1		Sunnyland	2:51
2		I've Come Undone Again	5:06
3		Jet Airliner	5:00
4		Oh, Sun	4:02
5		Sadness Everlasting	4:44
6		Somebody Else's Baby	4:37
7		Will You Or Won't You	2:56
8		My Big Iron Skillet	2:09
9		The Other Side	3:58
10		Love Is A Wrecking Ball	3:03
11		I Feel Like Going Home	5:00
12		Jet Airliner (The Black Americana Version)	5:00
13		I've Come Undome Again (Otra Vez)	3:59

Acoustic Guitar – Bruce Edwards (tracks: 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9)
Acoustic Guitar, Lead Guitar, Rhythm Guitar – Jon Diaz (tracks: 1, 3, 8, 10, 12, 13)
Bass – Naisha Walton
Drums – Sir G. Earl Grice
Electric Guitar – Michael Duhnfort (tracks: 12)
Harmony Vocals – Queen Esther (tracks: 2, 5, 8)
Lap Steel Guitar – Raphael Mcgregor (tracks: 5, 10)
Lead Guitar, Rhythm Guitar – Marvin Sewell (tracks: 1, 3, 6, 12), Ronald "Head" Drayton (tracks: 1, 6)
Lead Vocals – Queen Esther
Pedal Steel Guitar – Bob Hoffnar (tracks: 4, 7)
Piano, Harmony Vocals – Jon Loyd (tracks: 7, 9, 11)
Rhythm Guitar, Harmony Vocals – Ralph M. White III (tracks: 3, 4)
Violin – Charles Burnham (tracks: 7, 9)

Secrets do have a way of leaking out, and one that desperately needs to be heard is Americana/country/ jazz singer, Queen Esther. The very talented songwriter has a superb old school soulful voice, which years ago would probably have taken her high into the charts. Queen Esther began her career in 2004 with Talkin’ Fishbowl Blues, a neat mix of blues and country, which ended with an interesting version of Tammy Wynette’s classic Stand By Your Man. In 2010 Queen Esther climbed on another horse, jazz, which resulted in another fine CD, What Is Love? Now we have Queen Esther’s most country album, The Other Side, which contains some stunning traditional country, a dash of country/blues and some well selected cover versions. Every song is sung with passion and fire, by this underrated female singer who should be a musical giant.

Opening delight, Sunnyland, begins as an acoustic country/blues song, but then becomes more upbeat as the electric guitar bursts in. Queen Esther’s wonderful vocal has hints of her gospel and church roots in the south of the USA. The country tracks start with the incredible heartbreaker, I’ve Come Undone Again, an original song. Queen Esther’s vocal and her songwriting skills on this track indicate strongly that this is where she should be. The CD’s best country song is touched with old school genius; Sadness Everlasting would have been perfect for George Jones. Queen Esther’s knowing vocal, which has a touch of sadness, is perfection, with a superb steel guitar solo as well. For me, this track is one of the best traditional country songs of the decade so far. Not far behind it is another traditional gem, Somebody Else’s Baby, which would have been a good song for Connie Smith to tackle.

Queen Esther’s amazing CD includes several cover versions, all of them high quality songs. The Steve Miller Band’s 1977 hit, Jet Airliner, which was originally written in 1973 by Paul Pena, emerges as a blazing blues/rock song. Queen Esther attacks this foot-tapper with great gusto. The Queen also does a strong version of Wanda Jackson’s My Big Iron Skillet, which dates back to 1969. Heard in 2014 the song sounds almost like a feminist anthem, with Queen Esther sounding like she understands the dark drama of this underrated track.

Other highlights are the country/gospel of The Other Side, and the acoustic country/blues song Love Is A Wrecking Ball. The album winds down beautifully with a killer version of the old Charlie Rich song I Feel Like Going Home. It’s a brave singer, who tackles one of Charlie Rich’s most perfect songs, but the new version also hits the target, with Queen Esther’s passionate vocal set to move anyone who hears it. The simple piano backing track, with Queen Esther’s emotional vocal is a dream end to a disc which has no faults.

So the secret is out, Queen Esther is a major talent in several area’s, but her greatest talent is as a writer and singer of the more traditional country song. Hopefully this is the road she is planning to travel down for many years. The Other Side is a major work, by a vital, important artist who has been ignored for too long, hopefully now is Queen Esther time. ---Paul Riley, 1queenesther.livejournal.com

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1.The Black Cowgirl Song 03:34
2.John the Revelator 03:34
3.The Whiskey Wouldn't Let Me Pray 03:02
4.Oleander 03:05
5.Take It To The Limit 04:38
6.Lonesome Road 02:29
7.This Yearning Thing 03:43
8.Our Dying Day 03:07
9.All That We Are 04:06
10.He Thinks I Still Care 02:37
11.Wishin' On The Cars 02:25
12.I Love You 03:23
13.The Whiskey Wouldn't Let Me Pray (Acoustic) 02:55 

Queen Esther - vocals
Hilliard Green - guitar, mandolin, steel guitar, bass guitar, backing vocals
Ben Rubin - double bass + drum programming + Wurlitzer electric piano, organ and synthesizer
Jeff McLaughlin - acoustic + electric guitar
Greg Lewis - organ
Shirazette Tinnin - drums 

Gild The Black Lily’s Black Americana sound was curated by Harlem-based vocalist, songwriter, musician, and producer Queen Esther. Her creative output musically is the culmination of several important Southern elements, not the least of which are years of recording and touring internationally as frontwoman for several projects with her mentor, harmolodic guitar icon James “Blood” Ulmer, including a stint in his seminal band Odyssey. Queen Esther was raised in Atlanta, Georgia and rooted in Charleston, South Carolina’s culturally rich and enigmatic Lowcountry, a region with African traditions and Black folkways that span centuries and continue to inform her work. These 13 songs include originals from Queen Esther as well as covers from Son House, Chip Robinson of The Backsliders, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, The Eagles, and George Jones, with performances from guitarist Boo Reiners (Demolition String Band), bassist Hilliard Greene (Little Jimmy Scott), organist and Thelonious Monk specialist Gregory Lewis, guitarist Jeff McLaughlin and drummer Shirazette Tinnin. With each song, the Blackness that raised her moves steadily from The Old West (The Black Cowgirl Song) and the foundations of the Black church (John The Revelator) to heartbreak (He Thinks I Still Care) with soulful declarations (All That We Are) and country-rock reworked into black country soul (Take It To The Limit) and back again. Ultimately, the album illuminates other facets of the Black sonic experience. ---queenesther.bandcamp.com Queen Esther’s fourth studio album Gild The Black Lily, highlights the gift of being an African-American woman willing to make daring, reclamation-driven musical navigations into unexpected sonic spaces. It audaciously succeeds at crafting a narrative thread from gospel blues vocalist Blind Willie Johnson to The Eagles’ soft rock to her own heartwarming Black Americana. Notably, the album grows in distinction when Esther’s artistry expands beyond her prodigious roots and profoundly connects with the listener’s emotional core. Before 2021, defining who Queen Esther musically was and why she was great proved difficult for critics. The reason? For generations, the gift that is Black women performing America’s foundational music was cursed by white men having significant levels of pop-aimed mainstream dominance in the space. Thus, sounds that originated in the spirit of Black American femininity in the Antebellum era grew in renown as the timeless white American experience’s embodiment. As a result, reviews of the Harlem-based Esther’s melodic yet slyly robust vocal instrument are compared to everyone from Lucinda Williams and Melissa Etheridge to Sly Stone and Sheryl Crow, or Sarah Vaughn and Nina Simone. Thus, Queen Esther’s work would receive polite, critical acclaim in a previous environment in the not-so-distant past. However, in the present musical and socio-cultural climate, a “Black Americana” roots-rock release does as much to celebrate history as it does to provoke a nuanced cultural conversation... ---Marcus K Dowling, partonandpearl.com

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