{"id":11061,"date":"2025-07-29T07:54:16","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T12:54:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/postgenre.org\/staging\/4567\/?p=11061"},"modified":"2025-07-29T07:54:35","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T12:54:35","slug":"rachael-vilray-broadway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postgenre.org\/staging\/4567\/rachael-vilray-broadway\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Rachael & Vilray\u2018s \u2018West of Broadway\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Timed nicely for their appearance at the 2025 Newport Jazz Festival, Rachael and Vilray issue their third album, West of Broadway<\/em> (Concord Jazz, 2025). The vocalist Rachael Price (also of Lake Street Dive) and the guitarist\/singer\/songwriter Vilray exist in that rare intersection of jazz, pop, and singer-songwriter fare. Their producer is Dan Knobler, Rodney Crowell\u2019s son-in-law, and one of the most sought-after producers in Americana music. What differentiates the duo\u2019s sound from most of the records that Knobler helms is its instrumentation, including several notable jazz musicians such as saxophonist Steve Wilson (Chick Corea, Christian McBride) and vibraphonist (also playing xylophone and piano here) Warren Wolf (Christian McBride). Joining them are clarinetist Jay Pattman, trombonist Adam Dotson, bassist Neal Miner, and drummer John Riley (Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie). We also have a cameo appearance from the The Late Show<\/em>\u2019s recently exiled Stephen Colbert on \u201cOff Broadway.\u201d Jacob Zimmerman crafted the arrangements. Viray is the composer of all but one of the ten tracks, and takes credit for envisioning the unconventional instrumentation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This duo excels at the idea of intersections, with this session fusing West Coast jazz with Broadway musicals, along with their zany sketches of characters who populate the songs. Unlike some duos, they don\u2019t thrive so much on the lead\/harmony dynamic as they do in trading verses conversationally. We hear that construct in the opener \u201cForever Never Lasts Very Long\u201d where they sing about this \u201cF-word\u201d being overrated and their inability to stay divorced for long in their patented witty way. Musically, we hear brief solos from Wilson, Dotson, and Wolf. The duo has this obsession with tortoises, which appear in \u201cIs It Jim?\u201d Here\u2019s how Rachael starts: \u201cWe kissed and drifted off last night\/Now there\u2019s no sign of Jim?\/And in his place a tortoise\u2026is it him\u201d I woke up with a tortoise\/\u2026is it him?\u201d She goes on to make several references to Greek mythology in a song that\u2019s as much about practical jokes as it is about a breakup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n

<\/div><\/div>
<\/div>
<\/div>
<\/div><\/div><\/div>