One of the groups most affected by the pandemic was performing musicians, who were unable to bring their music to live audiences for months. Resourceful musicians tried to devise ways to get their music out via video streaming and other indirect means. Many took advantage of the technology to create recordings with musicians separated in their isolated homes and studios. It got to the point that a handful of jazz big band recordings were made with all the players recording their parts separately in isolation. And for many, the pandemic’s restrictions served as an inspiration for a new paradigm to what it meant to be a performing musician. The experience, not surprisingly, led to a spate of songwriting, with musicians basically sitting around with time on their hands, and itching to play.

This week we have another of those “pandemic albums,” Songs from My Kitchen Volume 1, by Curtis Stigers.

Curtis Stigers is known in the jazz world as a sometimes bluesy saxophonist and vocalist, who performs a combination of original songs and jazz standards. Like other musicians, while holed up in his home in Boise, Idaho, Stigers produced a series of video performances for his fans, mostly made in his kitchen at home with his dogs often present.

For his new album, Stigers draws on those songs, both originals he penned and a few covers, and went for an intimate singer-songwriter sound, showing little jazz influence, except for a couple of sax solos Stigers includes. In fact there is some noticeable country influence here and there. Though there are some added musicians, there is only one tune with a full drum set while most of the others have more more scaled back sound with hand percussion and light electric guitar. Stigers writes in his liner notes that 99% of the album was recorded within a two-mile radius of his house in Boise. Among the players on the album are electric guitarist Dave Manion, bassist Bernie Reilly, playing acoustic bass, and keyboard man Jens Kuross. These are not the same people who appeared on Stigers’ jazzier previous album This Life released in 2022. The lyrical direction of the tunes is decidedly on the melancholy side, with a number of breakup songs. A majority of he album consists of original compositions, but Stigers includes four covers, most of them rather obscure but there is one by well-known folk-singer-songwriter Patty Griffin.

Opening is one of the covers, a song called Until Your Were Gone, composed by John Fulbright. With a bit of country influence, it expresses what Joni Mitchell articulated in her classic song Big Yellow Taxi, that you don’t appreciate something, or in this case, someone until they are gone. <<>>

The first of the originals is a kind of an opposite to the lyrical direction of the preceding song, I Have Everything is about a close to jazzy as this album gets. The track has a guest appearance from jazz keyboard man Larry Goldings. <<>>

Taking the form of a narrative, is the original song called Burn It Down written from the perspective of a prisoner who is feeling hopeless in his situation. <<>>

Don’t Look at Me That Way, is one of the sad breakup songs. The original composition shows a little country influence. <<>>

Another of the covers continues the melancholy mood. The track called Old Fashioned is a kind of crying in your drink song. <<>>

The Patty Griffin composition on the album is called Goodbye another of those breakup songs, though the lyrics could be interpreted as losing someone by their either from the end of an affair, or possibly the death of a loved one. <<>>

One of the strongest of the original compositions is called, simply The Song, considering the role of a song and the writing of it. <<>>

The album ends with Lighten Up, It’s Christmas which is not totally a Christmas song, but an an appeal to “lighten up” as the lyrics say. <<>>

It’s not a particularly common thing for a jazz singer to go into the folk-influenced singer-songwriter mode, but Curtis Stigers has has done a very good job in that respect on his new album Songs from My Kitchen Volume 1. Like quite a few other recent musical projects, it has its roots in the restrictions of the pandemic. But Stigers has always had an affinity for rock and folk composers, having covered songs by the likes of Leonard Cohen, Emmylou Harris and Nick Lowe on his last album, though in a jazzier setting. On his new album, he still gets out his sax to play on a few tracks, but it all sounds quite intimate, with the almost no regular drums to be heard, and Stigers playing mostly acoustic guitar. The result is a satisfying album.

Our grade for audio quality is an “A-minus” with a warm sound that captures the intimate quality of the performances, while maintaining the distinctive, slightly rough edge to Stigers’ vocals. Dynamic range, how the recording captures the loud and soft of the music, falls short.

As a jazz singer, Curtis Stigers has been known to appeal to audiences who were not strictly jazz fans. His new album should help broaden that range even more.

(c) Copyright 2025 George D. Graham. All rights reserved.
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<<>> indicates audio excerpt played in produced radio review

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