After winning his first GRAMMY and constantly touring the world, including a string of Australian dates in late 2017, New Orleans piano player and songwriter Jon Cleary returns with his ten-song LP Dyna-Mite out July 13 on Thirty Tigers.
Cleary who plays a variety of instruments on the new album also wrote every song on the album and co-wrote ’21st Century Gypsy Singing Lover Man’ with Taj Mahal. “I’m a jack of all trades, and a master of none,” says Cleary. To complete this picture, he turned to his talented group of local musicians to round out the roots and emotion of Dyna-Mite.
An outsider from Kent, England, Cleary has improbably become a beloved personality in his adopted hometown. From a young age, Cleary’s love for the city was insatiable, with the records of Earl King and Snooks Eaglin constantly on his mind. The day after he graduated high school, he hopped on a plane to NOLA with nothing but the phone number for the historic Maple Leaf Bar to chase his dream. Nowadays NPR calls him “pure New Orleans,” and he’s made the city proud with his 2016 Grammy Award for his last album GoGo Juice.
Cleary says, “In New Orleans, you have to keep it real.”
Recorded at Music Shed Studios, The Parlor and Cleary’s own Funk Headquarters studio in the historic Bywater neighborhood of NOLA, Dyna-Mite shows off Cleary as the virtuoso talent once described as “nothing short of amazing” by Relix.
“The idea for Dyna-mite and the whole first verse came to me, unbidden and complete, on a plane as we were about to take off for an overseas tour,” says Cleary.
“The rest of the song came pretty easily and I had in the back of my mind an image from an old gig poster on my wall of Etta James, billing her as ‘Li’l Miss Dyna-mite’. I’ve wanted a new tune in the set that had that funky old Caribbean groove and we nailed it in the first take, live vocals and all.” “21st Century Gypsy Singing Lover Man” turns that energy inwards, showing off Cleary’s many skills as his soulful croon soars over sumptuous piano and horn arrangements.
Dyna-Mite is due out through Cooking Vinyl in Australia on July 13.