The Perfecto leather jacket is worn out, the leggings are torn and the hand disappears in a likely wet head of hair. No deception here, Danielle Nicole is through and through in the image of her music. With Cry No More, this tiger doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel of blues’n’soul but rather to hypnotise the crowds with catchy choruses and carnivorous growls. It must be said that the blues notes started flowing through her veins when her girlfriends from the sandbox were still playing with Barbie dolls. In the Nicole family, all members sing and play music. That’s it. Growing up in Kansas City, Missouri, Danielle performed on stage for the first time at the young age of twelve, already glorifying like no other Koko Taylor’s Never Trust A Man. Four years later, she was the lead singer in her father’s band, Little Eva and the Works. In 1999 she decided to start her own band, Fresh Brew, with a few old local musicians. But because family is at the core of her music, Danielle took her brothers Nick and Kris with her to Philadelphia. There their new band, Trampled Under Foot, quickly became a reference in its genre. She learnt the bass and quickly turned into a virtuoso.
After thirteen years of Trampled Under Foot, Danielle Nicole decided on a solo career, releasing an EP and in 2015, a first solo album, Wolf Den, produced by Anders Osborne. Even more masterful, even more sensual, even more soulful, Cry No More is the even more album of an ambassador weary of a certain tradition, but whose gutsy singing makes each performance a musical oddity. And to make this 2018 cuvée even more powerful, she invited four formidable musicians: Luther Dickinson, Sonny Landreth, Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Walter Trout. © Clotilde Maréchal/Qobuz