The band Blue Lunch, or as they are billed on this new Rip Cat Records release Blue Lunch Special, brings thirty years and an eight piece ensemble to the picnic table for an album that is in fact special. This Ohio based ensemble has put out a career retrospective that spans three decades and covers material from all of their previous six albums.

The band is fronted by one of the groups’s founders and original members, singer, harmonica player Pete London. His lead vocals can be heard on four tracks of this sixteen song offering. He also wrote two of the nine original tunes on the album.

Guitarist Bob Frank takes lead vocal duties on eight tunes. He is also the principal songwriter on seven songs. These two Cleveland, Ohio, blues stalwarts lead an ensemble that has had relatively few personnel changes. This is astonishing in and of itself considering the band’s longevity and the rough waters a big band has to navigate to stay afloat in this day and age.

Bassist Raymond Forest and trumpet player Mike Rubin play on the entire album as well. The tenor sax duties are split fairly equally by Norman Tischler and Keith McKelley, as both players have had different stints with the band. The same goes to the drum chair with Scott Flowers and Mike Janowitz sharing duties during different periods of this band’s arc.

Blue Lunch Special: 30^th Anniversary Deluxe Edition is a smorgasbord of music, where the right combination of songs make for an aural feast that is a very satisfying listening experience. Covers range from material written by such seemingly disparate sources as Robert Lockwood Jr. to Sonny Rollins. The band does songs made famous by the Dominos and The Five Royales via the pens of Billy Ward and Lowman Pauling respectively. They somehow makes everything work in their favor.

The album opens with three Don Frank originals. Sideswiped is an instrumental where the band riffs hard on a Memphis/Muscle Shoals style groove before making a detour to a New Orleans flavored number entitled Cold Day Down Below and then it’s on to T-Bone Walker territory with Skin Bones and Hair.

Track four is a Pete London west coast style, jump blues original Cutting Out. He follows that with an instrumental of his own entitled The Fidget that features his harp playing for the first time on the CD. It is a fun, upbeat number with a swinging Kansas City feel. By now the listener is careening down a blues highway and is not behind the wheel. The driver is the groove and at this point it is anybody’s guess where he will turn next, but it’s clear you are in very capable hands.

Another component to this band is the vocal harmonies which rise above the pedestrian in large part by the inclusion of the rich baritone of bassist Raymond Deforest. It is that baritone that takes on what must be a live performance favorite, the Dominoes Sixty Minute Man.

Every musician heard on this CD is an accomplished veteran, but what makes it work is that they work so well together. This of course is a byproduct playing together for so long. Each player is a gifted soloist, but the real treat in this lunch pail is the ensemble playing.

The album is marvelously sequenced with just the right mix of instrumentals, vocal tracks, flavors, textures, styles and shades of blue to make for a solid hour of listening pleasure. Blue Lunch Special: 30^th Anniversary Deluxe Edition is cause for celebration.

- David Mac