Liz McComb - The Spirit of New Orleans

By Peggy Oliver

Music of all sorts can break shy people out of their shell.  Take for instance Liz McComb who as a shy young lady had no doubts about her singing ability.  As she developed her craft, she mixed her faith with a love for African-American musical history in expressing that faith.  Unlike many of her counterparts, McComb enjoys a profitable career in Europe.  The current France resident always yearned to record a project in one of music’s major meccas, New Orleans, birthplace to gospel groundbreakers Mahalia Jackson& Sister Rosetta Tharpe.  Originally available as an import and released in the U.S. this year, The Spirit of New Orleans was recorded four years before the infamous Katrina storm altered the tone of the festive city. 

Since the early eighties, McComb has called Paris, France home since touring as a headliner at various European festivals like the International Festival of Montreaux (Switzerland) and at Paris’ Olympia Theater.  Her extensive résumé includes opening for some of urban music’s greatest from James Brown to The Blind Boys of Alabama.  European audiences have responded with sheer enthusiasm and appreciation to McComb’s jazz/ blues drenched gospel performances that incorporate her church roots.  Her family played a major role in those musical endeavors.  Her mother, who is the pastor of a Cleveland, Ohio Pentecostal church, instilled that God will always make a way to follow her dream as a musician/songwriter.  After watching her sister take piano lessons, McComb followed suit, while her brother introduced her to jazz greats like Wes Montgomery and Max Roach.

Like many of her previous recordings, McComb aims for vocal and arranging liberties that most gospel contemporaries might avoid.    Even though she writes a bulk of her material, she mostly focuses to traditional pieces, especially spirituals, tying into the New Orleans culture.

For starters, the spiritual Over My Head begins with a slow acappella set-up leading into a joyful celebration of music’s magnetism:  “When I think of Jesus, I hear music in the air.”  

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