One Last Kiss - RJ Comer
We head to White Bluff in Tennessee to meet our next LCM featured artist bluesy Americana singer-songwriter RJ Comer. Fresh off his official appearance at SXSW and a gulf coast tour, RJ has recently released his brand new album 'One Last Kiss'. Our LCM #SongOfTheDay is the dark and bluesy title track. It’s the ultimate last kiss....he 'kiss of death'. RJ invokes the tragic love poetry of Edgar Allen Poe and describes his own father’s funeral who died when RJ was 14........and this takes us to the most famous last kiss of all time.
Director Bill Filipiak boldly presents the odd spectrum of RJ’s true feelings about death. RJ’s often cold and detached response to death coexists with RJ’s bitter outlaw cynicism, but grief and sadness are conspicuously absent. The track was produced by Shawn Byrne and features fiddler Daniel Foulks (Parker Millsap band) and Grammy-winning slide guitarist Randy Kohrs (Jim Lauderdale, Dierks Bentley).
Originally from Chicago, bluesy Americana/Alt Country artist RJ Comer has toured in Canada and throughout the United States, including official appearances at SXSW, the Canadian Music Week Festival, the Key Largo Original Music Festival, and the Baton Rouge Third Street Songwriter’s Festival.
As a recording artist, RJ’s garnered critical acclaim and radio success. His 2016 release “Nightly Suicide” EP got spins throughout the country’s Americana stations, and Tampa’s WMNF 88.5 named it one of the best albums of 2016. In 2015 RJ released a two-sided single “New Orleans Undercover,” which debuted at #2 on iTunes New Blues Releases Chart. “New Orleans Undercover” was recorded in New Orleans with New Orleans musicians. His debut solo EP “Hell Hole Swamp” (March 2015) included tracks produced in Lafayette, Louisiana by True Blood and Treme’ contributor C.C. Adcock and featuring the legendary Stanton Moore on drums and Artelius Mystic on sousaphone.
RJ’s new release, 'One Last Kiss', is a collection of songs that show RJ’s lighter and brighter side, though his darker emotions of loss, regret, and longing for redemption are not completely in abeyance.
Photo Credit: Deborah Rosenthal