ON The Beat | Gospel Truths

It’s more than fair to say that the prized Santa Barbara-based singer Lois Mahalia is no stranger in this town, and that’s a lucky thing for fans of her impressive and innately soulful musical voice. Just in recent months, Mahalia has shown up on such local stages as SOhO, with Luis Munoz and elsewhere, at the Alcazar, and in the hip, humble setting of Roy with collaborator Zach Madden — also behind their band State Flower.

Her musical resume has also included high profile background singer gigs, with Joe Walsh, Kenny Loggins, and the late Joe Sample. She has found a place in the field so eloquently documented in the documentary 20 Feet from Stardom, and it may be time to move up about 20 feet.

It’s time for a bright spotlight in Mahalia’s general direction. In a critical moment in her evolving musical life as a leader, Mahalia has just released what is, by far, her finest recording to date, the album Chasing the Sun. As suggested on the album’s first single, “Buttercup,” something bold and old/new school this way has come. With this album, Mahalia has created a polished but emotionally nuanced song set of R&B/pop originals, ranging from the opening statement of “Sacred Ground” to the moving balladry of “Gravity and Love” and “I Can Breathe,” the sweet eco-coo of “Little Blue Marble,” and the driving funk-rocking of the closer “Lightning Bolt,” on which Mahalia cuts loose with her natural flow of steamy soul riffs we know are always beneath the controlled surface of her vocal presence.

Mahalia’s official album release party lands at SOhO on Saturday, August 19, a show well worth catching.

She’s in good creative company here: the dynamic production values were channeled into being by longtime Santa Barbara studio master Thom Flowers, who served as producer, engineer, guitarist and more. Flowers was the funnel through which Mahalia did sessions in Los Angeles’s legendary Sunset Sound, with such luminaries as drummer Steve Ferrone and former Journey-man lead singer Steve Perry as her own “20 feet from stardom” harmony singer. (Flowers worked with Perry on his 2018 comeback album Traces).

Locally, Mahalia worked with Madden, Toad the Wet Sprocket’s Dean Dinning, well-established session guitarist Tariqh Akoni, and others, in such 805 studios as Beagle and Goodland Sound.