Lucas Spinosa - Friends & Legends Of Louisiana (2019)

Songwriter and keyboardist Lucas Spinosa assembled an impressive cast of south Louisiana all-stars for “Friends and Legends of Louisiana.” Spinosa — who was the leader of the Baton Rouge-area band Southern Star in the 1990s — produced the album, did most of the songwriting and played keyboards for this one-of-a kind project.

Every “Friends and Legends of Louisiana” song stars a different, well-known singer from Louisiana. The project also contains a variety of musical flavors, encompassing swamp pop, blues, rock ’n’ roll, swing, gospel and even smooth jazz.

The guest vocalist list includes bluesman Kenny Neal, zydecajun artist Wayne Toups, blues-rocker Chris LeBlanc and swamp pop singers Don Rich, Gregg Martinez and Ryan Foret. It surely is a soulful, smoky collection of Louisiana voices.

Spinosa does a fine job of matching singers to the songs he and Billy E. Henderson have written. Rich, the popular swamp-pop artist from Pierre Part, sings “Want It to Be,” a ballad that sounds custom-made for him. Horns — that requisite element for so much south Louisiana music — and keyboard triplets complement Rich’s characteristically from-the-heart vocals.

Spinosa casts Baton Rouge blues artist Neal in the churning, bluesy-country song, “Southern Side of Life.” Neal blows swamp-blues harmonica for the track and poignantly sings in his unmistakably deep and grainy voice.

“Belly of the Beast,” featuring Toups’ vocals, Lafayette slide guitar master Sonny Landreth, horns and B-3 Hammond organ, takes a rousing gospel-meets-rhythm-and-blues hybrid direction. While "Belly of the Beast" is a fine performance and production, it leans too heavily on some famous songs, namely Crosby, Stills, & Nash’s “Love the One You’re With,” John Boutté’s “Treme Song” and, a standard from southwest Louisiana, Little Bob’s “I Got Loaded.”

There’s more musical variety in “Red Tail Lights on a Blues Highway.” Spinosa once again matches the right singer to the right song, placing Baton Rouge’s LeBlanc in the spotlight for a blues-rocking tale about a haunted highway. And blue-eyed soul singer Parker James takes the mic for “While You’re Still Mine,” a love song in a smooth-jazz vein. But lasting nearly five minutes, the song runs long. Some of the album’s other four-minute-plus selections could also use trimming.

Despite some long tracks and the mentioned instance of derivativeness, “Friends and Legends of Louisiana” is an ambitious opus worthy of praise and popularity. ~John Wirt