tim terry

Short Cuts
RECORD REVIEWS
CHRIS HERRINGTON, Editor
The Tim Terry Experience
The Tim Terry Experience
(Soul Street Records)
A Memphis native with gospel roots, Tim Terry cut his musical teeth as a sideman and a session keyboard player in California and Nashville, touring alongside such established soul artists as Cameo and Shirley Brown. But when he decided to form his own band and step to the front of the stage, he returned to Memphis, where he was greeted by a soul and jazz scene that put a greater emphasis on live, original music than he'd seen previously in the city.
Having rapidly become one of the leading players in this new homegrown soul movement, Terry takes the next step with a remarkably assured debut album. He cites soul stars such as Al Green, Marvin Gaye, and Isaac Hayes as inspiration, but The Tim Terry Experience is able to honestly evoke these influences without sounding retro. The organic sound of the music -- live instruments and church-bred vocals -- is a worthy inheritor of those classic sounds, but Terry always sounds contemporary. Indeed, what his music reminds me of most isn't the soul of the Seventies or even the retro feel of most neo-soul acts but the modern groove music of former Tony Tone Toni frontman Raphael Saadiq.
The Tim Terry Experience was mixed at Prince's Paisley Park Studios in Minneapolis, and Terry reveals that influence with the strong guitar lines and falsetto screams and sighs that occasionally break up the soft soul bed and calm, warm tenor that otherwise marks the record. Riding a strong two-steps-from-gospel groove for nearly an hour, Terry may not equal the masters of Stax and Hi, but this Experience is still the best local soul album in a long time. --Chris Herrington
Grade: A-
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- The Memphis Flyer