Ginger St. James - Told Ya (2025) Hi-Res

Canadian songstress Ginger St. James got her start playing in small-town Ontario bars and expanded to headlining festivals across Canada. Her website describes her music as a “blend of old-school rockabilly stomp, honky-tonk swing and bluesy riffs”. This is her third album release following One for the Money in 2016 and Live at Knox Farm in 2019.

Ginger provides all vocals on the album, wrote all the songs and produced the album. Her band members are Snowheel Slim on guitar, tambourine, and cowbell; Chris Altman on bass, pedal steel, piano, and organ; and Cleave Anderson on drums.

“Not Round Here” opens the album with a rockabilly number as she declares “I want to shake, I want to shimmy, I want to party all night”. “Please Renee” comes with the warning that it “may contain some naughty words”. Her lyrics on the countrified romp are rapid fire with Chris’ pedal steel driving the tune as she tells “in 1996 I drove a 1985 Monte Carlo with power windows, a V8 engine with overdrive…I was sweet sixteen”. I got drunk, I had the keys, I just need insurance.” “I have been ticketed for speeding and suspended, have been arrested for some things I regretted.” She next declares she has the “Lonesome Lonesome Blues”, as “everybody is gone, everything is wrong” on a country blues ballad.

In a country waltz, she tells him “I Think I’d Kinda Like It” “if you wanted to come home with me”. “We’ve been kinda dancing around this bar, but I think there is another room I want you to see”. Perhaps as a direct follow-up to the previous song, on “Honky Tonk Hangover” she tells “I woke up this morning in someone else’s bed, and I took a shot of whiskey to stop the shaking in my hand. When I got on when someone’s up, I have no regrets because hanging over from honky tonking ain’t that bad”. “Night Terrors” slows things down with Chris’ piano providing an eerie tone to the song as she says, “When it’s time for me to slumber, I keep the light on. Shadows in the dark are hard to see.” and outlines the things that scares her including monsters under her bed, vampires that might bite her, and the guy “in the yellow’67 El Camino who rumbles past my bedroom window.”

Next, she tells “I hit the road with my two feet, then walked a mile down the tracks… lit up a smoke and took a drag. Suddenly I heard a sound, so I flicked y ash and turned around, something must be going down, lookie here what I found – “Soul Shack”. Ginger sings about her favorite “Pink Bikini” “with the polka dots” in a slow bluesy swing. “Star gazing at the nightfall, fireflies light up the whitewalls…what a good-looking view.” The album concludes with a train song and the band gets the engine running as she describes “he makes money riding railway cars across country near and far, he checks the train from front to back to keep it going on down the track, he is a “Railway Rider”.

Many of Ginger’s lyrics seem to reflect her life experiences, mixing humor with some seemingly wild nights. Her vocals place her firmly in a countrified swagger that the honky tonk refrains push more to rockabilly. I don’t find more than a touch of blues on the album and that was country blues. But if you like rockabilly and want a good time, the album fulfills that direction.