Baton

Baton Rouge's third album re-unites legendary producer/songwriter and guitarist Jack Ponti with the hard rock vocalist of the moment, in Kelly Keeling. The vocals are strong and consistent, the songs are of high quality and chock full of riff's, melodies, hooks and solo's.

“Shake Your Soul” is an outstanding effort by a band that should have been at the top of its class. The band originally formed in Louisiana as Voices in 1986 and consisted of Kelly Keeling (guitar and keyboard), Lance Bulen (vocals), Keith Harrison (bass) and Harold Knappenburger (drums). They changed their name to Cheetah, later to Meridian and finally Baton Rouge, the group relocated to Los Angeles in 1987 and revamped their line up. Their debut album, “Shake Your Soul” debuted in 1990, reaching only the 160th place on the Billboard charts at a time when media attention to the style had already begun to decline dramatically.

Here is a double shot of hyphenated-name, late French Romantic trios for violin, cello, and piano: the Trio in A minor of Joseph Guy Ropartz (who later went as Guy-Ropartz) and the Trio Op. 31 of (René-Emmanuel) "Rhené"-Baton. Ropartz was a long-lived disciple of d'Indy of whom conventional wisdom states waited until World War II before abandoning his post-Franckian idiom in favor of a more up-to-date neo-classic style.

The debut release for the second-generation bayou blues guitarist/harpist, whose gruff-before-their-time vocals retain their swamp sensibility while assuming a bright contemporary feel that tabs him as a leading contender for future blues stardom.