Blue Largo - Got to Believe (2022)

Eric Lieberman founded the band Blue Largo 22 years ago, and back then they were tied deeply to 1940s and ’50s blues covers by Billie Holiday, Louis Jordan and others from that era. But life changes everything, and it changed Blue Largo. Lieberman had been a hot-shot blues guitarist in the San Diego scene long enough to see the future when he met Alicia Aragon at the Mandolin Wind club. He’d found the person he knew he’d been missing, except Aragon didn’t want to go pro. That’s when Blue Largo came close to being bon, and a few years later they started recording. Today, the band has really grown to the point where they are ready for the national stage. GOT TO BELIEVE has such a sturdy sense of deep soul that it stands up to any and all fellow outfits, and all Lieberman’s original songs like “Soldier of Love” and “Disciple of Soul” sound like modern versions of some of rhythm & blues’ finest classics. It’s often obvious when a great band reaches its tipping point and is really ready to grab the attention of those beyond their hometown crowd. That’s where Blue Largo is today: right on the verge of moving into America’s front lines of modern soul aggregations. That’s probably because the power of belief that fueled Eric Lieberman. He’s been playing music a very long time, and has never lost faith that someday he’d find an audience that would hear the heart of what Lieberman had always heard in his own. Bands like this are lifers, and wait in line for their time to come. Now is that time for Blue Largo. Any group that can record “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” inspired by icon Nina Simone’s original version aren’t afraid of anything. With Alicia Aragon in front of it all and Blue Largo firing up the engine bigtime behind her, their time has come. Better believe it.