Some things you don’t forget.
Like the day about four years ago when Deanna Bogart was in a shopping mall near her Maryland home, and a young cashier struck up a conversation. She didn’t know Bogart or her music, but spoke at length about her feelings as an outcast from her peer group.
“She told me she was thought of as `the girl in the band,’ and said she didn’t care if people made fun of her,” said Bogart. “When she asked if I though she was crazy, I told her `No. I’m still the girl in the band.’”
Such is the life of Deanna Bogart, who calls herself “the homely girl with the guitar who could sing a little.” From the time she first picked up a guitar at age 12, Bogart has never looked back except at such real life stories, which inspire her music — a mix of blues, jazz, boogie-woogie, R&B, and country. The result has not yet been wide fame or fortune but numerous critical acclaim.
Expect the same on her latest release Real Time. Once again, Bogart takes the sax and boogie-woogie piano to powerful, sophisticated extremes. But don’t grow so enraptured listening to her musicianship that you miss her powerful singing.
Of course, that would be akin to missing a vocal tidal wave, in which Bogart expertly takes her listeners from daydreaming on the song “Real Time” (“I was too young for disco, too late for the hop, didn’t get to Woodstock, missed the birth of bop, and I wonder what it was like in real time”) to heartache on “Are You Lonely for me Baby” (“Will u try, c’mon and try to forget, all the pain I brought you, go on and cry, I know I made u cry”) and “Wonder What the Weather is Today” (“Eggshells under my feet, every time we meet, first you’re out, then you’re in, change direction like the wind, I can’t get a read.”)
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