The follow-up to
Dion's 2020 album
Blues with Friends, 2021's
Stomping Ground mirrors the previous album's template to the letter -- the great Bronx Blues singer writes a new batch of songs, he goes in to the studio with a big, bold band, invites some well-known friends and fans to sit in, and pours his soulful vocals over the top.
Stomping Ground differs from its immediate precursor; while the earlier album featured a significant number of guest vocalists, this time around
Dion mostly keeps the singing to himself, and a roll call of guitar heroes lend their talents to these sessions, while
Boz Scaggs appears on "I've Got to Get to You,"
Patti Scialfa joins in on "Angel in the Alleyways," and "I've Been Watching" includes some soulful support from
Rickie Lee Jones, whose harmonies with
Dion sound like the work of a committed fan happy to be on hand.
Stomping Ground was released by
Joe Bonamassa's Keeping the Blues Alive label, and musically it isn't so far off from
Bonamassa's usual approach, with big arrangements, plenty of horns and percussion, and enough flashy soloing that
Dion occasionally threatens to become an afterthought on his own LP. While his voice has lost a considerable amount of its upper range over the years, thankfully he continues to sound strong and authoritative, and he has more than enough swagger in him to match the firepower of the soloists, who include
Bonamassa,
Mark Knopfler,
Billy Gibbons,
Peter Frampton, and
Sonny Landreth.
Dion is also a capable lyricist, and if these tunes don't often stray from the standard tropes of contemporary blues, they're plenty effective -- this is impressively forceful and full-bodied stuff, especially from an artist who was 82 when this was released. It would be nice to hear a more nuanced and stylistically diverse album from
Dion (like 2005's Bronx in Blue or 2016's
New York Is My Home), but there are more than enough great moments on
Stomping Ground to remind us
Dion is still a major talent over 60 years after scoring his first hit single. ~ Mark Deming