Angela Tini – Have You Met Me Yet – Album Review

My Seattle friend Angela Tini has stepped out from band The Starjays and recorded a new album. Yep, the lady with the big voice decided to show off her songwriting chops and gathered a who’s who of west coast roots musicians and put her own stamp on it, she dubbed her Long Beach Wrecking Crew. Which is an obvious, and appropriate, nod to the famed studio musicians who backed nearly every band in Southern California in the 60s and 70s.  The crew was made up of Tommy Harkenrider on guitar, Josh Collazo on drums, Shorty Poole on upright Bass, Carl Sonny Leyland on piano and Johnny Viau on Saxaphone. She and I share a love of musical theater, and it really shows on this new album, both in delivery and style.  The songwriting credit goes mostly to Angela and Carl Sonny Leyland, with a few exceptions, listed below.

The album starts out with the title track “Have You Met Me Yet” which, as Angela says is “about being underestimated and people not respecting your personal boundaries.” “Drop Dead” is a swinging, 1-4-5, fun, Rockabillyish tune. “Don’t Tease Me” (which is currently available when you prepurchase the album) is about her husband. “Let You Go” is, as the name suggests, about letting go of toxic relationships so one can come out on the other side. “Fool Me Once” was inspired by jump blues singers, such as LaVern Baker and Ruth Brown, and to me has a very R&B feel to it.  “Sotto Le Stelle” was Angela’s attempt to capture a style late 50s, early 60s, Italian Pop was doing American style songs.  Angela shares lyric writing credits Dario Vavassori on this one, but her writing partner, Carl, provided the music.

Another cut on the album features a duet with Robert Williams, aka Big Sandy.  Both Robert and Angela tossed around the idea of doing a duet over the years, and “Let’s Talk About It” was the result.  Robert providing the music to Angela’s lyrics, with a little help from Carl resulted in a fun song that reminded me of a musical comedy where the two main characters are flirting with each other.  Acting as the ensemble cast backing them up were Abby Maharaj (Abby Girl & The Real Deal) and Dani Colace (Crown City Bombers).  In fact, Abby and Dani sang tasteful back up vocals on several of the tunes.

A couple of songs came straight from Carl.  Based on a discussion between he and Angela, “Come On Down”, is a rocking song harkening back to “carnival barkers and snake-oil salesmen.”  But she is only selling “good times through music.”  Another song by Carl is “Dirty Dog”, a song that he asked Angela to sing, and with her brash voice reminds me of Big Mama Thornton’s “Hound Dog.”

As I said above, many of the tracks were written by Angela and Carl, but, there are, however, a few covers.  The most poignant being “200 Pounds of Fun” a song written by a friend of Angela’s, the late Candye Kane, who passed away in 2016 and asked Angela to sing a cover of the song.  It’s a lighthearted song with a serious message about acceptance, a theme Candye was noted for.  “Red Hot Henrietta Brown”, a song made popular by Sue Thompson back in 1952.  It was a jazz song updated to fit Angela’s voice, and another tune that reminded me of musical theater. And last, but certainly not least, was a revamped version of “Tintarella Di Luna”, a famous Italian song mad popular by Mina.  Angela originally recorded it with her previous band The Starjays and tells the story of a girl who cannot go out in the sun.  It, like “Sotto Le Stelle” were sung in Italian, Angela’s second language.

The release of the album is scheduled for April 28^th to coincide with her performance at Viva Las Vegas.  If you are planning on going, you can pick the album in person or you can go to https://angelatini.bandcamp.com/album/have-you-met-me-yet for presale, which will also include the single ”Don’t Tease Me” available now.  Bopflix also recorded a video of “Don’t Tease Me” at the New England Shake-Up and can be seen at https://youtu.be/mXl1yL0EsKc. Every song on this album is a keeper and arranged perfectly for Angela’s brash voice.  The recording was engineered by Shorty and produced by Carl in Long Beach, California.