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 Toronzo Cannon (from the album The Preacher, The Politician, or The Pimp available on Alligator Records)
The sound backing the title track on Toronzo Cannon’s recent release, The Preacher, The Politician Or The Pimp, echoes with 1970’s-era influences in the street-walking grooves of Curtis Mayfield in both words and music. Toronzo Cannon uses his pen to write the same street tales, changing the dates on events to reflect today as the issues that each songman sees remain the same. Intense guitar work and insightful lyrics are the one, two punch that Toronzo Cannon puts into this music, whether the story is a fly-on-the-wall as two lovers find common ground in “That’s What I Love About Cha’” or an open letter to inaction with “The Silence of My Friends”. The message AND the music are the important pieces for Toronzo Cannon, the Bluesman feeling that ‘it's not about the solos. It's about the songs. People get used to everyday life, so it's easy to miss the things around them. I write about those things. I know the problems of Chicago, the hardship, 'cause we're always a scapegoat. But I choose to love and respect the city because of the Chicago Blues giants that came here from down south. I'm proud to be standing on the shoulders of every great Chicago Blues musician who came before me’. His guitar work lays down a groove for “The Chicago Way”, the track tossed down on the table as a resume for Toronzo Cannon. Born in the Windy City, a young Toronzo found his way through tough city streets to Theresa’s Lounge, an infamous South Side Blues club. He soaked up the sound and watching the larger-than-life Bluesmen like Junior Wells and Buddy Guy strut by within arms reach gave him role models. He honed his style, playing as a sideman in varous local bands, a hired-gun guitarist from 1996 through 2002, supplementing his late night income with a bus driver day gig, where Toronzo still logs four ten-hour days per week. Horns and a raucous piano lead the way into a uptown Saturday night for “Stop Me When I’m Lying” while The Preacher, The Politician, Or The Pimp owns up to what it wants with “Ordinary Woman” and goes old school with the screaming Blues guitar of “She Loved Me (Again)”. Life and love are topics for the album, Toronzo Cannon reporting on a war between just two in “Get Together or Get Apart”, taking a moment to share his health history with “Insurance”, and closes out The Preacher, The Politician, Or The Pimp on an authoritative piano riff introducing ‘the voices of those how refuse to be victims’ in “I’m Not Scared”. Listen and buy the music of Toronzo Cannon from AMAZON https://toronzocannon.com/
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