TBGB Reviews…The Virginia Aires

The Virginia Aires
Live in the Country II
Firstlite Records
www.firstliterecords.com

Reverend Kerry Smith gave the patrons gathered for the Virginia Aires’ recording session at the Chesapeake Conference Center a dose of the gospel truth. “The devil’s been on my track all week long,” Pastor Smith testified. “It took everything I had just to get here.”

He could well have been speaking on behalf of the Virginia Aires, because at the start of the finished project, Live in the Country II, the quartet sounds a little tired and road-weary. Regardless, the members – Pastor Rodney “Mailman” Mills, Valry “BaBa” Spence, Rondell Shannon, Cory Shaw, and Kenny Halsey – dig deep within their reserves of energy to give the audience everything they have left.

Guest vocalist Natasha Halsey provides a dose of vocal caffeine when she trades leads with Shaw “I Can Only Be Who I Am,” the project’s finest moment. By the conclusion of “Time,” a lovely song with fine harmonies, the Virginia Aires seem more themselves. Energetic renditions of “Came Into My Life” and “Holy Ghost” give glimpses of what the quartet can really do, and the testimony during “He’s My All and All” – about being orphaned as an adult after both parents have died – will certainly resonate with listeners who know the feeling.

The Virginia Aires’ first volume of Live in the Country hits the mark far better than the second, but when you are a working quartet, traveling thousands of miles along the gospel highway, dealing with the vicissitudes of daily life on top of that, some days are going to be better than others.

Two of Four Stars