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Brick Fields Music | Award Winning Duo With Four Distinct Projects Including The Popular Brick Fields Band "Gospel Blue"

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Brick Fields Music | Award Winning Duo With Four Distinct Projects Including The Popular Brick Fields Band  "Gospel Blue"



Artist Information

Biography

Brick Fields AWARDS: *
• 2010 Ozark Blues Challenge Winners
• 2011 Pick of Club 152 for Beale St. Blues Kings at the IBC”s Memphis
• 2012 nominee for NWA Music Awards Best Blues Band
• 2012 for NWA Music Awards Best Duo
• 2012 3rd place Ozark Folk Songwriters Award
• Winners of 2012 King Of The Roots Springfield, MO Division 



Brick Fields Music  
 
The State of Arkansas has produced a self-sufficient amount of musical treasures over the years and some of them are still a best-kept secret. The Brick Fields Band is both a tradition-rich and forward thinking natural progression of that lineage. But with their work ethic and deep-rooted talent, the fences we have around this state will no longer be able to contain them. I so love the metaphorical possibilities of “Brick Fields” but alas, it is much more simple than that…and I think maybe more powerful. 
 
Rachel Fields worked her way into this world aching to exercise the music from her soul right out of the gates. Originally from the Arkansas delta city of Pine Bluff, Rachel paid her musical dues on every platform from a Mississippi Episcopal church to the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York City. At the Blue Moon Studios in Nashville, TN Rachel cut her teeth on songwriting with a professional team realizing successes there having had her songs recorded by others. But her heart clamored for performance…on her own terms. But what she needed was a partner to share in the journey.
 
It’s a wonder how fate brings two souls together. Oftentimes, if you look deep enough, the souls might have originated in the very same place and were brought together to revolve around each other like binary stars. Larry Brick’s roots reach right into the farm rich soil of a much smaller town on the working class side of the Mississippi River northeast of Memphis. His early musical education was had in the same way one might think any notable blues man might have been schooled…on the splintered front porches of the folks across the tracks. Front porch performances on a sweltering summer evening have a way of being brutally honest. They stay with you camped in your soul only to be revealed later in life. This might have been what Rachel recognized in Larry as they collided in 2006 to form Brick Fields.
 
The two together deliver music that might have been extracted directly from the canvas of a Grant Wood painting. Working class in its origin strummed from the hands of a carpenter, and a vehicle strong enough to carry the Gospel itself. Yet modern enough and clever enough to appeal to the masses and help you lose yourself, respectively.
Rachel and Larry have assembled a strong cast to help them deliver their message. Randy Fairbanks of Topeka, Kansas, is the keyboardist; Johnny Ray on bass is from Cleburne, Texas; Casey Terry adds color to the band on saxophone by way of Glendale, Arizona; Caleb Bomar from Fort Smith, Arkansas, is setting it all up from behind the drums and percussion. Interestingly enough, all of them came together at different intervals in Rachel and Larry’s hometown of Eureka Springs, Arkansas, at a little café called, New Delhi. As New Delhi in India is a microcosm of that nation, Brick Fields might also be its own little world within our world. A bringing together of two souls from similar origins surrounded by capable yeomen.

As I have taken my time writing a biography that could not dare to describe The Brick Fields Band with enough worth, I have been through their 2010 release, Gospel Blue, three times in a row. Every song. Rachel’s voice has just enough rasp to conjure up a tension of empathy that has the listener hanging on every note. The songs are so well written and arranged that each one tells its own story in its own way. Unlike nearly every other album I have heard in the past decade, it’s no use skipping over a song to get to a better one. The performances are spot-on professional and like any great story, there are no hiccups or bad decisions that distract from the song. The 2011 release Shambhala is the same way. 
 
The Brick Fields Band is music from sincerity and reality. American in its very core and both rooted in its upbringing and forward thinking enough to be very original. As much as I want to keep conjuring up a metaphorical field of bricks in the way a late seventies band might have, I have too much respect for this band. I want the world to give a listen, dump them to your mobile digital player, and hire them for whatever function you can. They have earned it and you deserve it. 
 
--Stephen Boudreaux August 29, 2012 Brick Fields 
 
Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Skip James, to name just two legends from back in the day, struggled with the sacred and profane throughout their careers. It is thus a stunning surprise to encounter a contemporary band that reconciles gospel and the blues while creating spellbinding music in both genres. Brick Fields from Arkansas, with the breathtaking power of sensational singer Rachel “Fields” Brick,” will turn heads and hearts with their groundbreaking new release, Gospel Blue.
 

Gospel Blue contains nine originals overflowing with pure soul and an innovative cover of “Amazing Grace.” “On the Vine” unabashedly lauds the joys of temporal love that ripens and matures. Over a sensual funk rhythm Fields declares with palpable passion, “Love grows on the vine, makes the sweetest wine” in what appears to be a reference to Brick. The guitarist responds as always with a tender, melodic solo, caressing his strings with obvious affection. Fields adds her haunting flute to the slow minor blues of “Cryin’” while pouring out her pain in a heart-rending tale that is frighteningly convincing, her rich alto a dramatically expressive instrument. “In the Light of Love” is an exuberant, up tempo gospel number spotlighting Brick’s jazzy comping and Fields’ lyrical flute as she radiates unabashed joy with “When I’m walking with my Lord…in the light of love.” The 32-bar blues ballad “Addicted to You” embraces earthbound love with Fields at her most seductive. A sassy “boogaloo” underpins the banter and celestial harmony of Fields and backup singer Rain Equine and their topical “About the Weather” espousing “God’s green earth is full of many questions…if you’re trying to catch this feeling, why not talk about the weather?” As he does throughout, Terry on tenor sax “sings” through his horn along with the vocalists. Like a modern day Pops and Mavis Staples, Brick and Fields blend guitar and vocals beautifully on the sweet and moving ballad “How Long” that could be seen to address a lover or the Creator with, “How long, until you come and take me home?” The dramatic R&B of “These Are the Days” finds Fields preaching “Though heaven and earth, may soon pass away, its love and its truth will remain” as she pleads for understanding in these troubled times. The show stopping gospel ballad “Go On with the Soul” again marries the heavenly talents of Fields and Brick as she spectacularly explores all the nuance and strength in her vocal chords. The toe-tapping “Lord I’m Coming Home” exhibits swinging blues in the service of a higher power before the duo train their creative gifts on a jazzy version of “Amazing Grace” in a fitting closer. Fields acknowledges Brick as “…a very gifted songwriter…always seems to write the perfect songs for me to sing.” It should also be added that she is the perfect singer for the songs to go along with his unwavering instrumental support. 
 
Backed by a group that plays, lives and breathes in sync, they acknowledge body and soul by imbuing the blues with the same glorious spirit of love and hope as their gospel songs. - Dave Rubin 2005 KBA Recipient in Journalism Brick Fields the dynamic duo from Eureka Springs, AR are the husband and wife songwriting team Larry Brick and Rachel Fields. Rachel and Larry met while playing music one spring evening at The New Delhi Cafe in Eureka Springs, AR in 2007. They have since then formed four distinct projects from roots music steaming from the Brick Fields Duo. The other projects include award winning six piece Brick Fields Blues Band, the award winning Brick Fields Duo, the popular Brick Fields Gospel Group, and the ever changing Brick Fields Jazz/Folk quartet all of which continue to pull listeners into Eureka Springs, AR year after year.

 

Instrumentation 

 

Rachel Fields - Vocals, Acoustic Guitar, flute
Larry Brick - Acoustic and Electric, Back-Vocals

 

Discography 

 

Brick Fields "Shambalah" 2011 Brick Fields Band "Gospel Blue" 2010 Brick Fields Duo "Only Love" 2009 Brick Fields "On The Vine" 2008

 

Official Website

 

 

Links

 

 

Press

 



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