of country, rhythm and blues, soul, folk, and rock, a phrase used by the late and great musician Gram Parson. The feel of Lo Fi Dreams, like Rainmaker before it, is similar to music made by Tony Jo White, or Ray Wylie Hubbard, or early John Hiatt. It contains stories told with honest and sparse musical accompaniment. My favorite song here is Two Jacksons, a tale of a thrift store jacket.
I am going to give the final word to Paul Liberatore, who writes for the Marin Independent Journal:
"With this album, Halford stays the course he’s set as a troubadour of truth, writing songs in the tradition of the American storytellers who used their voices and their guitars to elevate ordinary people and comment on the human condition."
He got it exactly right.
You can buy this cd at i-tunes or at your favorite music outlet.
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